1) In Unwired it states that a common Large Matrix Cafe would have a limit of 12 personas. Would that mean one Nexi could be the size of a computer server (like the blade servers?) Basically, could you have a stack of nexi so that if I wanted to have a large number of people who could come and jack in to the matrix, could I have a lot of those together, then cluster them, and have a larger persona limit?

2) If you have an AI as a starting character, you only get 3 initiative passes, but if you are a Cyborg you get 4? I call bulldrek. I understand I can just houserule it, but how does that make any sense?

1. Don't see why not... This is how I handle it myself... want more persona, either design a more robust Nexus or link a bunch together...

2. Hardware acceleration gives the Cyborg a boost... nothing says that you cannot do that with the home node of the AI... An important note, however, is that the Cyborg is ALWAYS in his home node, where the AI is not...

My Two Cents

AI's can in theory stay in their home node and just connect to different nodes.

this from unwired p110, node movement and accounts.

While we're on the topic... either I'm dumb or the AI character creation rules in the Companion aren't perfectly clear - does an AI actually need to purchase/use Computer, Hacking, Electronic Warface, etc, in order to hack?

5 actually.

well the metasapient AI in unwired is shown as having cracking and electronics skill group at rating+1. so yes, i would say they need to buy the skills or skill groups (altho they can probably default).

Um...

15,000 to add in to a drone worth 300k+ (before mods) and a CCU worth 250k. it may not come with the package, but if you have the kind of resources in your game to play a cyborg, you can afford and will almost definitely have a simsense accelerator. it's 5.

Which, IIRC, leaves the AI as the only character type that can't reach 5 matrix initiative passes. Go figure.

Yes, that is exactly what clustering is for.

Yep... Agreed... Clustering is very useful in some circumstances... this being one of them...

Which is why I'm glad you can do what you'd like as a GM.

I'd houserule they get 4 initiative passes, and I'd figure out some way that they could get 5.




NEW QUESTION LOL LOOK IT'S RED

Anyway.


One thing is, when you are in VR, or even AR for that matter, what exactly does standard sculpting look like? Just a blank room?

I'm having a hard time figuring out how to sculpt stuff for my hacker when it comes to stuff like RFID? What does being in an RFID node in VR look like?

Oh, the sculpting...erg. Lets see....IIRC:

CPUs and SPUs are hexagonal polygons
(slave) Nodes are cubes
I/O ports are triangles

There's a bit more in Psychotrope, and I'm grabbing a little from Decker, which uses a 2D representation of the same information.

Well, since there really isn't a "standard" sculpting anymore the old Matrix iconography is probably non-existant. But, it used to be:
CPU's - hexaganal polygon with additional "wall"
SPU's - hexagonal polygon
Slave Module - sphere
System Access Node - Rectangle
I/O Port - pyramid
Datastore - cube

This is, of course, from the 2ed book and well there has certainly been a lot of changes to the Matrix since then.

I'm pretty sure most standard sculpting is still designed to look like something (that is, as opposed to nondescript geometric shapes). Perhaps not the case for a mass-produced RFID tag, but virtually every node is sold with some sort of default metaphor.

Unwired describes the default commercial commlink node as "a bare-looking room with a logo on it," for what that's worth.

An RFID tag would probably just look like a bare room with ONE GIANT SIGN in the middle of it.