Let's you want a bunch of logic linked skills for use out side of combat. They are basically all good. Things like data search, armorer, first aid, medicine, cybertechnology, software, demolition, and every flavor of mechanic
22000 Alpha SkillWire (rating 4) + expert system
10000 Alpha Obvious Cyber Hand
40000 Alpha Nano Hive (rating 2)
1100 Implant medic (Skill Wires)
15000 Neo-Cortical implant
18000 per rating 4 Activesoft with Personalize and rating 3 OverDrive and

Final cost: 18 BP and .92 essense for set up, 3.6 BP per soft

This set up will get you a skill of 4 +3 +3 +1 = 11 for any logic linked skill at down time. Now yes overdrive activesofts have some pretty heavy penalties. Obsession isn't really a issue for downtime activities though, and the damage to 'ware can be handled by the implant medic. Yes you need a pretty high edge score not to bone yourself frequently, but it's really viable.

Anyone else think this is broken. Am i missing a rules issue or a down side?

I don't have my books readily available so I can't look at the fine print on the RAW to see how valid that combo is. However, I have to make a comment on your statement concerning Edge use. With Skillwires, you CANNOT USE EDGE. EVER. If you get an Expert System (in Augmentation) then you can use Edge ONLY to reroll tests that scored no successes. So your Edge could be as high or low as you want it to be, it's not going to do you any good. If you get the Expert System then you can reroll any time you don't get any hits, but that's the only time you'll be able to use Edge.

His edge use was the edge test to prevent Overdrive from damaging your skillwires. As described in unwired.

Personally, I tend to find two other aspects of unwired skill wires to be much more "interesting"
1) Pirated skill wires. (My face-to-face GM sensibly rules that skillwires are always somewhat personalized, so they can not be pirated, nor shared between players. And they don't degrade. But by the book, once play starts, you can buy them for 10% of list. It just needs someone in the aprty with middling datasearch and a good browse program [rating 6, with 3 optimization to run on a grade 3 deck, costs 900 nuyen.])

2) Pluscode, which lets you run up to 8 rating 4 skillsofts (purchased for 1500 nuyen apiece) in your skillwires wihtout worrying about reloading. "I am a walking, talking, pirated, agent.")

Yours,
Joel

Gee... I don't know... never thought of this before.

<rl>*sigh* except you numbers where FLAT OUT WRONG before unwired heaped another 4 dice on skill wires.</rl>

Would a implant medic be able to fix the damage fast enough? It doesn't give you a very large dice pool for fixing implants.

that's a 100% fiat actually. Overdrive says if you fail the edge check, you need a repair per Aug 126. Aug 126 says consult the build table on BBB 125. The build table says pick a difficulty number based on how damaged the item is and how complex it it. The is literally zero crunch guidance for interval or threshold sooooo who knows!

I actually read Unwired before anyone else remember? It might have paid to actually say what else could be done with skillwires, but I found the whole thing annoying enough as is.

My numbers before unwired were also 100% correct thank you very much. You could w/o the use of Unwired gain a bonus almost equal to that of an adapt character (seven dice as opposed to eight to ten for the bp spent I thought was quite wrong) when you are, basically not being shot at. Downtime with skillwires even before unwired could make any character rock and for an adept to match that they would have to spend power points on it, or if they happened to be specialized in a field they could get +2 dice in one specific certain part of their skill. The only thing Unwired did was make them even more broken. It seems like skillwires were completely overlooked as Augmentation, Arsenal, and Unwired each gave skillwires an unneeded boost IMOP. Combine them all together and why do anything else? Although my thoughts are did the actual publishers actually know that this could be done?

However I will completely concede that skillwires for me is quite a sore subject and that most other people will have a more valid and untarnished point then I do.

Substantial investment of essence into downtime skills...

The repair task is at least know to be for a complicated device (a piece of headware with running nanite colonies), so the suggested threshold is at least 12/1 hour. Then you get the whole load of 3 dice for auto-repair. Not that desireable IMO. I´d forego the overdrive dice for downtime skills, more so on skillsoft-heavy characters. You WILL fail the edge test, regulary. Overdrive is for emergencies.

Apart from that, I would not permit a character to use the +1-3 AR help modifier for skillsofts. Skillsofts don´t care for the knowledge the character has access to, they just overwrite individual experience. So if someone went out to buy Neocortical-3 nanites and real skill, the skill side of the pool could have a +4-6 going, with full access to edge, and no risk of damage. Competes nicely IMO.

Not really, the skill wires are good for most any build, and the hand still has 2 free capacity. Also the implant medics can be reprogrammed to treat any piece of ware. So really our only commitment to downtime skills is the neo-cortical nano-system. Running that takes up half the hive that cost 2 capacity in the .2 essence hand


My apologies, I miss spoke a little. The build threshold is based on however complex the GM thinks the device is. Th repair threshold is however damaged . Overdrive doesn't even give a fluff description of the severity. So we still have no guidance. As for interval we have no crunch. The only thing we have to go on is the example of someone building a knife in the sewer without tools or skills in bad conditions. That apparently has a 30 minuet interval, but I don't see an easy way to scale that to repairing cyberware in non worst case scenarios.


Yes. Yes you will. which is why the repair becomes really important. Also a high edge means you are less likely to fail, and have edge to spend on the test.


I find these ruling unsported. Neo-cortical is dice pool mod to logic linked skills. That is in no way part of what activesoft overwrite. As for the AR bonus I've always envisioned that as a non-combat "smart-link" if you will. It's doing things like labeling all the wrenches so you can find the right one faster. It's putting a glowing ARO on tab-A and slot-B. It's super imposing angles and measures for you. Things like that are useful however you are getting your skill.

If one wants the skillwires anyway, the investment is indeed not that high. My 750 karma build has currently 368 karma in skills, so I guess my POV is different.


On the extended test: No need for apologies, I´m just reading the basic table differently, IMO per the general text on B/R tests on the same page.

The threshold depends on the type of device to be build/repaired, and on the severity of damage in the case of repairs. So I arrive at a suggested "12/one hour" for any repair of complicated items, possibly more if the damage is judged to be extensive.

How does one reprogram the Implant medics? The description just says "installed with a specific bioware or cyberware implant".

I would allow the Neo-Cortical bonus (it's essentially a logic boost), but not that of the AR. Skillwires are akin to autopilot for the task at hand, and in my opinion would not benefit from outside assistance in that manner.

Would you people allow the combination of Enhanced Articulation and Active Softs? I think it makes sense, although it can get quite broken:

- Skillwires (rating 5) and Expert System
- 10 optimized, pluscoded Active Softs (rating 4)
--> 10 frickin' Active Softs at the same time with 6 dice each

I wouldn't even know what 10 skills to pick. Add Muscle Toner, Bone Density, Cybereyes, some Skill Softs, and water: tadaa, the instant-runner (necessary/useful psychological characteristics left aside).

I agree. I mentioned it because it levels the playing field for those who don´t want to use skillsofts. WeaverMount arrived at a dp of 11+Logic without, so no problem there.

By word of god it "writes" new muscle memories, so it's just as if you had trained the skill naturally. It's just that you haven't, actually, so you don't have the experience to prevent yourself messing up (i.e. rerolling dice) or the ability to hyperfocus on the skill to push yourself beyond your normal limits (i.e. adding dice).

So, are you agreeing or disagreeing with me?

Disagreeing. It's the same as if you had spent years working on your skills without remembering those years. AR overlays can still assist you because you can still use information visibility and relevance to improve how you apply your skills.

What you don't have are the experiences of pushing yourself beyond your limits or the millionth-time cool head that relate to particular uses of Edge.

Fortune I know you've been around for several rounds of people showing that skill wire are not auto-pilots because there are no RAW meta-human bio drones. The for example Mechanic(ground craft) isn't picking the next piece of hosing to remove, solving (inverse)kinematic equations and putting your hand on the right part to remove. So being about to select a particular hose from an AR drop down list, and having your comlink highlight it in your field of vision will still be useful.

Interpenetrating skill wires as auto-pilot is useful for slapping skill wires with fairly justified nerfs, but leads to a lot of contradictions.

I agree with weavermount on this one, you know what to do with skillwires, but that doesn't mean having the proper tools and procedures highlighted in your field of vision wouldn't be useful.

'Auto-pilot' was probably a poor choose of words. I would, however, still rule in the manner that I posted earlier. Of course the point is pretty much moot, as I really discourage the use (or acquisition) of Skillwires in general in my games.

I would not combine AR bonus and skillsofts because I see the provided knowledge as overlapping. A skillsoft replaces experience with perfect memory. The rating may be the same, but the method is different.

A skilled person might find AR instructions helpful for finding efficient solutions - higher DP, faster success.

A skillsoft person would not profit, as parts of the skillsoft system would figure out the correct order for doing things anyway.

(One could see it differently, but I prefer my POV for balance reasons.)

I am strongly opposed to the existence of skillwires/skillsofts, & this thread does nothing but list multiple reasons why. In the game I am starting soon, they simply do not exist. Problem(s) solved.

I just dislike turning my own chars into skillwire platforms. As long as both learning and plugging-in are valid, I´m fine with skillwires.

A valid option. Every table nerfs them at least a bit.


As you say the main merit of this opinion is balance. But by RAW fluff and crunch they should stack. Chipping skills work just like real ones expect in the ways mentioned in the description. This is difference is not listed, so they stack per normal. From the fluff side skill wires at not macros, they are skills. You can use mechanical skills without schematics for the vehicle you are working. More over you can repair things with skill wires that have been damaged, and do not strictly conform to any published schematics. That means that specific knowledge of the situation at hand would be useful. Let's say your trying to find a part. An over lay of the physical location of RFID tags of ever part would be extremely useful, and in no way made available by the skill wires. Same thing with schematics. Skillwires get a lot of hate because they can be literally game breaking by RAW, but I wish people would just own up to there house rules, and not randomly run against skills.