Hi everyone, first post here.

I'm a total Shadowrun noob. I'm currently playing a technomancer in a friend's game, and I like to think I'm doing reasonably well at it, but by the character's very nature he's hyperspecialized in one particular area (hacking, obviously). To broaden my system familiarity a bit, I've decided to make another character that lives in a completely different region of the rulespace. In full '80s nostalgia mode, I want to try to put together a corp ninja, stuffed to the eyeballs with non-cyber augmentation to assist in his dual roles of infiltration and silent, close-up killing.

I'm still totally unfamiliar with the nuances of the various augmentation types though, so can someone give me a quick rundown on the meaningful general differences between bioware, genetech and nanotech augmentation? Is one category better for my purposes? Is a mixture of types in a single character advantageous or a waste of essence/nuyen? Why? Any info you can provide along these lines is a big help.

Thanks.

There are certainly advantages to combining different kinds of augmentations to maximize the effectiveness of your character. For one thing, the devs have built a discount into the way you calculate your essence loss for having multiple types of augmentation. Cyberware and Nanoware are added together, and Bioware and Genetech are added up separately. Whichever total is higher is deducted at full cost from your character's essence score. You only subtract half of the lower total. This will allow you to fit in more augmentations overall depending on how you balance it.

Bioware is particularly useful to an infiltrator type because it's subtle and hard to detect on scans, so a lot of times, your character can get into places that highly-cybered characters would have trouble getting past without lighting up the MAD and cyberware scanners like a Christmas tree. In general, bioware augmentations cost less essence than their cyberware counterparts. The downside to bioware is the cost. Be prepared to shell out a lot of money for bioware implants.

Initiative boosters are always at the top of the list once the shooting starts, so synaptic boosters are going to be high on your wishlist. Muscle toner is another implant worth the money, since so many skills are linked to agility. Synthecardium adds dice to all athletics tests--which include climbing, running, and gymnastics. You can use gymnastics in place of the dodge skill in many instances, which increases your bang for the buck. Reflex recorders can give you a +1 skill bonus to a skill group of your choice--like close combat, for example. A skin pocket can help you smuggle small objects--like a ceramic knife or two into a place where you ought not to have any weapons.

Genetech generally provides subtle effects, such as giving you a +1 to your dice pools for Intuition or Logic linked skills (Qualia and PuSHeD respectively), or it allows you to increase your maximum attribute rating for a particular attribute (genetic optimization). It can add some interesting dimensions to your character's background, but I don't think that it's something that you can really build a character around. I'll leave the discussion of nanoware alone for now, since that's one area that I'm not particularly well-versed in. I'm sure others will be around soon to offer other suggestions. Finally, I'd suggest that you don't overlook cyberware entirely, since there are a lot of useful implants that can add to your character's effectiveness, such as cybereyes and ears, the attention coprocessor, or especially the ultrasound or radar sensors. There's nothing like dropping some thermal smoke grenades and carving up your opponents while they're blinded.

Hey, that's really helpful! Thanks. I've obviously got a fair bit of reading to do. And I'm not totally opposed to cyberware, but I generally understand the concepts and thought it would be interesting to see what I could accomplish with the other augmentation types.

you may want to mix and match the 'wares.

the gene therapthy Reakt can be combined with reaction enhancers and wired reflexes.
cyber suites are good way to reduce essence cost

Enhanced Articulation helps with physcial active skills linked to physical attributes; page 124 SR4A, for example. like gymnastics, or infiltration

that may help you sneaky corp type ninja