NO eyeware smartlink doesn't provide DNI, the cyberyes you but it in does that.

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?


Minding that the cybereyes are already wired to the brain nerve clusters, why not just presume a couple more wires are added for the smartlink system when they are implanted?

My favorite:

Skillwires.

The latter. While it is not spelled out explicitly it seems clear that this DNI is only meant for basic commands and diagnostics like "eject the clip" and not the full SimSense deal.

As a real life comparison, the cyberware DNI is like a SMBus (primitive short-range bus over two wires for things like getting status updates or putting devices into sleep mode), while full DNI is like a remote admin tool which gives you full control over a system. Obviously the DNI of cyberlimbs is more complex, but it was not build with SimSense in mind, so in order to get the interface to your brain cyberlimbs still need to be modded with a datajack.



Concerning trodebands, I recently wondered why anyone would bother with AR gloves and the like if a simple set of trodes + sim module can do the same and much better. The reply (don't know from whom) was "not everyone wants DNI", which made a lot of sense to me. Think about it, mankind has a tendency to blame hardships like sudden illness or disabled children on miasmas, witchcraft, vaccacinations, radio waves...sounds perfectly reasonable that a lot of people in SR are scared of DNI because the friend of an uncle has a coworker who's neighbour had a defective sim module and can't get it up ever since.

They can be cool, but the increased costs for the skillsofts in SR4A made them much less useful. You'd have to blow your entire starting funds to get half a dozen skills at rating 4. It is still cheaper than buying them, but you're eating up your limited alotment of resources to do it, and that 240k could easily go to getting a +4 to virtually all your DPs, which is almost as good as getting a 4 in every skill.

Are we talking about chargen or gaming too? During a campaign I've found skillwires to be incredibly useful and not really expensive. Nuyen come in plentiful, karma not so.

Either/or I think.

I suppose it depends largely on your GM. If your GM is stingy with the karma but excessive with the cash, then skillwires are the way to go, but from what I've seen it tends to be more the opposite, with plenty of karma and barely enough cash to keep up your lifestyle.

Oddly enough I think skillwires might be most useful for magic types. That way they can spend their karma focusing on magic, and can spend the nuyen that they don't know what to do with on mundane skills.

I've still seen excellent use of the built in skillwires capability of MBW. Say the player wants to pose as a technician, he just buys a couple cracked active and knowledge softs for 10% of the regular price, slots them and goes to work. Then, the software degradation isn't such a death sentence, since the gear served its purpose, much like a can of boom foam.



As to why anyone would use AR gloves when they can just DNI, the only times I've ever had players justify it have been:
1) A Computer Illiterate, half insane voodoo mage who doesn't even keep his comlink charged or on and survives through generous application of the Influence spell.
2) A Luddite adept who is so aghast at the concept of technological augmentation that his brain sort of tunes out when you try and explain it to him (Incompetence: Cybertechnology) and who has a massive phobia concerning VR.

Of course it depends on the GMs style, but karma can be used for so much...ok, cash too. Dammit.

Skillwires may be an option for a spellslinger is he is willing to sacrifice a bit of his magic. But even then, he needs to a buy a lot of stuff (even though he's much more a karma-back hole then a nuyen-one).

Exactly. For a mundane, it isn't that skillwires aren't good, it is just that there are so many other things to spend the 40k for a good skillsoft on. For a mage on the other hand, it may cost a point of precious magic, but it allows you to turn your nuyen into skill, and you can get other ware besides just skillwires. As for using the 10% cost cracked programs... I just never really liked that rule much. And to be honest, would you trust your body to a bunch of scriptkiddies that may well have filled their software with plenty of adware, viruses, bugs, worms, downright wrong files, etc? I mean for a hacking program that's maybe less of a risk, but for a program that rather literally operates your body?

"I don't know why, but every time I run my cracked automatics skillsoft, I get the strongest urge to transfer all my money to account XXXXXXX and buy a bunch of FruityYum^tm Microwave Burritos. Also, my dreams all seem to involve me going to stuffer shack and buying stuff... weird, huh?"

Well, it's not free... You're buying the softs from a warez group (connection with a loyalty rating,) and they wouldn't have customers if they burned them. Plus it's not like cracking takes even 1/1000th as much effort as writing a program, so the coding part is all easy money. What's hard is finding customers without being found out by the megas whose code you're jacking. If you mess with customers, all it would take is a single call to get a DMCA jackboot on your throat.

Though I do think it would be hilarious to have a character slot a warez'ded automatics skillsoft and be compelled to call his targets "fAg0rTz" and tell them they're getting "PWND." All running down the hallways screaming "Headshot! Headshot! Suck it N00bs!"

This space available for sale or rent.

Copyright laws would be the least of your problems if some AAA finds out that you are the guy who released their brand-new skillsoft cluster. They will issue a far more...direct takedown notice.

Yeah, but 90% of the skills don't change that much from year to year.

So what if you are using last year's skillsoft cluster.

The new skillsoft has the extra shiny interface guaranteed to work with the new autoupdated OS on your comlink. Unfortunately this latest update might cause some backwards compatibility problems with older software which hasn't received the mandated patch. Unfortunately, due to our extensive line of softwares, some of our older programs are no longer supported for updates. We refer you to our self-help section for those customers hoping to find common answers for older problems.

I find Looper a particularly enjoyable virus for an active-soft ...