Nanohive, of any grade above 1.

Universal Nantidote Nanites, rating 9

Ok, you have the above in your body. Then you "split" the colony so you now have 2 batches of Universal Nantidotes, each at reduced potency since they do not work together at this moment. It will not help better, fair enough, but we are not done yet.

Now you reprogram one batch to be whatever other Nanite type you want. Your rating 9 can easily eat the -4 penalty suggested as the highest, its now rating 5 of whatever nanite you had the plan for.

Regrow to full populations in both batches.

Repeat until all slots in your Nanohive is full.

Cost, rating 9 Nantidotes and the Nanohive, probably some refill goop too, and naturally the ability to reprogram your nanites.

Is there anything in RAW that says I can't do this? (Other than balance issues of course. )

what exactly do the rules say you have to feed them to regrow?

hmm. i guess theres nothing in the books that say you can't do that, but i don't think a GM would allow that. whats to stop people from buying nanoware at R1 and 'growing it' up to its max rating?

Probably the fact that they'd be hardwired to prevent such a thing to prevent a Grey-Goo Incident?

And, by that, I mean build more Nanites without paying the Corporations lots of money.

Regarding Rating I see it as representing two different things.

One, how good these nanites function when at full population. By that I mean, higher rating=better technology.

But Rating is also used to indicate size of remaining population.

However, I would always keep the "max rating" at the rating that the nanite was purchased at.

But that said, you could steal a pint of blood from someone with nanites and then use your own Hive to let them grow and flourish back to their full potential.

I do think CanRay might be on to a plausible limitation though. Giving each "batch" of nanites a maximum population within the same organism would be possible to attain.

Then it wouldn't help reprogramming part of the population as they'd still see eachother as "family" and refuse to multiply beyond a given total units.

That said, it might be possible to break this limitation but you would pretty much have to rebuild the nanite, which kinda defeats the purpose of reprogramming if you could do this on the fly.

So, CanRay, good job! - You've pulled the brake on serious hole in the rules with a very plausible cause.

Just makes sense both from a programming safety margin and a marketing standpoint.

Oh, SURE you could try HACKING the nanites to make them repopulate, but you'd be risking a Grey Goo thing at that point, and they'd likely have a deadman's switch at that point. "If Software ≠ Firmware Then $Dissolve" type thing.

Yeah. They would be concerned about people just making their own nanobots willy-nilly.

There may be something to that "What do you feed growing Nanobots" thing too. You may need some specific materials to have them make more. And that stuff can't be cheap. You'd have to take a nanobot apart and scan all the base componants just to know where to start.

what about nano-forges?
do they use nanobots to forge things or do they forge nanothings?

No you can reprogram your Nannys, and can replace the ones lost due to body waste removal systems, never have more than were "installed" in you in the first place.

Unless you go thru the implantation procedure again for additional ones.

Read up on the Build/Repair Rules in Augmentation for Bioware/Cyberware/Nanoware.

WMS

What about if you take that edge from Augmentation, Wild Card Nano Prototype? Would that make a difference?

Where does it say you can split populations of nanites?

the real question as I see it is where or not a nanohive (with an empty slot) and grow a new colony from nothing but software and feed stock. I am inclined to say yes, because there in no mention needing to reinstall nanoware if the rating is reduced to zero. Further a nanohive can make new nanites. i assume that if you load it with the schematics for a rating X system, that it could start growing it.

I would tend to agree, but getting the software or a sample of the nanites is the real problem.

But once you have that, I'd go as far as claiming you could hack and copy the software like any other program. Then add feedstock and start growing your own batch.

I doubt a sample of nanites would have the data required to get the source code for a nano colony. You can't get an ant colony from a few dozen ants or actual source code from a RAM dump.

Thing is, you can write you own nanoware system in 72hours/Dice Pool. Someone on your team ought to have logic 5. If you can con them into spending 4 karma to learn a new skill they can bang out a new system in 12 hours. Someone with Soft max logic 5, Cerebral Enhancement 3, and Skillwires 4 could knock them out in half that time. Throw in neocortical, and drugs and you can knock them out in a little over 4 hours