I've been mulling over a decision and have decided the best way to come to a good decision is to defer to the collective wisdom of the forum. Heres the situation.

I'm playing a technomancer. I have just 300,000 nuyen and, as we just have gotten access to a delta-clinic, I think one of the best ways to go about spending it would be to get some 'ware to help my flesh out my characters effectiveness in meat space. All my skills and stats for the real world is fairly average and spread across the board. I'm looking only drop one essence and get the most out if it. Any suggestions? I've been thinking of a nano hive and platelet factory. Maybe muscle toners.

If you're set on improving your ability in meat space, as opposed to getting a few things that would give a big boost to your technomancer ability (such as cerebral booster: 3), then I would recommend a synaptic booster: 1 and some muscle toner on the bioware side, and skillwires with a skillwire expert system on the cyberware side. If you are satisfied with your spread of mundane skills, you could get a top-notch set of cybereyes and either a radar sensor or an attention coprocessor, instead, for the cyber. You can get the bioware at normal or alpha grade, and get the cheaper cyberware at a higher grade.

A beta skillwire 4 + beta expert system for cyberware and standard synaptic-1 plus beta toner-2 runs 268K and .995 essence.

If you don't need the skillwires and don't want the second init pass, you could go for beta toner 3 + alpha pletelet facs + beta sleep regulator + beta reaction enhancer 3 for 306K and 1 essence. The +3 passive defense is a real help when people are shooting at you.

if you have access to unwired don't listen to them about skillwires, technomancers can emulate skillwires later on through karma *g*
and later on they can emulate ini-ware in the real world too it seems . . but some muscle stuff in bio-form would be pretty good, maybe some bone-works to make him a little bit more resilent, the hyper-gland or whatever helps with body so you can wear a little more armor protection to keep you alive witohut having problems due to looking like the michelin man . .
yes, Radar-Sensor and/or ultrasound and a fully tricked out set of eyes and maybe ears and the attention co-processor seems to be a good idea too

Muscle toner sand bone lacing, anything that boosts body, really. A synaptic booster also helps technos in general. some genetech options might help too, but since you've got deltaware available, they might be a bit costly, essence-wise.

Cheese/Munchkin options:

Synthetic hand
- Nano hive (as high as you can)
- Neo-Cortical stimulant (3) - +3 dice to any logic linked skill - thats the cracking and electronics groups
- Memory stimulus (3) - Reduces karma cost for knowledge skills (and my gm let me take that for CFs too!)

Platelet Factories
Trauma Dampner
Cerebral booster (high as you can)

DataJack - loads of memory space
Math SPU - +2 to encrypt/decrypt

PuSHed - another +1 to all logic skills


I think with delta ware you can get all that in for under 1e

Total benefits:
+1-3 logic
+4 to all logic linked skills
+2 to all math skills
+2 to cryptography skills
+3 Memory tests

Damage reduction from the PF/TD combo

Memory thats DNI
-3 karma to learn a knowledge/language skill as long as you have it at at least 1

You mention memory in the data jack, is that mentioned in BBB.

about 90% sure it does - havent got my books with me (curse this stupid work thing!), but given the 4ed stance on all compurterised devices having almost unlimited memory I dont hink it would need to be explicit,

I think I also remember some fluff about uploading things to rather than through the datajack

as long as you're not doing silly stuff with it, such as loading the entire matrix in it, everything, from datajack to trodes to your contacts is expected to have enough storage memory for everything

ALL cyber implants have unlimited internal memory. The datajack is not nescessary.

Adapsin might be worthwhile to help you cram in a little more 'ware.

Not sure how the maths works out for small amounts of cyber but it might be worth it.

Not on small cyber, it isn't, since it's base cost is 0.2 essence. Actually, Adapsin makes no sense on any cyber that's worth less than 2.1 essence.

it does see page 331 of the BBB

It's Bio that applies to Cyber so it only effectively costs 0.1 Essence and is of net benefit for any implant package of 1.05 Essence or more. I haven't analysed why yet but that works with higher grades as well. For example you can get 2.25 Essence worth of Delta Grade Cyberware and Adapsin for 1.0 Essence or just 2.0 Essence worth of Delta Grade Cyberware and no Adapsin.

Actually now that I think about it the higher the grade the better because that 10% discount is a bigger percentage of the base cost of the implants. It could only be any better if you had the foresight to buy Biocompatibility at chargen.

Then you'd be laughing all the way to the clinic....