1) Acquire a crappy fake credstick/SIN (say a rating 1 forged silver credstick)
2) Find a betaware clinic
3) Have them install you with all this nifty legal cyberware at the legal retail price (i.e. street index=1)
4) Pay a decker to erase the fake SIN's records
5) Repeat if necessary

Would this work?

It sounds like a cheeky way to circumvent some nasty street index multipliers (especially for the higher grade implants) to me.

Well, I would think that one would want to make sure that the Fake SIN was of high enough quality to pass whatever background checks the clinic ran, and I'm not quite sure why you'd even bother with burning the SIN as to be completely legal said cyberware needs to be included on any future SIN as well.


But yeah, this is a prefectly valid way to keep from paying street prices but you're stuck with legal ware only.

Yes, only you'd need a much better Credstick than the one suggested. Even though the Cyberware is legal the SIN checks at a clinic, especially a Betaware graded one, will be extensive enough to shred a Rating 1 fake SIN. I would think a Rating of 5 would be your bare minimum to get away with it I would look at an 8 preferabley a 10.

There are several problems with it.

First off, most of the more interesting 'ware has a Legal code other than Legal, which means you're going to have to forge some permits as well in order to avoid street index. Doing this may not even be in your favour, as while there's some >1 SI Legal 'ware, much of it is SI 1 or less; you pay ¥100 more for a standard Datajack this way, for example. Increasing Grade doesn't change the Street Index, so you just screw yourself more the higher-Grade you get your Datajack.

Another problem is that you assume there's no credstick verification, but that just drives up the price.

~J

It's easier to just get beta-grade on the streets. Assuming you are getting something like a Betagrade Wired Reflexes 3 (3.0 essence, about 2 million nuyen), the street index is still 1.0. You'd have to wait 3/4 of a month for it, but you wouldn't need to get the high level fake SIN, the fake permit, and whatever else you need.

I haven't checked, but unless you're getting something with a Street INdex of over 1.5, you shouldn't need to be too worried. So far, I can't think of an item with a street index of anything other than 1.

I was especially looking into eye- and earware (SI 1.25), senseware (SI 1.5-2.5) and nanowares (SI 2-4). At least to me that sounds a good deal even at a rating 5-8 fake SIN ( 25-40k).

Of course it depends on your character concept but I'm one of these guys who's into equipping his chars with massive legal wares and just some minor N-grade less legal cyber.

What do you use, then? The traditional big-ticket items in my view are Wired Reflexes and Vehicle Control Rigs, neither of which are Legal. Compounding this issue is that a lot of the stuff I would otherwise see this being useful for can just be gotten at chargen, sidestepping SI entirely—senseware falls under this, for example. I should really put the Shadowrun gear into a proper database so I can query it for stuff like this, but from scanning I really can't see how this would end up being useful.

Edit: ok, now that I look at Bioware there's some stuff it'd be useful for—Tailored Pheremones, for example, or Cerebral Boosters—but it doesn't seem like a terribly powerful option overall.

~J

Upgrading existing cyberware (grades) and remaining > 3 essence.

Using combo's like Spatial Recognizers, High frequency hearing and the Orientation system in order to get a -4 tn on hearing tests (just combine this with a high rating sound filter and Battletac cyberlink.... leave the analysis for the Battletac^tm master-Unit -presumably incl sounds database).

Now at one point you want to move into the nanowarez because... nanotattoos and Oxy Rush are just the shizzles! (and good bang for the buck)

Oehhh... I didn't even start looking into the biowarez yet...