You don't need implants to hack the Matrix anymore. A set of trodes and an external sim module can give you as much of an edge in VR as a hacker with half her brain replaced.
Goggles and earbuds can give you AR, VR, and all the sensory enhancements your heart desires.
Robotics technology is so advanced that you can buy flying drones the size of insects.
So tell me... how far away can we be from a full range of physically-enhancing exoware that doesn't require any essence loss whatsoever?
I'm talking full or partial exoskeletons to boost your strength, agility and/or toughness; smart-sensor reaction-enhancement systems; nanotech auto-repair systems; hell... I'm talking full-blown power armor here.
I guess they can only do so much, but such developments could still be pretty game-breaking for Shadowrun. And really... what's to stop them happening?
Full Version: Exoware
There is nothing to stop it happening, but you certainly would stick out like a sore thumb on that stealthy extraction you were just hired for. However, noone will care if you are in a battlefield situation, where everyone with this kind of augmentation will have heavy armor wrapped around the exo-whatever anyway.
It's also hard to see how exoware is going to boost your reflexes. You want super awesome magic powers without a lot of essence loss? Look into rigging, sonny!
| QUOTE (Clyde) |
| It's also hard to see how exoware is going to boost your reflexes. You want super awesome magic powers without a lot of essence loss? Look into rigging, sonny! |
Yeah, the change from SR3 to SR4 fixed the massive amount of essence loss for riggers. But rigging an exosuit you are wearing would tear you apart.
Im thinking full body armor with syth muscles or cyber muscles implanted into the suit and stuff. I would make the user have to have a simrig on his comm so that his body movements are mirrored to the suit. Hmm does the question of how is cyberparts powered ever come up ?? Well im thinking that since its seperate from your body it has to have a power supply which will limit how long the suit can function say like 6-12 hours or something?
All the parts would cost like triple. You would get a full body suit at triple price. You would buy cyberware for the suit at triple price. Now how do you plan to attach weapons? Are you gonna attach crap to wierd places like the forearm or shoulders? Normal hand held weapons would have to have troll sized grips. The powersuit would be unable to use normal weapons. As part of the powersuits abilities you would no longer need a gyromount. There could be a forearm attachment that you could buy for items that would let you swing assault rifles or heavy weapons around with one arm.
It would be heavy as hell. Multiply the users weight times 1.5 or 2 to get the final weight of the suit + the user.
You would have to use drone parts for its various sensors sense your enclosed inside. The sensors would cost triple.
You would be sealed off from the environment so gas and toxins could not touch you and you could breathe underwater since you couldnt swim. Your air supply is built into the time limit for its functionality.
I think it should cause some penalty to your movement and or reaction speed. You couldnt dodge bullets as well, You couldnt move as far. I know tech should have advanced enouch to fully compensate for that thing but come on your getting a power suit of armor. Why not just screw the exoskeleton and proclaim urself god if you dont want the hassle of any penalties.
Id say halve your initiative and half your reaction for any defenseive actions.
All the parts would cost like triple. You would get a full body suit at triple price. You would buy cyberware for the suit at triple price. Now how do you plan to attach weapons? Are you gonna attach crap to wierd places like the forearm or shoulders? Normal hand held weapons would have to have troll sized grips. The powersuit would be unable to use normal weapons. As part of the powersuits abilities you would no longer need a gyromount. There could be a forearm attachment that you could buy for items that would let you swing assault rifles or heavy weapons around with one arm.
It would be heavy as hell. Multiply the users weight times 1.5 or 2 to get the final weight of the suit + the user.
You would have to use drone parts for its various sensors sense your enclosed inside. The sensors would cost triple.
You would be sealed off from the environment so gas and toxins could not touch you and you could breathe underwater since you couldnt swim. Your air supply is built into the time limit for its functionality.
I think it should cause some penalty to your movement and or reaction speed. You couldnt dodge bullets as well, You couldnt move as far. I know tech should have advanced enouch to fully compensate for that thing but come on your getting a power suit of armor. Why not just screw the exoskeleton and proclaim urself god if you dont want the hassle of any penalties.
Id say halve your initiative and half your reaction for any defenseive actions.
Sonny?
*cough*
Well yes this does indeed tie in with rigging. Specifically, my reason for bringing this up was having a PC in my campaign who is a quadruplegic rigger and his meat body is carried around in a sort of slow exoskeleton. For reasons that I won't go into here, he's potentially got access to all sorts of ubertech and could quite conceivably end up with an exoskeleton that matches normal human speed, strength and agility. I'm not going to let him pump it up to superhuman stats or anything (happily he's no munchkin anyway), but it certainly got me thinking.
By 2070, or soon thereafter, this sort of tech could be pretty lightweight and discrete. Imagine some sort of suit of artificial muscles that's worn over your meat body, and controlled through trodes (or even just programmed to sense and react according to your normal movements).
Enhanced reaction... well yeah that's trickier, but with sensors, trode feedback and the equivalent of a pilot program you could maybe achieve something equivalent.
I'm just surprised, really, that this kind of gear hasn't already surfaced in the SR world (to my knowledge) and become quite commonplace, and before you know it you've got Mages who can armwrestle and outrun cybersams. I guess nobody else has a problem with that. *shrug*
*cough*
Well yes this does indeed tie in with rigging. Specifically, my reason for bringing this up was having a PC in my campaign who is a quadruplegic rigger and his meat body is carried around in a sort of slow exoskeleton. For reasons that I won't go into here, he's potentially got access to all sorts of ubertech and could quite conceivably end up with an exoskeleton that matches normal human speed, strength and agility. I'm not going to let him pump it up to superhuman stats or anything (happily he's no munchkin anyway), but it certainly got me thinking.
By 2070, or soon thereafter, this sort of tech could be pretty lightweight and discrete. Imagine some sort of suit of artificial muscles that's worn over your meat body, and controlled through trodes (or even just programmed to sense and react according to your normal movements).
Enhanced reaction... well yeah that's trickier, but with sensors, trode feedback and the equivalent of a pilot program you could maybe achieve something equivalent.
I'm just surprised, really, that this kind of gear hasn't already surfaced in the SR world (to my knowledge) and become quite commonplace, and before you know it you've got Mages who can armwrestle and outrun cybersams. I guess nobody else has a problem with that. *shrug*
Abbandon kinda anticipated some of my thoughts there, and I agree, although I wasn't necessarily thinking of anything that heavy.
Yeah, that rigger's scenario is a lot more reasonable. And the research that is going into prostheses today is gonna net some pretty spectacular results in a few years.
Note: According to some shadowtalk, Ares already has working armored exoskeleton prototypes.
So does DARPA. Today. Granted, they're still looking at several prototypes, most of which only sort of work, or work for only one limb, but this is something that we're on the verge of now, and SR really needs to keep up.
while external mods can give you a lot, there are some things it cant do.
right now you cant equip ear buds with sound dampening for example.
nor can glasses or ear buds act as recording units (alltho that can be delegated to rfid chips with matching sensors).
right now you cant equip ear buds with sound dampening for example.
nor can glasses or ear buds act as recording units (alltho that can be delegated to rfid chips with matching sensors).
Hmmmmm whats to stop people from sticking an endoscope onto your commlink's camcorder lens and using it to look around corners and displaying the view onto your glasses or eyes?
oooo couldnt a dude with cybereyes use an endscope to scout a corner or whatever and if his eyeballs are subscribed to his comm he could share the view with his team?
Damn i need my burst transmission rules nailed down hehe.
oooo couldnt a dude with cybereyes use an endscope to scout a corner or whatever and if his eyeballs are subscribed to his comm he could share the view with his team?
Damn i need my burst transmission rules nailed down hehe.
Hell the Army's Future Warrior System is looking at having nanotech involved in a big way. It will help with the ballistic defense properties and, they may have dropped this, with the maximum weight you can lift and carry. It is really cool stuff, in theory at least, I am not sure how far away they are from getting it to work the way they want, but it shouldn't be too long.
| QUOTE (Abbandon) |
| Hmmmmm whats to stop people from sticking an endoscope onto your commlink's camcorder lens and using it to look around corners and displaying the view onto your glasses or eyes? oooo couldnt a dude with cybereyes use an endscope to scout a corner or whatever and if his eyeballs are subscribed to his comm he could share the view with his team? Damn i need my burst transmission rules nailed down hehe. |
nice ideas there
another option is to attach a rfid camera to the endoscope.
just goes to show what one can do with the matrix 2.0 rules i guess
Interesting suggestion Witness. I'd have thought the exoware would still be pretty bulky as it has to have leverage.
I had considered a quadraplegic rigger in my own game, although given the amount of tech he'd need to build and arm his exosuit he was going to be an NPC.
As for looking round corners, They already have gun cams and mage-sight goggles and you can share that view with other people anyway.
I had considered a quadraplegic rigger in my own game, although given the amount of tech he'd need to build and arm his exosuit he was going to be an NPC.
As for looking round corners, They already have gun cams and mage-sight goggles and you can share that view with other people anyway.
I assume that rigger uses the Intuition attribute for rigging actions Houserule?
CP2020's "Battlegloves" gave the wearer the crushing and gripping strength of a cyberarm, and a couple of slots for cyberlimb upgrades, in a wearable form. My impression was kinda like a power fist from WH40k. They were, admittedly, kinda bulky and heavy, but having an uncybered guy be able to slip on a hydraulics-enhanced "glove" and crush the rear end of a car with it was pretty badass.
That sounds fair enough, but I'd expect them to have a legality of F and an availability in the 20's! 
| QUOTE (Shrike30) |
| CP2020's "Battlegloves" gave the wearer the crushing and gripping strength of a cyberarm, and a couple of slots for cyberlimb upgrades, in a wearable form. My impression was kinda like a power fist from WH40k. They were, admittedly, kinda bulky and heavy, but having an uncybered guy be able to slip on a hydraulics-enhanced "glove" and crush the rear end of a car with it was pretty badass. |
cpv3 have taken that idea into the realm of "fantasy" with bracers that expand to cover the wearers whole arm...
Powered Armor has been one of those things that's been out of the Shadowrun canon since back in the day. No idea why, really. Realistic androids were out for the longest time, too. Not that this stuff isn't Cyberpunk or impossible with the Shadowrun tech level, it just doesn't seem to fit the style.
As far as rigging powered armor goes, I'm sure it would work. I'm just not sure why you'd want to. A good commlink lets you run drones that are smaller, cheaper, just as well armed and armored and don't you have inside to get killed!
As far as rigging powered armor goes, I'm sure it would work. I'm just not sure why you'd want to. A good commlink lets you run drones that are smaller, cheaper, just as well armed and armored and don't you have inside to get killed!
who needs powered armor when you can cyber up a troll and tell him to have fun?
| QUOTE (Clyde) |
| Powered Armor has been one of those things that's been out of the Shadowrun canon since back in the day. No idea why, really. Realistic androids were out for the longest time, too. Not that this stuff isn't Cyberpunk or impossible with the Shadowrun tech level, it just doesn't seem to fit the style. As far as rigging powered armor goes, I'm sure it would work. I'm just not sure why you'd want to. A good commlink lets you run drones that are smaller, cheaper, just as well armed and armored and don't you have inside to get killed! |
That's very true- although I guess one limitation with drones is signal range: the rigger has to be fairly nearby (although for a heavy drone 'fairly nearby' seems to be within 4km).
Mind you that just makes me wonder why anybody ever does a job with their meat body! I suppose because there are things you might need to do on-site that drones aren't so good at. In the most extreme case, magic.
But I was mainly thinking about non-rigged exoware. Abbandon is right about trade-offs and penalties, I reckon. But some of this kit could still be pretty useful in some circumstances. Especially for mages, I would imagine.
I'm throwing some ideas around here:
UltraAlert helmet: armored, with AR-enhanced one-way plexiglass faceplate (allows mages to retain LOS), incorporates comm system, all sensory enhancements, BattleTech tactical overview (?), plus passive sensors and alert system (rated? Either it makes its own separate perception rolls in addition to your own, or it just gives you a big bonus).
FullMetalWarrior heavy power armor: heavily armored (ignoring usual armor encumbrance rules) and boosts strength, body, with penalty or limit to agility, reaction, movement, stealth. Incorporates chemseal and air tanks. Comes with UltraAlert helmet above. Very obvious.
MuscleMatrix powered suit: this full body suit covers the arms, legs and torso and is light and slim enough to be worn under normal (large-sized) clothes or armor. A matrix of artificial muscles and sensors boosts strength and body (allowing heavier armor to be worn without encumbrance penalty) as well as movement rate. Can be set to work against the wearer: it's a mobile gym!
CountyBounder running suit: with extendable powered stilts and gyroscopic stabilisation, this suit allows rapid and sustained cross-country travel- increasing movement, bonuses to running and jumping tests, etc.
SilentEagle aerial insertion exoharness: this jumpharness incorporates ruthenium polymer visual camouflage and radar camouflage (bonuses to stealth), parachute and/or retractable glider wings, thrusters, life support systems, and built-in sensors and autopilot systems: everything you need to do a HALO jump with minimal training!
SpiderMax climbing harness: with ruthenium polymer camouflage, Gecko-coated limbs, retractable spikes, artificial muscle enhancement, twin stealth grapple firers with myomeric rope, and computer-assisted route-guidance, this harness can turn just about anyone into Spiderman!
ArmDoc external medical filter: typically worn on the arm, this device hooks into a major artery, monitors blood content and general health. An external toxin extractor, platelet factory and pathogenic defense system all in one [meh- why not!] as well as a combat drug administrator, mobile medikit and medalert system!
ZootSoot pheromone vest: this discrete vest provides all the benefits of Tailored Pheromone bioware with none of the intrusive surgery. Can be turned on and off through a wireless link. Single pheromone pack will last a month with typical usage!
I don't know: I'm just thinking out loud here. Some of this stuff is very limited in use, some of it is probably a bit unlikely (too much packed into the ArmDoc?), and some of it maybe nobody would ever want. But the basic point is there. This sort of thing ought to be technically possible (if expensive) and could do a lot of stuff that cyberware can do but without the essence loss.
I know what you mean about it 'not fitting the style', but there comes a point when, if its possible, you have to wonder why it hasn't been done. Didn't know about the Ares project, but that makes perfect sense. Maybe by 2070 that stuff is out there. Maybe we'll see exoware in the Augmentation book.
| QUOTE (Samaels Ghost) |
| I assume that rigger uses the Intuition attribute for rigging actions Houserule? |
Pretty much, yes.
The advantage of having the rigger in the armor is that you become immune to jamming and all sorts or remote piracy tricks. Mainly it depends on how important you want to make various EW tricks in the SR battlefield.
Anyone want to deliverate the effectiveness of two legged troll size power armor vs similarly sized spidertanks?
Anyone want to deliverate the effectiveness of two legged troll size power armor vs similarly sized spidertanks?
| QUOTE (Clyde) |
| Realistic androids were out for the longest time, too. |
Are there realistic androids in Shadowrun now? I didn't think there were. Certainly not with their own AI, I would imagine, though an AI could 'pilot' them remotely, I guess.
| QUOTE (Crusher Bob) |
| The advantage of having the rigger in the armor is that you become immune to jamming and all sorts or remote piracy tricks. Mainly it depends on how important you want to make various EW tricks in the SR battlefield. |
Yeah that's a very good point.
At the end of the day, maybe this kind of stuff can exist in SR, and will appear in Augmentation. But it'll be rare, expensive, possibly illegal, the lighter stuff will only grant moderate benefits, and the heavier stuff will only be suitable for certain kinds of jobs.
a antroform with rating 6 pilot and some rating 6 autosofts can more or less match a person in whatever area those autosofts cover (excluding any use of edge btw). but they will not have a personality like what you see in star wars...
With programs like virtual people, is there any reason why they couldn't? Maybe if you really wanted you could count the virtual personality as a program running against their limit, but I see no reason why they couldn't simulate a personality as well as other programs can in SR.
FWIW, Runner Havens mentions a rumor that Ares is working on "armored exoskeletons". In another section, rumor has it that a Seoulpa Ring acquired some "custom-crafted anthroform drones--androids, really".
Then there's the guy that talks about technomancers backing up their natural memories to external storage media. And the group allegedly trying to upgrade semi-autonomous software agents into AIs.
Transhuman shadowrunners, here we come.
Then there's the guy that talks about technomancers backing up their natural memories to external storage media. And the group allegedly trying to upgrade semi-autonomous software agents into AIs.
Transhuman shadowrunners, here we come.
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