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Serbitar
Edit: How I hate not being able to edit the topic . . .

We all know that drain of spells is calculated by a well defined rule set. One might argue whether the values of this set are balanced (stun spells for example make for smaller drain, indirect combat spells make for bigger drain, both things I would object), but still, they are consistent.
Also, the numbers concerning guns look like they were designed with certain gun design rules in mind and are consistent.

But now to Cyberware and Bioware. Is there a concept behind the values? If yes, it is well balanced?

There is some ware which is really good (Synaptic Accelerators) and some stuff which is really bad (Adrenaline Pump), so there might be no concept behind it.

What I am trying to do now is provide a kind of construction kit, to test the balancing against and find ware that is not balanced compared to the power level set by other ware. Note that I am considering Adept powers just as another type of ware.


First some terminology:

Attribute bonus: The ware provides a bonus to one attribute
Skill bonus: The ware provides a bonus whenever a skill is used
Test bonus: The ware provides a bonus only to a certain test

Lets start with the baseline. The good old Muscle Replacement.

Attribute bonus: 2
Essence: 1
Cost: 5000

which can be normalized to:

Attribute bonus: 1
Essence: 0.5
Cost: 2500

now we have to deal with several effects:
- attribute to skill to test ratio
-bonus to money ratio
- essence to money ratio
- cyberware to bioware ratio
- cyberware to adept power ratio
- permanent to temporary ratio
- drain vs bonus

Attribute to skill to test ratio:
As I am using a 5:2 ratio in my SECKSY generation system for attribute to skill karma advancement costs, I am going to take these. RAW suggests 3:2 (and 5 for Skillgroups) which is absolute nonsense. So I am going to stick to my numbers and disregard RAW.
Tests are a subclass of a skill (like jumping). They are even less effective than specialisations, so I am giving them a factor of 1, which leaves us with 5:2:1
These factors are applied both to Essence and Cost.
Note that balancing wise spoken, these factors vary with the frequency of a certain test appearing in a standard Shadowrun situation. This can lead to factors of 0.5 to 2.

Other Effects:
Additional IP: Worth 3 Attribute points (balanced by calculating RAW Wired costs)


Bonus to money ratio:
SECKSY gives you 3000 Nuyen per karma point. This is also the value often suggested as a ratio for standard runs. The BP of RAW also approximately translate into this ratio.
Raising a skill from 3 to 4 costs karma, or, using the money conversion, 24000 Nuyen.
Attributes have, according to the arguments above, a 5/2 higher value rating, costing you 60k per attribute point (note that the real karma value is 3/2, leaving you at 36k, but as I said, the RAW attribute costs are nonsense). Muscle replacement does it for 2500. I am not going to question this difference. It just means that you will want to get cyberware as much as you can.
Furthermore other effects, like the finite value of essence plays into the calculation.
Comparing these numbers to the Muscle Replacement gives us a 0.1 Essence 500 Nuyen per point

Essence to money ratio:
The intrinsic essence to money conversion of cyberware (and bioware) seems to be better than the alphaware conversion (0.8 in essence, 2 times in price, giving a product of 1.6, less is better). Lets look at muscle toner/augmentation vs muscle replacement. We have have 0.2 Essence and 7.5k on the one side, and 0.5 Essence and 2.5k on the other per attribute point. This is a 0.4 Essence to 3 ratio, a product of 1.2. Synaptic Booster(2) vs Wired reflexes (2) has a product of 1/3= 0.33 and 160k/32k = 5 yielding 1.55 (Synaptic 3 vs Wired 3 has a ratio product of 0.3*2.4 = 0.72, get those!!!)
I think a product of 1.5 is OK. Which means that you have to pay 3 times as much for an implant with half essence costs. Note that his is mostly for calculating the effects of Bioware which cost less Essence.
Furthermore, Cyberware (even Alpha, Beta, Delta) will never outperform Bioware, due to the calculation above.
For a more realistic calculation one might want to employ power or exponential laws instead of linear ones.


Cyberware to Bioware:
Bioware is undetectable. Thats good. This alone would be enough to account for a factor of 1.2 in price tag. But I think I will drop the price tag increase and instead proclaim: Cyberware can be upgraded, Bioware can not. To go from Wired 2 to Wired 3 you only pay the difference, to go from Synaptic 2 to Synaptic 3 you have to pay the whole Synaptic 3.
The Cyberware-Bioware factor is then 1. But I will always use at least halve Essence cost by applying the Essence to money transfer factor when constructing bioware.

Cyberware to Adept power:
Adepts powers dont cost money, they are undetectable and upgradeable. But you cant get the cheaper Bioware versions and you cant get alpha and beta adept powers. But you can increase you magic. This is mostly a religious question. Im going with a factor of 1 and say that all the effects cancel themselves out.

Permanent to temporary:
The difference between permanent and temporary is mostly the fact, that you wont have the temporary Cyberware on when surprised. This is not that much of a problem. As long as the power can be activated without drawbacks for longer than, say 3 combat rounds, the effect is hardly noticeable, except, when surprised. Im giving temporary effects a 0.9 Essence cost reduction.

Drain vs Bonus:
Is it worth to risk drain (like in the abuse of an Adrenaline Pump) for some effect?
Every 3 points of drain take away 1 die from every test, and you might go down.
1 Die for every test you are making would score around 10 in the 5:2:1 ratio of Attribute:Skill:Test ratio. The fact that you are more likely to go down is worth at least another 10 points (for 3 boxes). Thus I am giving 1 average box of drain, a value of 6.66. One could also allow temporary, drain (or other in-check-keeping-effects) causing implants to break the attribute cap and go for 5.

Damage resistance Bonus:
Permanent resistance boni would be worth a factor of 5 per box (see above) if you had damage all the time. As you dont, I will give it a 3 per box. Temporary resistances (on the order of combat turns) are really not worth anything, so I will give them a 3 for 10 boxes.

So, with these numbers in hand, lets look at some stuff (note, that I am mostly listing the "interesting" stuff, so this is biased. I am also assuming natural attributes of 4 and a magic of 6 for adepts):

Improved Physical Attribute:
RAW: 1 point
Here: 0.5 points
(0.5 for attribute bonus, times 1 for power)

Great Leap:
RAW: 0.25 points
Here: 0.1
(0.1 for test bonus, times 1 for power)

Attribute Boost 1/2/3:
RAW: 0.25/0.5/0.75 points
Here: 1.17/1.33/1.3
(Attribute Bonus 2.33/2.66/3 (1.17/1.33/1.5), average drain ~0/~0/0.33 (0/0/0.2), adept power (*1))
Note that the average drain of 0 is mathematically wrong. The average drain is always a nonzero positive number (cant cancel out with cases where resistance would turn to negative drain), but might be small.


Adrenaline Pump 1/2/3:
RAW: 0.75/1.5/2.25 30k/60k/90k
Here: free/free/free free/free/free
(Attribute bonus of 4/8/12 (2/4/6 Essence, 10k/20K30k), stun damage resistance (temporary, whole track, (+0.3 Essence +1.5k), average drain of 3.5/7/10.5 (-2.3/- 4.6/- 6.9, -11.5k/-23k/-34.5k) temporary (*0.9), Bioware (*1))
Severely broken !

Wired 1/2/3:
(Note that wired is the only Cyberware in RAW with progressive costs)
RAW: 2/3/5 11k/32k/100k
Here: 2/3/5 10k/40k/54k
(Attribute bonus of 1.5/2/3 (0.5/1/1.5 Essence, 2.5k/5k/7.5k), IP bonus 1/2/3 (1.5/3/4.5 Essence, 7.5k/15k/22.5k), Essence to Money (/1, *1 ; /0.75, *2 ; /0.833, *1.8)

Synaptic 1/2/3:
RAW: 0.5/1/1.5 80k/160k/240k
Here: 0.5/1/1.5 60k/120k/180k
(Attribute bonus of 1.5/2/3 (0.5/1/1.5 Essence, 2.5k/5k/7.5k), IP bonus 1/2/3 (1.5/3/4.5 Essence, 7.5k/15k/22.5k), Bioware (*1), Essence to Money (/0.25, *6)
This is where you might need a power or exponential law for the large essence reduction!


In general I would say, that the "flavour" gear (like wall-running) and adept powers in general are quite underpowered. You can spend your whole magic on stuff like wall running, great leap, and falling without being superhuman or very effective. 3 Levels in Muscle TOner and Augmentation bring you the same number of dice and much cheaper and more versatile. RAW Cyberware increasing attributes is cheap and balance wise more effective than other Cyberware. Muscle Toner/Augmentation is setting the benchmark here.
Furthermore: This is only the "balancing" aspect. Reality aspects (how much space/essence does something take) and consistency aspects have to be considered, too.
The Jopp
Interesting - does this mean that we can create a "Build-Your-Own-Engine" for Powers and Cyberware similar to the spell creation section in SM?

Would be interesting since one could then recalculate some items actual value.

I made a small comparasy to adept powers of Improved Attribute and Improved Reflexes.

Improved Attribute lvl 1
1 Point= +1 Reaction

Increased Reflexes lvl 1,2,3
2 Points= +1 Reaction & +1IP (Cost: 1 point for each)
3 points= +2 Reaction & +2IP (Lower cost on IP's)
5 points= +3 Reaction & +3IP (Even lower cost on IP's if Reaction stays the same)

The interesting thing is that you have a limiter on the increased reaction while you actually save points by taking a higher grade of improved reflexes. Either the Improved attributes are overpriced or you get a discount on the Increased Reflexes.

hobgoblin
hrmf, why not just rebuild the whole game as a effects based game?
or, you know, go play ex machina, heroes, or any other game that use that kind of setup, with a cyberpunk background?
DireRadiant
QUOTE (hobgoblin)
hrmf, why not just rebuild the whole game as a effects based game?
or, you know, go play ex machina, heroes, or any other game that use that kind of setup, with a cyberpunk background?

I often wonder why Serbitar doesn't play Champions/Hero System, or GURPS.
Serbitar
The journey is the reward!

There is a difference between playing a game and doing number exercises (which is fun). When playing, rules are not that important, because, well, you are playing, but when you are not playing, rules are extremely important, because you are, well, not playing. You get that?
Jack Kain
I know lets alll play the Paladium system with S.D.C and M.D.C
Faelan
Yes more bookkeeping, Palladium rules! ohplease.gif
eidolon
Fixed the topic title.
Serbitar
Much appreciated.
Glyph
I think I'm of two minds about this. Yes, it would be nice to have all of the costs for gear be "fair", but, to me, some pieces of gear should be better than others. I kind of like scrutinizing the gear list to find out what gives me the most bang for the buck.
Serbitar
Of course, there should be variations. But mostly in utility value for different situaitions.

I personally dislike this Bioware = better Cyberware in SR4. in SR3 Bioware was something completely different with different effects.

I did the calculation mostly because I think "pure" adepts are quite underpowered and most powers and ware can not compete with the simple "bonus to attributes" implants. This is not good for variety. Especially for "flavour" stuff like wall-running.
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