Technomancer are considered by many to be the underdog of the shadowrun family. Agents, on the other hand, seemed to be a way for any mundane guy with a commlink and money to litterally break havoc in the Matrix. Here's some house rules that might help solve these problems.

Active Memory (this replaces the rule on the maximum number of programs active in a commlink)

Each commlink has an active memory, also called RAM. This is the maximum amount of program that can work on a single commlink at the same time. Under normal circumstances a commlink has an active memory equal to twice his system rating. If the hacker needs more active memory, he may reduce the performance of his commlink by reducing his response by one (this doesn't affect the rating of other commlink components or programs). By doing this, his commlink's RAM increases by its system rating. The RAM rating his now equal to three times its system rating. Further decreases in response allows the hacker to increase his RAM even more by the same amount. A commlink with a response of 0 crashes and his unable to work.

Agents and programs take up RAM space equal to their rating. For example, an hacker with a commlink running a system 4 has an active memory of 8. He may run any combination of programs/agents with a total rating of 8 (Stealth 3, Attack 3 and an Agent 2 for example) If the hacker wants more programs or more powerful programs, he need to reduce his response accordingly.

An agent must be run on a commlink in order to work. The agent response is equal to the commlink's modified response and may use all the programs currently running on the commlink (This replaces the actual ruling on agents)

Technomantic Echoes

A technomancer, has he understands the deeper meaning of the matrix, he getting more and more powerful. To reflect this, all technomancer's known complex forms receives a bonus equal to the technomancer's echo grade. This may increase a TM's CF above the technomancer's Resonance. If a technomancer wants to improve a CF later on with karma, he uses the base value to determine karma cost, not the improved one.


Comments?

Both of those sound like well thought out houserules except for one thing.
I would change the Technomancer houserule to be an Echo that adds the number of times the TM had submerged to all CF that are Rank 1 or higher. This way the TM has to at least learn the base CF to get the bonus.
This echo bonus to CF rating wouldnt add to CFs that are threaded from Rank 0.

Actually, that's what i meant by "technomancer's known CF"

Known = they spent BP or Karma to learn the CF per 'Learning/Upgrading CF' rules in BBB

I'm wondering between making this an actual echo or a bonus every technomancer receives when subermising...What do you think?