My understanding of MBW is that it makes you move with maximum efficiency. Smooth movements etc. But by my reckoning that would only slighly increase your speed. "It's just a game" aside, how would that justify the speed bonuses? Unless the seizing it induces triggers all your motor neurons and kind of gives you a permenantly adrenalized "hysterical" speed? I dunno. Can anybody comment?

It certainly also includes a nervous system supercharge akin to wired reflexes.

Bye
Thanee

The thing to remeber with any Initiative enhancers is that they dont really INCREASE your PHYSICAL speed.

What it does is to make your reaction time and Brain-to-muscle movement fractions faster making the movements more economical as they take less time sending data back and forth between muscles and brain.

To the enemy you seem to react with incredible speed but in your eyes everyone else seems to move in slow motion since your brain is processing data at increased speed.

You basically activate your own personal bullet time.

I think it's a lot like power steering; only a small mental nudge makes a lot of physical movement. Of course, this can be nasty if you're not entirely sound of mind. One twitch and you decapitate your daughter sneaking up on you with a birthday cake.

Yeah, I don't like MBW. I appreciate the power, but it's a horrible thing to do to yourself.

Yes but MBW does increase quickness, which is a physical speed amplification.

Quickness?

I see we are not talking SR4 here.

Bye
Thanee

LOL whoops. Old book.

Have you ever had really violent spasms in your muscles or seen somebody who has? I was on some medication for a while that did this to me regularly, so its why I think of it.* The muscles just contract explosively, and an arm can go flying faster than it could ever consciously be commanded to. It goes faster because it's not being coordinated at all. Some muscles just suddenly contract as fast as they physically can with no regard for the other muscles or tendons they're linked to. It's erratic and can be very painful and even damaging. Move-by-wire makes all your muscles want to do this all the time, but provides the control over those muscles and coordinates the nearby muscles quickly enough to make it not erratic and just barely not damaging.

*As an aside, this medication also gave me the sensation that my muscles were about to rip out of my body and go for a walk on their own. Low-grade move-by-wire could have the same effect.

Old move-by-wire was indeed nasty tech. I don't think I ever used it in a PC.

It was nasty tech, that was the exact reason you'd want to give it to a PC... a very good reason to 'run (I want to remove this piece of tech, but it costs a lot!)

Now, the technology may have improved but it still is a fluff issue -I think- to describe the effects the wirings give to characters. Not only MBW, wired reflexes too. In SR2 or 3, tehre was the reflex trigger for wired reflexes. Itw as an interesting piece of 'ware because it differentiated an adept's reflexes and a sammie's -also see the story in SR2 "Plus ca change..." where the sammie describes how an adept moves elegantly with his imrpoved speed and the sammie moved like a robot due to the wirings.-

I think I no longer know where I am going with this, but enjoy teh 'ware and describe it differently, it makes for more intersting games.

When it first came out (Cybertechnology SR2), Hatchetman says taht it basically makes you spasm in all directions and provides error checking to keep you from moving until you actually want to move. "Constant state of seizure" is how its described.

Yeah, it's pretty gruesome. The kind of thing to install if taking vengeance against impossible odds matters more than having a life expectancy over 6 months.

In previous editions you had to make a body roll every couple of months to see if you develop brain damage and have to have it corrected by removing the damage brain tissue. But then again, if you could afford it, it was the only way to get a 7D6 initiative. (The roughly the same as having 5+ passes in 4th ed.)

The nice thing is in 4th all cyber is wireless so you can mentally turn it on or off. Sure, you might get caught with your pants down occasionally but that's a lot better than living with MBW as it's described in the fluff.

I think that if you 'turn off' Move-By-Wire you will start moving your muscles in all directions and spasming without control.
MBW works exactly like those installed in SOTA airplanes.

Your body naturally imposes limitations on how you can use your muscles, that's why people can be blown across rooms by touching something like a powerpoint or capacitor. They actually throw themselves. Same principle, I suppose.

The fluff of MBW systems doesn't even describe what actual fly-by-wire system do, fly-by-wire simply means that the pilot's control send control signals to actuators at the control surfaces, instead of having a direct mechanic connection between the stick and the rudders...I guess one of the authors back then picked up one of the more consistent rumors about the then brand-new F-117.

So don't interpret too much intro the technobabble and just remember the long and short of it: MBW makes you faster than anyone else, but the guy with the large harvesting tool will come just as fast

More accurately it was decribed as akin to unstable plane design - which can only be held steady with a computer-assisted fly-by-wire. The simili-seizure state providing the instability and the wounteracting action of the move by wire provding the equivalent of the fly by wire.

If you want to nitpick (why would you not, it's the Internet !), you can have fly-by-wire without instability, but you cannot have a really aerodynamically unstable plane without fly-by-wire, the computers adjusting the control surfaces fast enough to keep it steady.

It's very important to utterly deny your request to set aside the one and only explanation: it *is* just a game. MBW doesn't and can't make any sense.

Well what I got from this thread is that my original hypothesis was correct and the MBW keeping you in a constantly controlled state of seisure actually gave you a type of permanently "adrenalized" speed. Thanks chummers.

QFT.

I suspect it also does something to the inhibitors in your brain that keep you from tearing yourself apart. Maybe they reinforce your joints and tendons when they install the MbW?

Move-by-wire, while still cutting-edge technology, has been around longer in SR4, and has changed a lot. In SR3, it gave insane advantages, but also had so many disadvantages that most people would stay away from it - it was generally something you would be likelier to see in cyberzombies.

In SR4, the advantages are less (although still very substantial), and the disadvantages are also correspondingly less - a higher likelihood of eventually developing neural disorders, and even that is mostly fluff. In other words, it isn't the quick way to commit suicide that it used to be. Users are described as moving with an unnatural smoothness, but often have small muscle tremors when they are at rest.

0 to tetanus in an instant. That's what MBW is about.

How can this be accomplished electronically while still using biological muscles? Can't.
The way muscles work, the fibers are contracted with a series of motions, like a team pulling on a rope, so even just flooding the muscles with Ach or whatever neurotransmitter won't do it.

Conclusion - pure Phlebotinum

I think you got that backwards friend, a series of motions are caused by fibres contracting, not the other way round.

Yeah, but MBW still is just a series of buzzwords that makes no sense.

It finally makes sense to me now, electro muscle stimulation for hysterical speed that's almost perfectly controlled by computers to have no wasted movement.

Well, honestly, if you have that opinion, then almost all cyberware, geneware, bioware, and Nanoware are pure BS...
Really, it is a Genre specific theme, and you should just roll with it...

Why do we still try to explain 2070's tech in terms of 1980's tech knowledge? It is just a game, and it represents a time farther ahead than the whole duration of the computer revolution. (OK, maybe not going as far back as BRANIAC, but you know what I mean.) We cannot possibly predict what tech will be like then, based on current technology. The game gives us similes. That's all we can get.

Well put.

It's revolutionary, robust and seamlessly integrated into your nervous system, providing a world-class intuitively powerful solution to optimizing movement.

SOLD!... wait how much am i paying?

Gonna g-g-g-g-get th-th-th-those basta'd-d-d-d-ds

Betweem 2/6ths and 5/6ths of what some people call your soul... *ominous music plays* Also vast amounts of money of course. You don't buy anything for just a soul anymore these days.

"But really, when was the last time you actually used your soul?"

Yes, souls are overrated these days. I mean, just thos fancy wizards and adepts with their mumbo jumbo worry about it. Heck, you could even SELL part of your soul to some vampire.

If your soul isn't put to work, garnering interest, then you're just not doing it right.

I'm talking on a cellular level...
It relies on ATP and basic chemical pump actions. Electronics won't ever make cellular chemistry work better than it does.

Hmmm...if there's interest rates on souls, does that mean inflation exists, too? And is cybermancy a bailout for people with unfortunate soul flow problems?

There are some unusual financial-spiritual options in the HMHVV brochure, but generally souls are a more stable currency than nuyen.

Sure, but the regional soul market is heavily saturated and might even see a negative yield curve in the future. Investors looking to diversify their portifolio might however be interested in our new "Lost Souls on the Moon" fonds...

Much wisdom is in these words. We are having discussions about hypothetical tech in a game and comparing it to now. Huh? This game also has Trolls who cast magic spells.

Seriously, quit trying to find realism in my game! It is Sci-Fi, not a prophecy of the future of technology!