cybereye laser systems in Aug have a signal rating of 3, which means that the laser designator can't be used on targets further than 400m. is there any way to raise this rating? would it be reasonable--not necessarily canon, but reasonable--to get an implanted commlink with a boosted signal rating, and use that rating in place of the eye laser's base rating?

I think that's apples and oranges. In the case of the laser, Signal measures the strength of its emission of coherently directed light, which limits how far the beam can create a useful reflection. In the case of the commlink, Signal measures the strength of its emission of omindirectional radio waves, which limits how far it can broadcast a signal that can be usefully received and understood. (Of course, in 2070 all receivers have exactly the same ability to pick up a signal; see my post on optional rules for high-gain receivers.) Hooking up a laser to a radio broadcaster isn't gonna strengthen the laser beam. Nor will attaching an acoustic megaphone.

Getting a stronger laser should be possible; getting more sensitive detectors, that can pick out the reflection even after a standard-strength beam is attennuated more than 400 meters, should also be possible.

well, it's not the broadcaster that i'm thinking will help, it's the juiced-up power amplifier. of course, the lenses and other guts that allow the laser to work might not be rated for higher energy throughput... but maybe you could install a tool laser, since that's obviously beefed up in that regard. hell, maybe the tool laser implant itself would be able to manage enough boosting of the designator laser to boost the signal rating.

No, and you're a cheater and a munchkin and a roll-player and a doodie head!

so, if one can up the strength of the laser designator, can one up the strength of the weapon useable tool laser? O.o
(of course,just implanting one of those cheapo laser-guns into your arm is probably better but meh)

i kinda assume that the tool/weapon eye laser is boosted as high as it can safely go. maybe you could adapt the redlining rules, though... which, come to think, might also work well for the designator laser.

I believe you are correct. If it was "safer" to get a increased signal strength it would have been listed.

There also may be issues in getting enough "Backscatter" at beyond that range due to atmospheric issues too, related to the laser beam intensity and backscatter detector that can be put into a cybereye.

To designate a target using a laser beam at greater than 400m, you will need a non cybereye laser designator ie something bigger.

WMS

strictly speaking, if the device in question has a signal rating, said rating can be improved according to the same table you would use to improve any other device's signal rating. so i would say no to the commlink, but would allow you to pay extra for a stronger signal rating on your laser communications eye thingy.

are you sure that's how that table is intended to be used? to be clear, i'm talking about the one on page 240. i ask because it's under the "Commlink Customization" heading.

The Table is labeled Hardware Upgrades. Now as to what that means.....

WMS

The signal range may not be a limit of the laser, but rather a limitation of the human's gaze stabilization vs a reasonably sized receiver. If the laser is mounted in your eye, even a cybereye (which might not have intrusive microsaccades), at a certain range you'll be unable to keep that laser trained on the receiver for a significant amount of time.

It's a cybereye. Why should it be unable to stabilize?

Because it's being supported by a metahuman head. As an experiment, take a laser pointer, hold it in your hand. Keep it trained on a quarter from 400m away. Can't do it? What if the receiver was the size of a dinner plate? Still no?
I'm willing to accept that the cybereye can compensate for some human movement and stay on target, but at a certain point you just can't keep a metahuman-supported laser pointed at a receiver for a meaningful fraction of the time, and perhaps that distance is 400m. Maybe if it were in an eyeball drone and the drone left the persons' head and stood on a block of concrete, then it could keep the laser link at a larger distance, but for a laser link to work you need a stable enough platform to maintain the link.

edit: I feel like this has a little bit of a snarky tone. That's not intentional, it's just the end of a long day for me. My only point is that a metahuman is an unstable platform, and perhaps the limitation is in the stabilization of the eye, rather than the signal strength of the laser. Perhaps not, I'm just suggesting a possibility, not asserting a case.

because your head might not be entirely stable

And that's exactly the reason why 'take an external, handheld device for greater range' is not a solution.

The head is more stable than the hand (simply because the feedback stabilisation is better), yet there are internal stabilizers in most modern cameras makeing better pictures possible.
Now, if you add the neural knowledge of movement available to cyberware and it's control over the cybereye movement, you can do a lot more.

The only right answer? Ask your GM.

By the rules, its unclear, at best - and so I wouldn't count on being able to do it. If your GM allows it, awesome, its his game. If you're the GM, do whatever you want. In either case, it is unlikely that any conclusion a bunch of random people on a messageboard come to is going to sway the GM, one way or the other.

Personally, as a GM, I would probably be no more inclined to let you upgrade the signal rating of a laser using the radio-signal upgrade rules (despite the authors not clarifying that you can or cannot do such a thing) any more than I would allow a player to upgrade his headware radar to signal 6. Besides microwaving his brain, the cyberware explicitly has a signal rating of 2, even if you buy it as rating 4 deltaware. There is no way that the deltaware clinic was just skimping on the measly 3,000 nuyen radio-transmitter.

In my opinion, the rules for upgrading signal ratings are for upgrading RADIO signal ratings by buying and installing a better antenna. I acknowledge that the table says "hardware upgrade costs", but below in the build hardware table, they have "Wireless radio (signal)" which to me, says that the authors were mostly thinking about wifi wireless in the BBB, and didn't tackle lasers or radar until the splatbooks, where they went out of their way to mention that the signal rating for those devices is different from the devices device rating (unlike wireless radio signals).

That's just my interpretation, though. Again, your GM isn't going to know, or give a crap about what I think. I didn't write the book.

Also, I recognize that that didn't really answer your question, which was whether or not it made sense or was possible... but I figure, your GM will either let you or won't, and any argument trying to apply real world logic to make-believe cyberware lasers won't carry a lot of weight. Maybe there's some professor of lasers on the boards, though.

That would be a nice point, if a deltaware commlink would not only allow you to upügrade to Signal 6, but actually require it, since stock ones only come at Signal 5.