Agreed (and saved me saying it). But the new cyberlimbs mean that if you want to go the tank route, cyber is still the best by far.

Not that the tank route is that effective in a game filled with stealth and high explosives.

You are right about the specific point of skillwires allowing unparalleled amounts of jack of all trades skill flexiblity (as opposed to enhancing some handful of key skills or skill groups). But if we want to branch out from pure combat effectiveness a bit, and discuss augmentation of intellectual or social capabilties, maybe the picture is not so clear-cut. I mean, e.g. what about the comparison of intellect-enhancing bioware and cyberware, and a character (again, putting budgetary qualms aside, as we talking about cutting edge) that has a mix of combat, intellect, and/or "face" augmentations ?

If this be the main concern, bioware always wins out by landslide. Barring being arrested for other charges and being forced to undergo in-depth medical checks, the all-bio sammie is essentially free from worries about being discovered with illegal augmentations, and can laugh off environmental checks for cyberware.

...the real problem is the character does not start with enough resources to be effective going all bio.

I'd feel better about this post if you qualified the term "better"; because while he (the cyber-sammy) may be a higher-average-stat guy who's a more efficient killing machine, he's also lower-essence (yay lack of healing!) and shows up on scanners more clearly than small cars. Bioware may be mildly non-human, but at least it's biological.

...basically this was in reference to combat ability out of the box. Yes essence is more of an issue but a totally cyber sammy can get more under the reduced chargen resource cap than a total bio based character due to the lower cost compared to bioware.

As I mentioned in another thread, the costs of Cyber were reduced pretty much across the board while the costs for bio remained the same, or in some cases, actually increased. Meanwhile, the starting maximum resource cap was cut by 75%. Taking this into account, the "relative" cost of bio at chargen increased by a factor of 3.

Now combining of both cyber and bio would be more efficent than just going the total bio route alone.

This is theoretically possible, but I rather doubt it, since Augmentation seems to imply that the current state of effective day-to-day survelliance invisibility is not going to be changed for bioware and geneware.

I quote from Augmentation, p. 56

This seems to imply that barring the truly exceptional, super-cutting-edge security system in rare locations like the apartments of a CEO, current state of the art does not allow for MAD-like environmental scanners that cops or security guards can use to detect bioware from a distance or at casual expection or in normal security systems, which is what shadowrunners would really have to worry about, and would seriously affect the balance between cyber and bio. If Joe Cop or Jane Corporate Guard wish to know whether a random person has bioware, they have to arrest them, bring them to a medical facility, and have them undergo an expensive, complex, and time-consuming array of medical tests. IMO, in all likelihood Arsenal may bring some kind of dedicated forensic bio/geneware scanners which may somewhat facilitate the examination of prisoners, but they will be stuff you can use on a person under custody, not something you can use for casual inspection at a checkpoint.

...this is part of the reason why I think they messed up giving Bone Lacing (which would be relatively easy to detect) an "F" legality and Bone Density (which slips "under the radar") only an "R" legality.

I have swapped the legality ratings between the two for my campaigns.

You do have to be the strongest, fastest, the best shot and the most heavily armored as well as smarter, sneakier and never give your opponents a stand up fight even if the odds are stacked heavily in your favor. And this includes your fixer and johnson.

How would they do that? It's just data sitting in storage, indistinguishable from any other data unless you have read access to it. And if random guards can read all our sensitive files I think you have bigger problems.

If by design, you mean there may be some residual areas where bioware is still definitely definitely suboptimal, I agree. There is at least one: senseware. I notice, though, that by SR4, the availability of unobtrusive and subtle contact lenses and ear buds with all the sensory ehnancement one might need, has greately diminished the appeal of senseware, at least for mundanes.

If it's a flavor thing, well YMMV, tastes and all that, but I strongly disagree. Cybernetics and chrome look so clumsy and crude, so fragile and outdated, in comparison to the holistic elegance and reliability of genetic augmentation. Really, compare Robocop with Dark Angel. Of course, there are exceptions, such as nanomorph robots a la Terminator 2 & 3, which look and feel as up-to-date as genetic supermen, but cyberlimbs, really. As sci-fi goes, one might as well drive a Model T.

I just had to smoke a Marlboro after reading that.

There's one thing chrome has that wetware doesn't; style. Sure, you could look like a mutated freak if you wanted to, but nothing says old school bad ass like chrome.

Now, as long as it doesn't really hold you back there's nothing much for it. I think eventually Nanocyberware and Cyberware have to be combined, even if they are considered the same thing Essence-wise. Give chrome back the edge.

Gimme a T1000 liquid metal arm and so on and so forth.

You know, I have a hard time envisioning a badass sammie waiting in line to be scanned. Why is he entering a high-sec area? Are they just spot-checking people?

Because real men don't fly passenger planes. They drive there themselves.

Yes, even across the ocean, damn it.

bah, what do you think the cyberfins and cybergills are for? driving is for wimps. a *real* samurai transports himself without the assistance of crutches like vehicles =P

That's great. So in your game, the hordes of wageslaves will take turns get their skillwires inspected - because that's what most average workers have.

At which point you go for adeptitude rather than biotech.

Pure adept is still sorely lacking in some areas (such as Attribute enhancement, even if a combination of multiple Attribute Boost and Berserk can patch it rather good for a while), you need to be mystic adept and cover some areas with enhancement spells, and you take some time to grow into your full power (adimittedly, this is also a problem for the all-bio sammie, unless the GM is slack with the Availability and budget restrictions), but yeah.

Until research cracks the secrets of the Mage factor, you still require Mother Nature to be generous with you and hand over the right gene package. If you lack that luck, biotech is the second-best way to go.

Quite many people. It makes shuffeling human resources so much easier for the corps.

So there's no smuggling at all? No greasing of the palms to hide that crazy-ass shadowrunner leaking oil most likely in the underbelly of a plane? Or the cargo hold?

The man does things illegally for a living. He breaks into facilities as his nightlife scene. And his only recourse is being frisked by some bored airport clerk?

Now, if you have a wannabe sammy visiting his mom "across the pond" as it were that'd be something else.

Where there's a will, there's a way. And when there's a way there's an underhanded way.

Ah, but that's a twink's argument. Style is meaningless in the face of min-maxing the rules. The cyber adept is going to be more effective than any flavor of pure street samurai, given time to earn the karma, simply because adepts get to add to the maximums non-adepts have: So, you have a skill of 6 in Pistols, specialized to Viper Sliverguns, which takes it to 8, and you're Exceptional in Pistols, so it's up to 9. You've also maxed out your Agility. That's great, but the Adept can do the exact same thing and add 4 dice of adept skills on top of that.

If all you're going to do is play the most effect characters, then there will be nothing but one or two basic templates for every role, and only minor variations on them. Personally, I like style and variety. Not everyone is going to be an adept, so you have a mundane person who wants to become a street sam. He takes whatever route he can afford to go down, be it nothing but the most effective, or with what will get him by. I'd much rather play with a group of people who can play unique individuals rather than rubber-stamp min-maxers. But that's my humble opinion. If you feel differently, then, by all means, play that way.

It depends what do you mean by efficiency. If we make a pure min-maxing effectiveness comparison, as it might be done IC by a military expert:

As a general rule, nuyen typically comes easier and cheaper than karma (at least, until some kind of money for karma rule is allowed back into SR4), and thanks to bio grades you can stuff much more bio than adept powers in an individual in the short term (even if a long-lived adept can probably accumulate more power enhancements than a bio sammie in the long run).

For this reason, when adept powers and bioware do the same thing, especially if it comes in grades, adept powers are inefficient in comparison to bioware. Typically, attribute enhancement (esp. fixed permanent ones, Attribute Boosts and Berserk are another matter), sense boosting, skill enhancement, armor, toxin defense, and initative boosting.

Adept powers shine when they do things bioware cannot duplicate (e.g. many face powers, and most of the barehanded close-combat enhancements), esp. if it takes only one power application, or if you go the mystic adept route and you can synergy with sustained/quickened spells to cover those areas where fixed adept powers are inefficient.

In sum, bioware is king if you wish to build the super-strong, super-fast, super-tough guy, and adept is king if you wish to build the "I smash everyone and everything with a karate chop" martial arts master (but if you wish him to have super-attributes as well, better use bio or spells, or a four Attribute Boosts at 1 plus Berserk combo), or the "I charm everyone" social master.

There are also areas where adepts powers and bioware are of comparable efficency: e.g. you can build the "thousand faces" shapeshifter equally well with spells, the False Face-Dynamc Chamaleon Skin-Chemical Gland bioware combo, or the Facial Sculpt-Melanin Control adept combo. Again, nuyen is much cheaper than karma, but the adept disguise lasts rather longer than the bioware disguise (Magic hours vs. 30 min per dose).

It must be acknowledged there are some minor areas, where cyber gives some advantages that bio (and adept) cannot (yet) duplicate, such as skillwires, senseware, spurs, and smartlinks. I notice however that many of those areas can be covered with gears, or sometimes equalled in effectiveness by some adept powers or bioware comboes. Although if maximum "I am thrown naked in a bare cell and I'm 100% efficiency" reliablity is sought, 'ware (or spells and adept powers), is the way to go, not gear. For the vast majority of state-of-the-art basic body enhancement, however, cybernetics is definitely obsolete (in addition to aesthetically distasteful), if price is not the overriding concern.

In the sum, although, it can be concluded that by post-SM, post-Aug SR4, adepts with a little bio, mystic adepts, and bio-sammie with a little cyber are roughly all on a comparable state-of-the-art power level and can equally well fit the role of the "I look normal but I'm superhuman badass" guy, which only reinforces my conviction that the days of the chrome cyberlimb sammie are definitely numbered. True elite/professional runners, mercs, freelance enforcers, and corporate/government operatives do not need to stuff themselves with visible chrome as an intimidation statement. That's what their Street Cred is for. Visible chrome only means you cannot afford anything better.