Spyball - (pg 63 arsenal) Cost 5000. No body listed just capacity,signal and avail. Described as cue ball sized device (which really is a drone?) with shock absorbers and gyroscope system for it's lenses.

iball- (pg 342 BBB) Cost 1500 Fully stated drone that can move on its own.



Biggest differences spyball can't move on it's own and has capacity in place of the iballs sensor rating. So for arguments sake let's say the spyballs shock absorbers can survive a toss from moving vehicle or greater fall. It's still stuck were it lands regardless of its gyroscope for sensors. Example: Lands in high grass....too bad. The iball is mobile with sensor suite and costs nearly 1/5th the price.

Am I missing something? What would make Spyball worth 5k?

Marketing?

Spyball can survive any fall and such. and i assume the Iball is bigger and not as well equipped for spying maybe no microphone but you can mod it. other than that assume that the spy ball is designed to be easy to smuggle in to places and is hard to detect.

You can get an iball as an ocular drone, so it can be even smaller, but it'll cost a lot more then (63'000).

True this is confusing.

iBall can't move.

It has Limited Manoeuvrability, Arsenal p139.

It can steer itself to some extent. Kinda like Glider is to Aeroplane.

That's gotta be a typo where they put "iball" but meant "spyball." How else does it have Acel ratings and maneuvering?

That option didn't exist in the BBB but Arsenal altered the drone to have the Limited Manoeuvrability quality which retro-actively altered the original stats.

Check the errata or arsenal tables.

Availability 6
Cost: 3000Y
Capacity Cost: 6

That makes it even better then - still cheaperthan a spyball, and it can move.

Sure it can. It just can move in a limited way... you know, like the main book says:

Of course, technically, it even can handle stairs... in one direction.


It's not likely for them to be much more resiliant than the iBall.

And you can hide it in your head.

So after all that the question still remains. The iball is obviously a better toy to have, yet the spyball costs 3500 out of the box and still more then the implant version of iball. So just from looking back over the stats for Spyball, treated more like a sensor and must have some amazing shock absorbing qualities! Sort of like those unbreakable combs.

Again, it's probably marketing. The iBall probably isn't advertised as heavily, and sales suffer from that.

Another question, check the availability on both items. Might be an explaination there, too.

Don't forget for 500 bucks more the IBall can pack a grenade, toss in take alook...crap bad guys with guns! pepperpunch or narco grenade go boom!

Mass production could be another possibility!

Nanofacs producing explosive iBalls keeping costs down, while the SpyBalls are "Made by Union Labour".

I can see were your coming from CanRay I can rationalize with the best of them. But I just can't imagine using marketing in a core sourcebook without any precedence for pricing.

Like I said I'm a fine rationalizer and I've already made Spyball a highly survivable sensor. Just wondering if there was something I was overlooking, maybe whoever created it might have given us some insight. (wishful thinking)

What? So, you're just going to ignore what it says in Arsenal?

(On an aside, thinking about a ball that can steer but can't motivate we should do a bigger one, a 'whole-head' ball, maybe with a skull motif for Mystery Men fans, that is the size of a bowling ball. Even I could get a perfect score with a bowling ball that could steer itself...)

Introducing... The iBowl drone.

Rigger bowling... I'm imagining 100m long bowling lanes with obstacles. You have to navigate your iBowl down the lane to strike the pins without getting destroyed.

Well, they had to do something to make bowling interesting!

I thought that's what the beer was for.

Indeed, because the Devs promised us that for SR4, there will be no contradictions in supplements.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

Sorry I think I'm going to be sick....

Its one of those games that can be fun if everyone is on the same skill level, whether its awesome, good, bad, or absolutely abysmal! (kind of like Settlers of Catan, IMO)

Oh, and beer really does help level the playing field.

Only on the beat up lanes.

Same thing as Pool. A few drinks in me, and those beat up bar tables straighten out nicely.

Spyball is listed under spytoys. The typical spies getting/using these are funded by nations/megacorps and won't care about a 3500¥ difference.

Not to mention, the iBall is a microdrone, by default having a Capacity 1 and Signal of 2 (SR4, 325) while the Spyball explicitly has 3 and 3 for its ratings. Considerably better sensor abilities with 3 times the capacity.