When it comes right down to it, there isn't 20 essence of compatible cyber in the game, anyway. But it still makes a difference at lower amounts, too, especially if essence loss equals magic loss. I don't want essence loss to become a non issue at any power level.

In other words, basic bioware can be ripped out and transplanted into someone else. Cultered Bioware cannot be. It's important information for any potential organ leggers out there.

That's another good alternative explanation for why they would make a cultured bioware distinction. Still, I suspect that it's part of the balancing scheme along with exempting cultured bioware from Type O benefits. Used Synaptic Booster 3 for 120k or Delta Synaptic 3 for 240k with Type O hits me as a li'l out of whack balance wise compared to, well, pretty much anything else in the game, really. If I'm wrong though, hell, sign me up for Type O. I'll be quite happy to take multiple loyalty 6 street docs at chargen too, if that's what it takes.

It's not loyalty 6 your need, but rating 6.

I have a house rule that if you have an appropriate contact, you can add their rating to the maximim availability you can have at chargen for equipment they can help you get. Fixers are universal, but they only provide half their rating as a bonus.

I just meant loyalty 6 so the Docs won't sell my valuable Type O meat to the Tamanous the first time I get banged up.

You can even put it on your resume at the fertility clinic where you sell little bits of yourself to upgrade other little bits.

Depending on how you read it, the rules for cyberware and bioware grades on SR4 p. 303 implies that Cultured Bioware is, indeed, a grade all its own. This can also be reinforced with the Second-Hand Bioware grade in Augmentation that specifically states Cultured Bioware isn't applicable for the modifiers.

It's pretty vague and my personal reading of said rules is saying that Cultured Bioware does come in various grades, just that it's not "standard 'ware." Which, as an aside, is what the Type O Bioware quality refers to as well.

The easiest way to settle things is to try and find an NPC or Archetype who has stats featuring Cultured Bioware with a grade.

Or we settle this with a game of rock paper scissors.

Cultured Bioware has to be grown to match the neural pathways of a specific individual. While a pancreas or a kidney is to large extent a self contained system with in input and output valve, a spinal chord is a complex relay that integrates itself in a unique and evelopmentally assigned fashion to each individual. So if you go get a piece of cultured ware they map out where your neurons go and then then they make a new item for you. There is no "off the rack" possibilty because it has to be grown specifically for you.

So when you pull a cerebral booster out of someone, there isn't anyone on the planet that you can reinstall it into. That's why Dr. Swayne put it down like so expressively:

Those suites are incorrectly stated and need to be fixed in errata, the basic formulas used "a series of multiples" and we simply didn't catch it.

Are you speaking as the writer of the Bioware chapter or the Type O Quality, Frank ? Because your reasoning still leaves me quite unconvinced. It seems to me that since neural bioware can come in A-D grades, too, it means there are extra levels of improved matching that one can have in order for that better grade neural bio to exist. The special nature of neural bioware is stated to be that it must be matched with the host's nervous system, not its immune system. Since the extra grades of neural bioware must represent something, I expect it to be full immune matching. And this is something that Type O can reproduce. Therefore, I expect Type O to make standard grade neural to work as Delta, too.

Of course, it is plain and clear that you cannot stack a non-standard grade with Type O. The latter already makes bioware as fully matched with the individual as it can ever be, so no point in implanting non-standard bio in a Type O guy. The Quality already makes all standard bio work as Delta, as good as it can ever be.

As regards the non-stacking of Biocompatibility and Type O, fine, I was doubtful myself, so this is a nice ruling for me, too.

I'm not sure what's unconvincing about my reasoning or Frank's. A is not B. C gives a discount to A. That doesn't mean B gets a discount from C, even if A and B are closely related and similar in many ways.

Yeah, but if cultured bioware still comes in grades, then obviously, even though it's all gene-matched, it can be more or less compatible. Maybe they still work off of some base stock and then modify it. Maybe it's easier to do that modification work to a type O patient.

Maybe the essence reduction from type O isn't because they bioware is already type O. Maybe it's because the very nature of the type O system (the lack of the protien markers that create bio-rejection) allows it to take new parts better. So no matter the parts, the system won't fight them as much. In other words, it's not that bioware is more compatable with the type O patient. It's that the type O patient is more compatible with Bioware.

Frank's analysis above is correct.

Strictly speaking, it's useless to even get alphaware... because it just counts as delta.

Ok, if that analysis is correct, why doesn't every peice of cultured bioware count as delta grade? How, if it's all grown from the patient's tissue and gene matched and everything, can there even BE standard greade cultured bioware?

Frank, your game-lingo semantic analysis is nice, informed, and eloquent about the fine points of game lingo, but sorry I fear it fails to address my point: I was not arguing about the meaning of the wording, I was putting the justification (or lack of it) into question for the interpretation you give of the rule. Taken what Type O is purported to do, the in-game biological justification this Quality is given, the way bioware is supposed to work, and the fact that neural bioware does exist in grades, the more we discuss this point, the more I get convinced that it is illogical for Type O to affect non-neural bioware and not neural bioware. Either grade A-D neural bioware does not exist, or Type O benefits it as well.

Even more, the more we discuss this point, the more I come to the realization and get convinced that one needs to be more radical: this distinction between somatic and neural bioware is an ugly legacy bit that is quite contradictory with real human biology, unnecessarily complicates game bookkeping, and adds really nothing to the game. Everything just flows smoother if this silly "cultured" stuff is scrapped. Bioware is bioware, it just comes in basic or standard grade, and A-D grades that do reflect increasingly perfect matching with the biology of of the individual, whatever place of the body you do implant it, nervous system or elsewhere. It is built in just the same way, it gets implanted and removed just the same way, works the same way, and affects Essence just the same way. The other way just adds bureaucratic madness to the game that needs triple somersaults from RL biology to be justified. And there is no real game need to do that, since cyberware, nonoware and geneware work quite fine and nicely without this stupid "cultured" distinction. If a writer or GM wants to make neural bioware more precious, just tinker with prices, Availability, or both. If this needs to be a house rule, so be it. It just brings the way bioware has evolved between editions to its final, natural consequences, doing away with legacy rules.

Wanderer and PlatonicPimp:

Cultured Ware must be made for the person in question. There is no resale market of cultured ware because every set of cultured ware is unique. It is not just unique in terms of biochemical signals and surface proteins, but also unique in terms of wiring. Your brain isn't a factory-made unit that is physically identical to other brains and running different "software" that makes you a unique individual. The wiring is the software and it is more than anything else what makes you a unique snow flake.

Now the question of how integrated that neural connectivity is will remain an open one. A cerebral booster could be a largely self-contained sub unit that connected to the existing neural structure in some minimally effective fashion (satndard grade). It could also be deeply integrated on every level of the brain connecting continuously to every part of the central nervous system (delta). Or something in between.

Just because something is grown from your cells doesn't necessarily mean that it fits well into your body. Unless of course, you're starting with something that is already essentially a symbiote like a liver - in which case it actually does mean that. Shrug.

-Frank

Okay. So the brain retrains the new cells. What does that do? Would you like to buy some rating 3 Synaptic Boosters and then have your brain decide to reroute those expensive new cells to store all those awesome memories of last week's Combat Biker episode just because it doesn't know what else to do with it? I would think it'd it'd be easier to have the Delta Clinic experts go in and set everything up so your brain thinks reacting 4 times as fast as the average man is perfectly normal and that everything is already running A-OK rather than just doing the standard grade job and making your brain reshape itself without changing around the new hardware. Honestly, I don't see why you're fighting the idea that tailoring bioware to interfere as little as possible is beneficial. It's exactly the same justification used for every other chunk of 'ware in the game.

[EDIT] What the devs did isn't any different than just giving a list of 'ware that doesn't work with Type O or used 'ware, except they just call it cultured rather than non-type o compliant.

So now we have different meanings of deltaware for basic and cultured bioware. Basic Bioware becomes higher grade the better it matches the target's biochemistry and genome. Integration has nothing to do with it (or else the type O wouldn't work at all, since it's all about biochem matching). But culuted bioware determines grade based on integration, not biochem.

Do I have it? does deltaware mean an entirely different thing for cultured bioware than it does for basic bioware?

Yeah, that's how I figure it, fluff-wise.

I was just reading the Augmentation preview, good stuff.

However, one question: Why does an Orientation System cost so much and cost a full capacity point when it's included free with the commlink? Why does SR4 p. 318 and 227-328 say that a commlink only uses "wireless" navigation, but a GPS navigation system is needed when wireless is unavailable such as in wilderness areas. I'm no doctor, but doesn't GPS use satellites and wireless transmissions? And isn't wireless communication everywhere (except underground or in otherwise blocked areas) due to satellites? So where could GPS navigation possibly work that "wireless navigation" could not?

The Grid provides an internal navigation setup for everyone inside of it. GPS satelites orbit the planet and project location information to every point on it.

-Frank

It's all a bit technical, but a Comlink is perfectly able to use satellite GPS (or receive FM, AM etc.)... it's a soft-radio, after all.

The only real advantage of an Orientation System is the gyroscope compass that gives you an absolute direction reference.

The advantages of an Orientation System are the auto-mapping features as well as what is doubtlessly going to be the bonuses received when used with a Tactical Computer in Arsenal.

OK, as no one else has asked it...

How much will a body get you from an organ jacker? I'm assuming that the more intact the more it's worth. Also how long to I have to get the body to one before it unsellable? And if they happen to have cyber or bio do I use the basic 30% fencing price added to the price of the body?

I can imagine that a street sam that has been mindfried by a mage going for a pretty hefty sum. Assuming that they spent 100K on their cyber/bio that's 30K to the guy who brought him in. That's a YEAR low lifestyle with 6K left over to party with in a big way. Not including how much you get for the rest of him.

All I'm thinking now is that if you have a player who spent all their money on chrome and bio and lives a low or squatter lifestyle they might not want to advertise that to much. Otherwise people will be coming for MILES around just to kill them. Its even worth 10K to hire a good combat mage for the night to help minimize breakage.


*EDIT*
Also can you put autoinjectors anywhere? And it looks like they take no capacity?

The inertial compass works inside wi-fi shielded corporate properties, underground, etc. GPS doesn't.

Ah, miniaturized gyroscope = inertial navigator that can be used inside wifi blocked areas, gotcha. Thx.

75kg * 3-nuyen = 225-nuyen = "a few hundred nuyen."

That aside, you're basically getting them to dispose a body for you. In all believability, you should be paying them for the service with the organlegging being the reason why they'd take it off your hands, not the other way around. Be happy it works as it does.

Prices vary. A zobop might pay more if it's fresh and reasonably intact.

Yes, if you sit there and manually edit it all in, hoping you get the details just right. Each and every step of the way.

An Orientation System makes accurate Mapsofts, and if you have a Radar Sensor, it makes them on the fly for rooms you haven't even stepped into yet. And regardless of what book it's going to be in, I can practically guarantee you that a Tactical Computer (which, if anything, is going to be a specialized commlink/transciever rather than "just a program") is going to gain benefits from the highly detailed, highly accurate, highly up-to-date information an Orientation System provides.

They've already proven that they're splitting concepts up between books (see: Jarheads). Sitting around whining about how "useless" something is because you haven't seen the full execution is pretty lame.