Ok so I was looking through RC and the Restricted Equipment quality looked tempting... so I figured I'd take it to get Move By Wire 3.

Except of course MBW 3 is Availability 25F... which is outside the rating 20 max from Restriced... Ok...

But I looked and MBW gives rating 5 skill wire functionality... except BBB says that Activesofts only go up to rating 4... since Linguasofts and Knowsofts don't require Skill wires... what purpose to Rating 5 skillwires serve?

I looked, but I didn't see an Augmentation Errata

Skillwires with higher ratings can have more skillsofts slotted at once, I believe. Check your hymnal, on or around page 335, I think.

normal skillwires also go up to rating 5.

but remember, a rating 5 set of skillwires can fit 10 ratings worthth of activesofts, whereas a rating 4 can only fit 8 at a time. so you could have one extra skill at 2, or lower 2 skills to 3 with one at 4, and so on. with some of the rules from unwired, this can be even more serious.

But with the unlimited storage of a commlink, and the unlimited bandwidth of a skinlink/datajack/skillwire, I can pretty much swap a skill in and out faster than you can blink... so I don't see much value there.

During combat, you'd rather not have to spend an action swapping skillsofts. The benefit of the higher capacity isn't huge, but it's a nice bonus regardless. Also, you don't really want to have to swap skillsofts constantly. There are times when you want to have more of them running at once.

It's a Simple Action to change your current array of Skillsofts, but that can be an eternity if you're being shot at or fleeing from a building that's being demolished.

Imagine you're an urban Street Sam stuck tracking someone through a forest. Like any sensible Sammy, you had the foresight to acquire as many activesofts as you could get your hands on, so you've got Navigation, Survival, and Tracking running. Would you rather split 8 dice among those skills or 10?

Personally? I'd learn skills like Tracking/Running and Survival... I'd have a suite of skillsofts for things like mechanic, pilot, first aid, etc... stuff that I'm not going to use in a combat situation, but can bring up instantly and then use when its called for.

Tracking and survival would appear to fit under the non combat skills group too. After you don't generally need to follow a trial during a shoot out.

Oh and I think the running bit Zaranthan was meaning was actually having the skillsofts running rather than the running skill itself.

Edit - Out of interest, is there any reason you couldn't have Skillwires 5 /and/ Move by wire 3 fitted? Providing you have the nuyen and essence that is.

There are no written rules saying you can't get a set of skillwires on top of move-by-wire (as far as I can tell), but I would tend to think the neural connections needed to make a skillwire function are already being used by the move-by-wire system, so I wouldn't allow them both in the same meatbod. Basically GM discretion.

To me that boils down to asking if one can get skillwires with a rating higher than 5.

... but those aren't combat situation skills (while First Aid I would consider one).

However, I believe what Zara wrote was "Imagine you're an urban Street Sam stuck tracking someone through a forest."

Anyway, it's a big advantage to be able to run more programs. There are plenty of times that you need to slot more skills at once (gunnery and driving, for example), but what if you are ALSO having to try to talk down the guy who is holding a gun to your head (negotiation). The extra slots can be useful at times like those.

You need to have rating 4 skillwires to run the best softs. From that point onwards it becomes a question of how many softs you want to run at once.

For the MBW 3 you could buy a Dodge 4 skillsoft that only counts as rating 2, and for all purposes have a rating 4 skillwire system left. I allow any number of skillwire systems, because there is IMO little benefit from multiples anyway, no reason to deny the option.

The Pluscode program option in Unwired allows you to run rating 4 activesofts that only take up one point of skillwire capacity. A hard cap of 10 activesofts at once seems pretty reasonable to me.

I'm having a big doubt regarding Move by Wire : the level 3 would give you +6 in reaction, but no one should ever be able to benefit from it since max augmentented reaction for any race would be 9 or 10 with a natural 6/7 in reaction.
What am i missing ?

Take a 3 in Reaction, with the +6 gives you an augmented 9.

EDIT:

Also you can get up to 9 base for a 13 modified. Exceptional Attribute (Reaction) + Metagenetic from Surge (Reaction) + Genetic Optimization (Reaction) = 9 base Reaction. So you would be able to go up to a 7 naturally, and then the +6 would bump you to the 13.

I can get 10 (15) Reaction pretty easily.

Well making a ghoul, vampire, or dzoo-noo-qua would push that up to 10 (15) since they can't have the gene treatment. I just tend not to factor them in since they are usually pretty restricted (if even allowed) by most gms.

Also picking a pixie would allow you to push that up to 11 (16).

Going completely overboard you could do a free spirit and have an effectively unlimited reaction. Provided you had an unlimited amount of karma to spend.