Oi Chums,

Was looking to pick up some Activesofts for my Street Sammie and was talking to another party member when he mentioned how much more it was going to cost me. I GM three weekends out of four so I had not noticed the change till I looked at the two books side by side. Did any one else notice the huge spike? Whats the deal?

Here is a break down of the costs.

BBB pg. 321
Activesofts (Rating 1-4) Avail:8 Rating x 3,000
Knowsofts (Rating 1-5) Avail: 4 Rating x 1,000

4th Ed. A pg. 331
Activesofts (Rating 1-4) Avail: 8 Rating x 10,000
Knowsofts (Rating 1-5) Avail: 4 Rating x 2,000

*Note: Linguasofts cost remained the same

yes, that change was noticed.

in general, the change is considered to have been pretty much necessary. activesofts were just way too inexpensive for what they did. even now, you're looking at 2 BP per skill point, whereas getting the actual skill costs 4 BP. that's still a really good deal, it just isn't as good as the 0.6 BP it used to be.

also, if you really want, you can get them cheaper pirated (and *technically*, there is open source software of up to rating 4 available... but for obvious reasons, i can't recommend handing out max rating activesofts for free)

change didn't go far enough in my opinion (but that's been discussed to death in other threads so I'll leave it alone here.)

It'd have been better if they simply changed how Skillwires worked rather than make them financially unavailable for their intended goal. The whole point of getting Skillwires is to have a wide array of backup skills available for an emergency or to cover areas not covered by your character's background and training, not as a means of cheating the system because you don't want to buy the skills as actual Skills.

A completely different mechanic than "just treat it like an actual skill" would have been far more useful and interesting. I'd have started off with an idea where the rating of the Activesoft was unlimited by the Skillwires' rating, but instead the Skillwires functioned as your Physical Attributes when using it. I'd then incorporate an Encephelon with similar functionality for 'softs that required Mental Attributes (and probably Knowsofts as well; it's stupid that one mental skill can't be done without skillwires like Hacking, but not Knowledge Skills). I'd then see how that turned out and balance it from there.

That way it becomes less of an obvious choice for any character with Attributes over 4, but a very viable choice for characters who aren't combat junkies while still allowing them to at least defend themselves. So combat fanatics can choose between being average through Activesofts or excel through natural skill, whereas more pacificist characters can choose between being unable to defend themselves and being average.

That's an interesting way of handling that. If I ever go to prison (pretty much the only situation in which I'll be able to run a regular SR game) I'm going to nick that.

I never thought Skillwires are that great (even though they are great), because I am incapable of making a character without thinking about the run where all my gear gets stolen, blown up, eaten by an awakened aardvark or dropped down a well onto a switch that triggers an EMP blast.

Piracy - 10% of the original software cost.

Way too complicated, IMHO.

Just restrict Attribute Dice to Skillwire Rating.

the issue is in slotting: you can have two equal rating skillsofts slotted simultaneously: with certain exceptions (notably hackers) how many people are using more than two skills within two simple actions of each other regularly? one way to help this is to drop it to one equal level skill slotted - now it's a significant sacrifice to be a 'wire ninja.

one way around this is to find ways to require everyone to use more skills more often, but outside of combat it's very hard to cause 1 simple action of delay to actually be meaningful when switching skills.



Encephelons are absurdly expensive for proposed use - you'd need to drop the cost and/or create a version for just the skillwire substitute without its other bonuses; it feels like you could break it in the other direction (notably, it would allow certain types of characters to buy less attribute points or min/max more) but it wouldn't be an across the board edict like skillwires are atm.



doesn't do anything. rating 4 skillwires are already giving you 8 dice in that situation, and the likelihood of having more than 2 attributes over 4 are relatively low (rating 5 'wires are also available at character creation but necessarily I don't suggest them as an across the board edict because mages can't fit them easily with the other things they should be buying with 1 essence of cyber/bio.)

Uhm... it does, compared to RAW. Any hey - it's just a suggestion for a houserule.

Personally, I'm running skillsofts by RAW.

Given implants, that likelihood is actually pretty big.

The biggest drawback, of course, is that you can only try to negate failure with Edge reroll (an even that needs software option), and thus, normal glitches will stay for good, only critical ones can be averted.

I strongly disagree. Not every piece of equipment in the book is made for runners or you. (look at the text on cyberware suites)

Financially, if you can afford to program your own skillwires and issue them to a lot of your own workers then they're quite viable. Given the low cost of the cyber, and the obvious benefits of large-scale use. Or if licensed somehow, and I have 10 active seats and 100 workers... 10 of them at any given time can use them greatly decreasing my capital cost per drone.

The point of skillwires is for corp drones who need access to specialty skills and have access to the corporate software repository (especially with any kind of a check-in check-out license system if the software is licensed, or issued by in house programmers). The fact that it's also usefull to runners is secondary.


They were too cheap before, and too effective. And I don't see your solution as an improvement at all. Now I have even more reason to dump stat agility on a decker... why bother when skill wires will pick up the slack. Rating 5 skillwires are only 10k base (100k delta, making them one of the few affordable delta implants). For an automatic rating 5 in attribute... w/o the skill cap on the software... hell yeah that's broken.

Yes, because when I suggest something like that -- despite specifically stating that it's where I'd start and then balance it from there after testing it some -- it clearly means that it's a final solution and perfect in all conceivable ways.

These are all good points; I'd also point out that no one would be taking skillsofts for their actual area of expertise (since with the exception of hackers, again) everyone wants more than 4 skill in the area of expertise - under the houserule anyway. (I could see characters taking skillsofts for areas of expertise in games where a pool of 8 is pretty good otherwise, since you're still buying up the attributes)

the likelihood of someone having a secondary attribute over 4 is relatively low - even with implants. (most characters won't be boosting misc. stats) so it becomes the cost of 1 Agility (0) versus 4 Agility (30BP) in addition to the discount on all those nice agility linked skills.

even then, non-magical characters can easily drop in skillwires 5 if they're not using MBW2.

thinking about it more a limitation is a good houserule, I just think it might be better to go with the lower of attribute or skill rating. (capping it at instead of setting it to.) [edit]now that I reread what you suggested this is what you originally proposed. mea culpa that's what I get for reading too fast sometimes

A more obvious solution if you want to force activesofts into a support / limited combat utility role is to introduce a load / adjustment time penalty. Say the activesoft causes disorientation for rating minutes after you switch to it (fairly realistic, if the mind needs to accomodate synthetic memories) and voila, people aren't jumping between skill softs in combat. IIRC, sr2 had such a load lag, though it was quite brief and could be circumvented by using a multi-slot chipjack. (Damn, how oldschool.)
Still leaves the problem that all you really need is ONE combat skillsoft (and can easily run two), of course. A penalty to using all other skills besides the ones running on your skillwires might do that.

Oi Chums,

Piracy- 10% of the original software cost.
Woot!! I like the sound of that. Great idea I should have thought of that myself but since I did not, Thanks.

What about capping regular skillwires at 3, and regular activesofts too? It's easy enough to justify fluffwise, and it gives you balance. You can make the low-rating wires fairly cheap, and the softs too - they only give you limited ratings anyway.

The rating 4+ skillwires meanwhile are obscenely expensive, and the software to use them very rare. They might be very hard to program, and the demand isn't nearly as high (any facility needs only a few 4+ skilled workers). Lots of companies consider rating 4+ activesofts to be company trade secrets, and labor unions for the high-classed workers aren't enthusiastic about selling them either (only top-employees might have any credible labor unions left).

The military will have high-grade skillsofts, but possession of those is illegal.

In fact, a rating 5 activesoft might be a valid target for a Run.

The quality of ActiveSofts isn't really the issue; they've never been as good as skills, they just happened to be cheaper, and the BP->Karma transition encouraged min-maxers to avoid low point skills in favor of rating 4 skill groups and a pair of rating 5 skills or a single rating 6. So really, the original SR4 SkillWires were so potent in part because in the long term they were the most cost effective way of being just good enough to avoid defaulting-- if you just wanted 1 point of Hardware and Pilot Ground Vehicle, they were a no brainer. Hell, by the RAW truly high rating ActiveSofts don't really exist (or at least they don't have a standard street price) already; the listed prices cuts off at 4. Rating 5 SkillWires actually just afford you the ability to have more 'softs slotted at once, so a rating 5 ActiveSoft that actually requires a rating 5 SkillWire system would definitely be a valid run target, considering that it'd represent the industry cutting edge.

piling on to this, many sammies are already taking restricted gear to get MBW2 which functions as Skillwires 4 so the real issue is the accessibility of many low value skillsofts; I just point out the two skills at 4 thing because it's where it's easiest to see the discounts (since DP8 is a significant DP value)

-> contrariwise skillwires are the reason my gm rarely has npcs with DPs under 7, even when they're 'grunts'. unless there's a reason for them not to have skillwires installed, we've kind of concluded that every wage slave would have them.

I think, like most all of the changes in SR4A, the change in skillsoft prices was ill-considered and unnecessary. Skillsofts were always a way to cheaply get secondary/peripheral skills - kind of like how muscle toner is a cheap way to boost all of your Agility-related skills. Augmentations are supposed to be a shortcut to power! That's the whole friggin' point of them!

Making an activesoft cost so much means no one will start with them at char-gen. Why pay 4 BP for a skill of 2, taking irreplaceable resources from your starting allocation of cash (which is capped at 250,000), when you can pay 4 BP for a skill of 1? Now everyone will just get Move-by-Wire to start with, and pick up pirated skillsofts after the game has started.

they're still ultimately half-off skills; why pay 4 BP for a skill of 2 when you can pay 4 BP for 2 skills at 1 instead of 4 BP for one skill at 1?

and single skills you want at 4? you'd be 'crazy' to buy them as skills and not skillsofts (16BP vs. 8 BP; 8BP buys *alot*).

Two reasons:

First, you can't spend Edge for more successes with skillsofts, and they only go up to 4, and they don't have specializations. So they aren't something you want for one of your main skills - they are for secondary or peripheral skills.

Second, you only have 250,000 to spend, and sammies already have to make some hard choices in order to get a good combination of 'ware. Heck, even if you take born rich, in debt, and genetic heritage, you still need to do that. So 10,000? That's a reflex recorder, or a tricked-out set of cybereyes, or a cerebral booster, that you can't get because you've bought one piddling point of skill.

Now, a lot of that may be my personal play style. Someone with lower dice pools and less 'ware might indeed see skillsofts as "half price skills", since there won't be the same trade offs involved for them.

well, if you're taking them at 1 rank, they're obviously for peripheral skills (stuff you'd take at 1 rank with skills anyway); I know they're expensive, I also argue (in another thread) that every archetype should spend the points and cash and eat the essence loss on a set of skillwires (and take 250k regardless of character) - I think the one possible exception *might* be technos because of biowires; I haven't really looked into that case in depth.

I agree that samurai are eating alot of cash but they're also fairly unintensive skill-wise; many samurai will want to take MBW2 and then buy skillsofts later (they're still generally a bargain, especially pirated, unless your GM does something weird with cash and karma amounts). so you take the stuff you figure you'll need for that first few runs and then buy everything else later.

In the case of characters that can already spend 250k skillsofts are less of a bargain*, for characters that normally wouldn't spend 250k, it's BP optimal to take 250k anyway, buy 'wires and go to town on auxiliary skills that way. -> this is counterintuitive and a flaw of the system, imo.



*at chargen; 4k for rating 4 skill once ingame is still obscene and hard as hell to beat for those random minor skills like lockpick you'll almost never consider edging.

A couple of observations about skill-wires, and rules changes in general.
From my point of view, and I will readily admit that this is a personal judgment, not rules, and not provable, a number of the shifts from SR4 to SR4A end up feeling like they produce a different game. Not a wrong game. But a different game. The shift in skillwire prices is one of those changes. It changes the conceptual role of skillwires in the characters and the world. It is not that there is no role left, but it is a different role, in most cases, than before.

Note that if we use the 2,500nuyen==1karma equivalence that is suggested by karmagen, then a skill 4 is 22 karma straight up, and 16 karma for the somewhat less useful skillsoft, if you have the skillwires already. (In fact, since you probably want the optimization that makes it take up less of the skillwire, it is more like 17 karma.

Obviously it is less if you assume you can get pirated activesofts. By the book, you can get activesofts, and for some reasons, they decay. Since I can not figure out why they decay, I am very comfortable with the GM ruling that no, they are not available pirated because they have to be fitted to the person. That personal fitting is even more appropriate if you want personalized activesofts (and +1 die for 3,000 nuyen seems like a very good deal to me.)
In fact, the assumption that activesofts have to be personalized, and that higher skill ones take more personalizing, makes more sense of why the base cost is so high.

Yours,
Joel

PS: It took me a bit to realize that my reaction to changing the karmagen system (to 5*karma, and races cost bp in karma) is the same thing. It is not wrong to change it. But it does produce very different characters. I.e. it chnage sthe baseline definition for a karmagen game.

Of course, the book also suggests that they should decay much slower, or that only Computer & Hacking Programs should decay.

Just that would be a house rule, as only skillsoft with said option are personalized and only usable by the person.

I totally can... with enough bugs in them..

EDIT: It should be mentioned that you guys (I only glazed over the thread) haven't even brought up Skillwire Clusters... It definately helps cut the cost of ActiveSofts.

IMHO Skillwires would have most likely been developed for the military first. They have the need and the budget.


As to the expense, I know they are trying to balance them, but this is a bad way to do it.

There were balance issues, but skill chips were one of the things that balanced out the Magically active PCs.

I mean with Street samurai throw 15 dice plus in a gunfight what does someone being able to do 7 or 8 dice matter?



It also goes against every thing we have learn about software since SR first came out.

The best way to make money on software is to sell a lot of it. All the expense is in the development. Once you recoup your development costs, if it costs you nothing to create another copy then no matter how low the price you are still making a profit.


Most active skills have not changed that much in any two three year period to demand constant updates. For all we know they have a master recordings for a particular skill set and every time they upgrade or change the skillwires, they recompile it to work with the new hardware. So development cost on the skill chips for a lot of skills is going to be dirt cheap.

So I'm looking to where the expense is, and not finding any reason for them to be that expensive.

And having an expensive price on a cheap to produced product is begging someone to come in with a cheap knock off and under cut you.

There has never been a copy protection program that can not be beat. And I expect using a proprietary format for a particular brand of skillwires wouldn't work too well either.

I could see if you had to actually physically jack a chip that there might be some serious expense and the chip could act to prevent copying, but they got rid of the skill chip.

The older skill softs should be dirt cheap. Software always gets cheaper as it gets older and where is the public domain software? Where are the cheap knockoffs of better software. So what if it is a year behind SOTA.

The general rating 4 cap is for freeware, not open source software. The latter and self-written programs don't degrade, too, as per errata.

Of course, there isn't much point in open source skillsofts, as there it's not the souce code that matters, but the simsense recordings.

People are a bit too hung up on BP cost alone.

Lets not forget in play there's nothing stopping you from stealing a huge library of them or buying them blackmarket. Or from just treating it like an ammo expense. We need to spend 4000 for a black market copy of lockpicking, after the run we just let it slowly degrade, if we need it again in the next few months we have it (and can pay to bring it up to date).. if not... let it expire.

It's instant skills without paying any karma OR TIME to learn them when needed on the fly. Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but how long does it normally take to train a skill from 0 to 4. (a few months of game time I'd say)


Except SOTA (which makes a lot of sense, these companies want to make money, self-degrading software is a way to ensure the subscription fees in a dystopian world). At the book degradation rates, that's 1000 every 2 months to keep it up to date.

Lets say you just offed a street sam w/ MbW, chances are good he has a few routines, just like you steal the body for the cyber, steal the commlink as well for the software. Similarly, if you're a decker, stealing them should definately be possible. Look a wage slave, bust into his commlink and see if he has anything interesting...


Here's another view, if cyber is the 'quick' way to power... but for a cost $$$$. How much is it going to cost you in living expenses, equipment, trainer, etc. to actually take a skill from 0 to 4. Doesn't it make sense that the costs will be somewhat in line as well. (the old costs definately aren't on this scale).

Right, but people aren't exactly thrilled about the idea of them being darn near free, either, since they compete directly with skills. Pinning down a happy medium between skills vs. ActiveSofts here is rather difficult. Personally, I've never really had an issue with ActiveSofts that changing to karmagen didn't fix, so I tend to be in the camp that isn't too thrilled about the change or the addition of pirating. Luckily, this isn't an MMO or a nationally standardized game, so at my table we just roll the old way.

So put a strict cap on how good they are; at rating 3, it's a lot better than defaulting, but if it's your niche, then you want the real skill.

Frankly, Activesoft degradation was a poor idea. If you're taking out the copy protection, you can also take out the planned obsolescence code.

Again, think about the logical consequences of that.
1. once cracked, cracked copies would absolutely dominate the market as very few would ever buy the real thing.

2. You're assuming that the degradation is part of the code. It could just be failure to have the software dial-in to manufacturer to be recalibrated to the user every 2 months. Failure to have other relevant time-changing things like the database of equipment updated. etc.

The exact mechanism really doesn't matter. Just what the logical conclusion on gameplay mechanics are.


I still stand by my view... SOTA degradation is a great rule, and nowhere near as complicated as people make it out to be. It stops cracked/stolen software from being the absolute norm. And in practice just adds a little to lifestyle costs to keep up to date program library. However, at this point we're just rehashing old arguments.

I understand, from an effect point of view, why they put in the SOTA degradation rule.
Note that in what follows I am commenting on the regular, strict interval based degradation mechnism. Gm adjudicated degradation with different amounts based on the specific software, is in different matter. For that part I would expect the GM to be clear with the players up front about what they are doing and why.

However, for me, their explanation of clockwork like degradation does not work.
If one can crack the software, remove the copy protection, and remove the registration and tracing logic, then I would expect that same cracker to be able to remove any deliberate degradation from calling home.

Some folks have argued that the clockwork intervals are to reflect real world change. That just doesn't work for most activesofts. If it did work, then we would have to have a requirement for characters to keep training in all their skills, as those would be becoming obsolete. (Note that by RAW, if you picked up a skill at chargen, and did not even use it for the next two years (game-time) of game play, it is still perfectly valid and functional.)

Yours,
Joel

I think unwired's rules for all the free and near free software is one of the biggest problems in this issue. If you run under the original BBB of a rating 4 skillsoft being 12,000 period, then you don't run into too many problems. Sure, that is only about 2.5BP, but that quickly eats into the ability to buy other equipment, and generally anyone getting skillsofts is going to be getting alot of other equipment, so it isn't that huge of an issue at chargen.

There is also the fact that you have to pay nuyen and essence just to get the wires in the first place, so there is a bit of balance there.

You also have to keep in mind all the things you can't do with skillwires, the most important of which is use edge. You can't increase your DP with edge, you can't reroll with edge, you can never get exploding sixes, you can't downgrade glitches or critical glitches. Often, this is a really big issue, as if the skill is really important to you, you'll want to have these options.

Then there is the fact that you can't improve your skill any. Your stuck at where you're at, and if you want to improve it, you have to go through the full training process, instead of just increasing your skill. And remember that some skill boosters won't work with skillwires. Adepts can't get improved ability, and cybers can't get reflex recorders.

12k is enough nuyen that you have to consider about it before spending the money on a skillsoft in game, and you can certainly make the more dangerous/illegal ones (Guns, weapons, demolitions, lockpicking, etc) hard to find.

The problem was when the unwired stuff hit the table, and that was suddenly a 1.2k expense or a freebe because someone has a freeware version of it. All the sudden it was immaterial to have every single skill in the book, it could be done for 20k or so. Of course that easily offsets any of the problems mentioned above, because there is nothing you couldn't do with at least 7-8 dice thrown at it.

The problem with increasing it to 10k a rating, thus 40k for a rating 4, is that if you want to play a skillwires character, you have to expend your entire resource allowance on getting 5 skills and the wires. Sure, you got those five skills for cheaper than it would have cost to actually buy them, but you have all the disadvantages above, you have no other equipment, and those five skills are never getting any better.

The only place that skillsofts work now is in play when you get them pirated for 4k each. In chargen they simply eat far too much into your spending allowance to be worthwhile. It really is a shame that such a core part of the game got shifted to suit a very small rule in a supplement book. With unwired the old system doesn't work, and without unwired the new system doesn't work.

Agreed. I could understand this for knowledge skills, as what is known tends to change over time, but I don't think there have been any significant advances in how to point a gun and pull the trigger in the past few centuries (By SR time) to warrant there being any kind of degradation of skill in that regard. Same goes for any combat or physical skill. Most social skills are also not going to change, with etiquette being a notable exception. Technical skills I can imagine there being some changes in as new parts are invented, new tools are used, and new methods developed, but even there you are looking at obsolete as a course of years and not a course of a single month.

Personally I think the best solution would have been to leave the cost for skillsofts alone, but point out that the rules in unwired deal with programs and not softs. While they are similar to us, the book never mentions one as being the other, and I'm willing to suspend some disbelief that there is something preventing softs being cracked and distributed via the matrix but not programs (Something as simple as requiring a quick interface with the manufacturer to get it to operate properly on your brainwaves would sound like a reasonable explanation to me)

We've passed some house rules to the same effect; sensor softs and active/know/linguasofts don't degrade. Only security-related software degrades, to reflect the arms race in finding exploits and patching them.

As for pirating skillsofts.. all of that is only a problem if people get skillwires above rating 3, really. A "free" skill at rating 3 isn't all that disruptive; mages and technomancers have spirits and sprites with skills of their own.

Again, the rating of the Activesofts involved was never, EVER my issue with SkillWire systems. Ever. Period. It's rare that anyone at my table ever used an ActiveSoft rated higher than a 2, to be perfectly frank. Most of my players just ran a smattering of ActiveSofts that covered skills you couldn't normally default to. I was completely okay with this, for the most part. What bothers me is that these ActiveSofts are now either very nearly free if you pirate or flat out expensive if you buy them in chargen via BP. The fact that things have a funny way of being less expensive in play than in BP chargen is probably my single biggest pet peeve with the standard rules, which is why I play with karma gen, the old prices and do not allow ActiveSoft pirating.

To those who say don't let them degrade... then you have another issue.

Group has what, 2 or 3 people w/ skill wires (not uncommon street sams, deckers, and other classes which don't care overly much about essence). Okay copy is cracked, which basically means that one copy is now 3 copies splitting the cost, and w/o degradation... they're all equally valid.

Or if playing... why not just horse trade skillwires w/ others as if they were mp3's. (who knows your street sam acquaintance might have lockpicking, and you might have that mechanic skill he wants). That's part of my point here, yes, they're expensive in chargen, however once you're out... they can be quite cheap and fast paths to proficiency (though not mastery).


As far as the timeframe on degradation rules go, any rule would be arbitrary. If they would have said, that hacking tools degrade in 8d6 days would it have been any different? (avg, 28 days) It's still arbitrary, now just not clockwork.


I honestly believe people get too hung up on the 'how' it works or 'why' it needs regular maintenance. It's a game, it's not engineering. The purpose of the rules is to create a playable system w/ appropriate checks and balances.

Personally I think the whole program sharing thing is an issue of the game itself. This also once again puts pressure on the character to make use of certain rules (Once again, we're looking at unwired) in order to make use of something that should lie outside of those rules (In this case, skillwires).

Yes, in play, skillsofts (along with all programs) are ridiculously cheap, because there is nothing stopping you running out and grabbing the copies for free from a half dozen different sources. I think this is a problem with the rules that allow you to go out and do that, and shouldn't try to be fixed by making the original product super expensive, and not an option inside of chargen.

I mean, there is nothing stopping me taking a contact that would reasonably have a full library of all skillsofts, and simply bum every single skill in the book off him for free (I'd owe him, but not that much, it isn't any bigger of a deal to give me those than to give me a couple of songs from a ripped 'CD'). Increasing the price so that people who use the basic rules only can't use the skillsofts any more isn't the way to fix this.

Out of curiosity, what kind of relative price did skillsofts have in old editions? Did they break a players starting funds to have two at a decent level? If not then the problem seems to be able to be traced rather directly to the ability to copy and pirate and otherwise circumvent the costs, and not any sort of balance of the BP cost of a skill vs the BP cost in resources of a similar soft.

I somehow predict that SR 5 will see a Crash 3.0 that will get rid of wireless, because it seems to do nothing but cause headaches.

Considering how prevalent pirating is today, they should have just designed the system around free software to begin with. Which would have been just fine if hacking was a Skill + Attribute based mechanic. Combine that with programs offering specific functions and limiting how many programs you could have loaded at one time would have been far and away more balancing without having to come up with all these silly rules for grossly overpriced software. The whole point of hacking/pirating is to get around paying those stupid prices, not for it to be a game balancing mechanic.

Agreed. (Not often I say that to you )

Interesting point..

I do like the idea of cutting-edge programs being important/useful, but at the lower end, it's kind of ridiculous.

I'm very much inclined to treat all rating 1-2 software as being available for free download, but to give all software exponentially increasing availability as quality increases; the best stuff is rare (else the rest wouldn't exist anymore).

You see, making the availability equal to teh square of the rating would work in my opinion... exceptional programs would be very hard to come by, and the balance would be there... unfortunately, the prices would need to be adjusted somewhat, but then again, that would also be okay in my book as well...

As for the Skill + Attribute issue; it has been discussed to death, but had that been the standard across the board, we would probably not be having many of these conversations...

Keep the Faith

It is, by RAW, see errata.

Biggest change I've seen with new cost is the pc's trying to find a way to accomplish something either via a default roll or another option not requiring the skill.

One pc in particular would download skills on the fly as needed for the job, now he's just bowing out and letting the team find other solutions to skill lacking problems.