I play a TM a lot and despite many of y'alls opinions on them my group has been very pleased with the bonuses I can grant their actions. That being said, the 'toolbox' for Technomancers got a shot in the arm with the introduction of Code and Tutor sprites so I'm building a new, Unwired-equipped TM and am lucky enough to be able to rollover my Karma. That said, I'm looking for your opinions on the best 5 echoes (and why!)

My kneejerk reaction, in order of usefulness, is:

1. Biowire
2. Overclocking
3. Improved Overclocking
4. Macro [to make compiling and threading take muuuuch less time. Threading now has a lot more uses, after all!]
5. Widget Creation

Which 5 do YOU think are the best and why?

I'd say there room on the list for acceleration, makes you more survivable and effective in the meat, without compromising your resonance. You probably won't buy it all three times, but I've yet to see a shadowrun character that doesn't benefit greatly from +1 Reaction, +1 IP.

Aha, someone found Biowires.

1. Macro
2. Reality Mesh (VR and still Walking the Streets)
3. Overlocking/Adv. Overclocking
4. Multiprocessoring
5. Widget Creation

If you have the first 4, you have 5 Matrix IP in VR, 10 complex and 5 Free actions per Combat Turn and are still knowing, whats going on arround you.

With Exploit (Mute) it is likely you log out before the host even notice your presence (even if you trigger an alert).

cya
Tycho

Huh? I thought per RAW no one could have more than 4 IPs...for anything? Did Unwired change that?

yes, there are two exeptions of this rule:

Adv. Overclocking Echo and Simsence Accelerator grant +1 Matrix IP to a maximum of 5 Matrix IP.

cya
Tycho

OMFG...

Skinlink
Multiprocessing
Mesh Reality
Overclocking
Advanced Overclocking

Others of note:
Blur
Resonance Trodes
Widget Crafting
Biowire
Acceleration

Personally I hate biowire, and only would take it because it's required for Acceleration. Of course, I also believe skillwires should not exist for various reasons.

And why is that, if you don't mind my asking?

Simply put, the disadvantages of skillwires do not balance against the advantages. A character with a skillwire system is basically capable of doing nearly everything well, with a significantly reduced cost. I have seen to many characters with skillwires that simply do not need the rest of the team, as they can do everything themselves.

Meh, that's a good thing - most runners should be able to pull of simple jobs by themselves. Difficult joby usually require many people doing things at the same time, however.

But, yeah - the Skinlink echo is pretty ugly.

I rather disagree with this assessment of skillwires. Skillsofts only go up to Rating 4 (if I recall correctly), so you'll never be as good as somebody who's trained hard at a particular task and paid for it with karma. (The fact that with Biowire you're technically emulating skillsofts and learning them as CFs, that leaves room for debate as to whether or not you can advance those past that level with a techno.) Skillwires also take up a fair bit of Essence, in my opinion, and their ratings cap how many skillsofts you can use, and at what level.

But all that pales in comparison to the fact that YOU CANNOT USE EDGE WITH SKILLWIRES TESTS. Sure, with an Expert Driver you can use Edge on tests where you didn't get any successes, but that's a fairly limited and lame allowance. You cannot use Edge to reroll failures, you cannot add it prior to the task to beef up your chances of getting hits, and you cannot downgrade or negate your various glitches - which are more bound to happen with your limited pool.

Simply put, if you have seen a character with skillwires utterly dominating a campaign, I'll show you a GM who's doing some things seriously wrong. They're a tool, but not a Win Button.

Skillwires in my gaming group dont replace the need for other characters, we have one person with the meat skill and Edge to roll and then the team use their skillwires to assist. It works quite well and I'm stoked a TM doesnt have to lose Resonance to do it now that Biowire is out.

I like the idea of 50 million actions via Overclocking+Macro+Mesh Reality [5 echoes just to get that combo!], but the versatility of Biowire and Widget Creation [bonuses to Compiling 4tw!] is just awesome as well.

As to using Accelerator for extra passes thats for suckers. If you have enough Karma for submerging 5 times you should be able to afford Synaptic and purchase +1 Resonance to offset the resonance loss. Plus, you can get some light amount (.75 essence) of cyberware and the synaptic accel at half essence cost since its Bio. Thats enough for good stuff like mnemonic enhancer, cerebral booster, or a control rig.

It could very well just be me, as no one else seems to have the problem, but with skillwires, you can effectivly be a jack-of-all-trades without loosing anything in exchange. Sure you roll less dice than the specialist, and having more people always helps, but you can do significantly more than anyone else without a skillwire system for significantly reduced cost. That is a problem, because it turns skillwires into a must-have, punishing anyone who does not want to use them.

And in my experience, not being able to use Edge with skillwire tests rarely comes up as a disadvantage. Only running two skills at once is also rarely a disadvantage, as you will rarely need to use more than two at any given time, and it is very quick to change when you need a different set.

Skillwires are pure awesome for a mundane character. You can actually download new skills from amazon.com and like, flip out like a ninja the next day. Seriously, any character who is not awakened has no better use for 1.2 points of essence than skillwires 6. Hell, I'd be tempted to take skillwires 4 on most awakened characters, with maybe a trauma dampner.

You cannot improve them and you can NOT use Edge when using them under normal circumstances. The CF represents the copy of the skillsoft emulated into a format that the Biowire system can then process.

That is exactly the problem with them. Any character not taking them is punished for that choice, because everyone else who does now has a significant advantage over them in terms of versatility at minimal cost. Same problem with Initiative Pass enhancement, although even greater because there are numerous ways of gaining additional passes with any character archtype.

So long as your resonance is 5 or higher, its at least as karma efficient to buy the echo without submerging than it is to drop a point of resonance and buy it back up.

This is even more the case if, as in games I've played the cost to increase magic/resonance is calculated before reductions for essence loss.

As for the added utility of additional 'ware, I'd say the least detectable IP booster in the game is worth something. Acceleration doesn't show up on scanners, doesn't show up on astral and doesn't show up on the matrix.

It isn't just you. I don't necessarily mind the versatility aspect of Skillwires as much as the fact that they tend to produce characters with no skills themselves. I have problems envisioning how some of these Skillwire-oriented characters managed to survive to an age where they could get the implant without actually learning much in the way of anything worthwhile at all along the way.

The problem never came up for our game because no player wants to play a char without skill. We still did move the skillsoft rating limit to 3, to leave even more room for the trained professional.

As long as usual skillsoft limits apply, there is no big deal here. What would you rather pay, 1 karma or 3000¥? 10 karma or 12000¥? TMs might like this option because it allows for cheaper secondary skills without touching sacred resonance, but is not a "free skills" gift. At all.

I totally agree with the disallowance of Edge with skillsoft Complex Forms, but what says you can't improve them? Do you have a page reference? I don't have Unwired handy right at the moment. As far as I can logically deduce, the new skill is a Complex Form. Complex Forms can be raised with karma. Therefore, the skill CFs for Biowire can be raised. If there's a line I missed I'd be more than happy to be corrected, and wouldn't think it's a bad thing at all. Simple fact of the matter is that program skillsofts for skillwires are limited, but that doesn't mean much to a specially threaded or learned-with-karma Complex Form.

You cannot improve them as a Complex Form because the only way to obtain them is to convert them from an Activesoft program. You cannot learn them separately. You do not learn them from rank 1 and increasing. You learn them at the rating of the Activesoft you used, and it remains fixed there.

Also, not all Complex Forms aside from these can be raised with karma - smartlink, for example.

Also, where are you going to get the simsense recordings you need to improve it? The only way to code a CF of a skillwire would be to possess the skill yourself, in which case it would be pointless, now wouldn't it?