First, is there anything (other than 'game balance') that says you can't route an Encephalon to a CED to stack Task Pools? Ie: let the Encephalon run some background process for the CED for a Task Pool of 5?

Also, does the change to the Eratta:

I believe Knowledge skills are linked to Intelligence, so the Task Pool should apply. The funny part is that it will apply to Gunnery and Launched Weapons as well.

I don't understand the Encephalon/CED question. An Encephalon doesn't improve mental function directly (implying such a technology is stil mostly 'black box' in Shadowrun). The encephalon merely takes over for brain function, doing routine biological tasks, thus freeing up brain power (the ultimate pacemaker, I guess).

So, routing a CED into your Encephalon, I just don't see how it could be done. Unless you're getting the CED to use the Enceph to augment physical ability. Urgh. That'd be messy.

PS: It seems in Shadowrun time they've learned about the math centre of the brain. Considering the Math SPU doesn't do the math for you, it merely allows you to do math easier.

PPS: Would you allow a Math SPU to augment indirect fire?

Care to explain where you get the 'biological' and 'pacemaker' references? That's not my reading of the Encephalon which performs 'background processes', sort of like a computer being multi-threaded with background processes...

Sphynx

...you know, i guess the Math SPU would help with indirect fire. indirect fire is basically a word problem: what equation do i use to draw the shortest curve between myself and my target that doesn't exceed my weapon's ability to steer?

don't believe me? think back to every submarine movie you've ever seen. they're not called "firing solutions" because somebody liked the word 'solution'.

a caveat: the SPU should help with the firing test, not the spotting test. spotting is just shooting.

Since a CED only works with chipped skills, and since chipped skills preclude the use of any other pools (with the exception of the forementioned CED pool or certain specially modified chips), I'd say it'd be fairly pointless to try to stack the two task pools.

It would work just fine, but only if the skillsoft had the DIMAP option. The "Task Pool" of a CED isn't a true Task Pool; it was just lazy writing. It works nothing like a Task Pool, isn't compatible with a standard Task Pool, and is otherwise anything but a Task Pool. It should have been called a Soft Pool or something. I'll never understand the writer's logic sometimes...

Anyway, a DIMAP soft will be able to access both an Encephelon and Cerebral Booster-generated Task Pool just fine. No routing required, either. But routing a CED to an Enchephelon, while possible, will not grant access to the Enchephelon's Task Pool. They're completely different things for -all- intents and purposes.

I assume you're refering to the page that says "Softs do not provide associated dice pools". Guess you could read it that way, it's not quite how I read it though (whambam, Sphynx opens himself up to flames, enter Doc. ).

Seems to me the wording would allow other things to add pools (Ie: DIMAP, CED, etc), just nothing natural because the soft doesn't have it.

Anyhows, maybe I'm the only one who reads it that way, that's cool.

Sphynx

One thing that was mentioned in Shadowtech (where the Encephalon was first mentioned) and left out of M&M is that an Encephalon can allow you to multitask your thoughts. Pretty cool...

As far as the CED goes, it applies only to chipped skills and the pool granted by it is the only one you can use. An encephalon works on an entirely different principle. One reads the skill input from the chipped skill and your own biological functions to determine the best way to act using your own body, thus granting you extra dice to use when using a chipped skill. The other simply augments cognitive functions by taking over operations from the brain to make the brain work faster and more efficiently. In other words, an encephalon basically lets your brain concentrate on the hardcore tasks it has to do instead of devoting precious runtime to the ultimate question of "Just how big ARE her boobs anyway? Are they fake? No, they look too natural..." While your brain is concentrating on that, the encephalon is still trying to figure out where the best place to ambush your target in the club is, the problem with the code you've been working on, whatever.

Cerebral Boosters work slightly differently in that instead of taking over functions to free your brain from having to worry about them, it simply increases the processing power of the brain.

Here's an analogy. A cerebral booster is like adding in more RAM or getting a new processor on a computer. An encephalon is like getting a second, less powerful computer to network to the first one in order to take pressure off of the computer by doing other things for it (IE it acts as the router or mail server instead of the main computer, freeing up processor clock time). A CED would be like getting a faster video card. Sure, everything looks better and seems to move faster, but it doesn't really do much to increase the processing power of the computer itself.

The Abstruse One

Because I played once under a GM who had experienced sniper school and knew how much math was involved, he allowed the math SPU to function in indirect fire tests and long gun shots in the Long and Extreme ranges, provided the character had some way (read: rangefinder) to work the distance into his/her calculations. So if he knew the range from legwork or read it off his smartlink, we were good.