Are there any rules in SR4 for reducing interval times? (and let me preface by saying I am not an expert with SR4 rules... so cut me some slack please)

Teamwork just seems to add dice to the main person's pool from a helper.
- Auto Mechanic and Assistant... assistant rolls 2 hits and gives 2 dice to Mechanic for his roll to supercharge a car.

Scenario 1:
A classic car has been disassembled and smuggled across the border.
Ten mechanics are waiting in a garage to reassemble it.
Reassembling a car is given a Threshold 10, 1 Week interval.
By the teamwork rule as written each mechanic would roll and add successes to one main person... still taking the full week and having a really crappy return on investment for hiring 10 mechanics.

Multiple initiative passes seem to be completely ignored as well...
-Hacker A and B have the same Skill+Attribute.
-Hacker A is programming AR and has 1 Pass...
-Hacker B is programming in Hot Sim VR with a Simsense Booster and a Sleep Regulator with 4 Passes...
-After a 1 week interval test they both just roll 1 dice pool

Am I missing something?
In Scenerio 1 why can't you "buy down" the interval with extra skilled help? (pay money / more people to reduce interval rolls)
In scenario 2 why do no factors ever apply to how long the interval tests are? (Risk some VR addiction/burnout... cut some time?)

Rushing the Job, p.65, SR4A.

Cool, thanks!

While it still seems a bit flaky for time not to be cut by adding more people... at least there is something.

Glitching on 1's and 2's is pretty rough.

More people = Teamwork tests = more dice = achieve the necessary number of hits in one test instead of three. It's a different way of going about it, is all. You can add more people and rush the job if you really want to.

"Bribe the GM with food; Go up a level."

Well yea.. food for the GM is always a good one... or the common sense approach that spreading the task among multiple people can make it take less time

It is an easy thing to add common sense via a house rule...

I was just more curious if rules existed out there that already covered the topic.

Looks like at least they made some small attempt to address it with the rushing rules in the upcoming S4A which is nice.

Please don't make me dig up the cite, but I KNOW the same thing was in SR4 somewhere before the Anniversary edition.

if there is no rush, like downtime, when the group combines their skills they can just buy the successes
just figure out the time interval, hardest part for me, and apply the successes

saves time on lots lots lots of dice rolling

team has 24 dice for a job, which takes 8 hour intervals needing 12 successes total
instead of rolling, its easier to just figure at 6 hits at 8 hours, the job will be done in 16 hours

OK found the bit on rushing the job from regular SR4... thanks for that

One thing I don't see (and again excuse me for some of the n00b questions) is what else can you be doing during an interval where you are working on something?

So two people are trying to perform similar tasks...

A) has 1 Initiative pass and nothing else special
B) Has 3 Initiative passes and a sleep regulator.

During an interval of 1 Combat turn player A must obviously dedicate the full combat turn to the action... and player B...
Spends 1 pass on the action and can spend 2 passes doing other things? or Spends all 3 passes to do the same thing player A did in 1 pass?

During an interval of 1 Week what happens? Obviously you don't need to spend 24/7 on the extended test right?
Is player B able to work on 2 separate extended tests or more during the same time as player A due to the sleep regular and /or additional init passes that player A doesn't have over a 1 week period?

I usually rule that tests that take over a day require roughly eight hours of uninterrupted work a day to complete. It depends on the situation whether or not you can do other major things in your down time(like running).

As far as I know, extra initiative passes do not affect extended tests. Most tests require more detail work then you can perform at such speeds, and leaving your wired on that long can really screw you up.