I had a bunch of points left, and bought a bunch of contacts...the GM stated no fixers, or Mr. Johnson are available, but everything else is fine.
what should I get? this is what I picked.
Mechanic
Bartender
Corporate Scientist
Corporate official
Government Official
Mafia Don
Yakuza Don
Detective

Depending on what area you're in (as in, who's in power) I'd go with one of the crime bosses. Goverment officials can be great too depending on the campaign.

Having a friendly cop on your side can be real useful too.

Cheers,

Max

So much depends on context... If you don't have a Hacker in your PC group, you should definitely consider getting a good hacker contact. Heck, even if you do have one, they're still usually pretty good. After all, at least that way if your team Hacker gets cacked or otherwise incapacitated, you still have someone you can contact to spoof your datatrail for a while. At the absolute least they're potentially one more guy with a great data search pool on your side, and hackers have funny ways of knowing way more than they should about people. Something to consider, although having a mechanic means you probably won't really need someone to upgrade and repair your comm for you, since a good one should have a decent hardware skill. Hackers are still a great source of software and Electronic warfare gear though.

Don't overlook Ganger contacts either. They can do more than you'd think.

Get a catgirl stripper contact cause it's ... um ... helpful. Yeah, that's it

Heh, I once had a character (dead now after taking a manaball to the face after becoming unconcious) that had a professor in magical theory as a contact at Seattle university. The character had use of that contact ONCE but it was also THE contact we needed at the time. Great fun it was.

One of the guys in my group made *great* use of a reporter contact.

Look at the skill sets of the contacts. What they have and you need, then that's the contact you want. If your GM is forbidding the Fixer and the Johnson, then use the Fence(similar contact to the Fixer) and the Company Man or the Government Agent(similar contact to the Johnson). In a pinch, you could use the Blogger, he has "Chosen Specialty Topic 5" which can be used to match the Fixer on 1 of his rank 4 skills.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Thor Shot operator at loyalty 6. You might only get 1 use out of him, but it's sure to be a good use.

Best contacts?

w/ Thermo, Low-light, Flare comp, Smartlink, Ultrasound, Vision Magnification, Vision enhancement 3, and image link. Availability 36R baby.

Street Snitch
HR Director for a Cleaning/Landscaping Company
Decker (Yeah its been said before, but this one is just too important not to have, after all can you really trust your team's Decker?)
Drycleaner

Eh, those contact lenses would be balanced, when you consider that any GM worth their salt will make them so hard to acquire that you'll regret ever going for them. I mean, really, nothing in those contacts would be black market material on it's own, but a combined -36- availability? Better break out the 2 pound brick of 6 siders boys, we're going to be making rolls all night, and you still probably won't get them handed over in a pretty package.

I think he meant 6-8 weeks.

An oft over looked contact is a street doc, some one who you can trust to patch you up at any time of night, and with out screwing up your cyber or implanting tracking beacons.

Yeah. Having a super high availability means that while an item may be legal, it's not necessarily very um, available.

Really though, availability is on there for a reason. If you sketch out a set of dream contact lenses that has an availibilty that is more than 50% higher than that of Seven-7, then your GM is being a bit of a Santa Claus if he just lets you waltz out of the Crime Mall with nary a roll, even if you can get a license for each and every augmentation on that particular pair of lenses.

I have a character with a 5/5 LoneStar Organized Crime Division Chief as a contact. He has come in handy more than once. Also I'm a big fan of the Investigative Reporter. Arms Dealers make great contacts too. It's not as easy to make characters with lots of contacts at character gen in SR4, but in SR3 I had a character with twenty-some contacts. A few other of my favorites were the Seattle Hilton Assistant Manager, Bank Loan Officer (great for credit checks when doing investigative type runs or for a small loan in a pinch), Realestate Developer (great for getting blueprints efficiently without raising an alarm).

Then this is always the running joke with my group a Talismonger who is owner of a shop called the Home O' Fetishes.

depending on the skills of our group, a mage especially a mage with a heal spell can be really important. oor able to do ritual spell tracking or anything else a mage does.
If you're already a mage (and even if you don't have a lot of left over bp's) a good street doc is incredibly important.
Joy girls are of course classic my face character's contacts were all former dancers at her strip bar.

What is Blakkie's contact rule, I'm intrigued. I've always been unsatisfied with how previous editions handled contacts, but SR4 has made them extremely rare. I liked it when contacts wouldn't cripple a starting character.

The one I use is give 10 BP to characters that can only be used on Contacts but you have to buy at least 3 seperate contacts with the extra BP. (I also usually give at least 1 campaign contact free to all of the PCs as well.)