I have two probably related questions which I want to pitch out there.

1.) Is there any sort of limit to the number of items which can be connected to a commlink through a PAN? A subvocal microphone, two guns with smartlink, a set of goggles, and AR gloves could all easily take up a decent amount of space, I'd figure, but I can't find anything.

2.) Is there any sort of limit to the number of connections which can be made through a Nexus? For example, if you have an ARE game like Miracle Shooter, how many "Realms" would you need to have between the players? A 30 to 1 ratio?

Thanks much.

I seem to recall it being system x 2 as the maximum number of things you can have connected to your commlink at once. (Called subscriptions)

Edit: Yep, p212 of SR4. Can have system x 2 active subscriptions at a time. (Including nodes, agents, and drones)

As for nexi... I'm not sure. I'd kinda think it would be limitless, because otherwise you'd never be able to have more than a dozen or so people on your site at once.

That might explain why I can't find it. I've been looking in the 20A and it doesn't seem to have anything, but I can't find any matchup between those two areas.

As for nodes, I found a thing where they're capped by persona equal to system x 3, which would mean that you can have 18 people in each ARE game tops. Seems kinda insane to me but oh well.

Thanks much

Well, what might happen is that they use multiple nodes, with 18 people connecting to one node, then 18 people connecting to a second node, and both of those nods connecting to a third node. Eventually once 18 nodes are connecting to one single node, the process gets started again, with both nodes that have 18 nodes connected to them connecting to another node until there are 18 of them and the process repeats itself (Basically creating a giant tree in which one central node goes to 18 other nodes which each go to 18 other nodes which... until you finally get to the players) Of course this would mean you would need hundreds or thousands of nodes to have any kind of online game with high user numbers. That seems like it would be prohibitively expensive though.

Edit: No idea about 20A, but I would think that it is still in there unless they took out subscriptions, it is near the beginning of the matrix section, under the bigger heading of "Commlinks and Networking."

See also unwired p55

iirc, these are not considered connections in the subscription sense, but rather data requests. page 54, unwired, dont know about SR4A.


there is a interesting bit on page 55 of unwired that points towards subscription limits being a issue with personas. that is, your persona (your virtual entity, made up of your comlink stats and you own consciousness) can only maintain x number of outbound subscriptions equal to x2 system.

but the interesting thing is that a nexi or comlink that only serves incoming people do not have a persona of its own and so it seems that even a rating one comlink can handle a unlimited number of incoming subscriptions, but can only sustain 2 outgoing subscriptions.

i am not sure if SR4A cleared up any wording related to this...

There is indeed a difference between Data Requests, which are unlimited (Need no Subscription), and a Subscription, which is limited to 2xSystem... See Pages 54-55 in Unwired for the distinctions. But for the example above of Miracle Shooter (or any other MMORPG Style Game in the 2070's), it is a Consensual Data Request (Social Networking of a fashion), and is therefore not limited by your (or the hosting) System or Response... It does not fit into any category of Subscribed Connection as described in the text...

Keep the Faith

In the case of the ARE game, don't all the players start on their own node, their commlinks we presume, and then visit the ARE game node?
There is no limit to the number of personas that can be in a node, just a limit to the # of personas that come into the matrix from that node.