I just had an idea. You could purchase a limb at full price for standard. Maybe pay for the customized attributes in the limbs at full cost as well. But then you could stuff it full of used standard 'wares, which would half the price without impacting essense. Thoughts?

A crafty GM might hit you with compatibility issues because of the disparate age of the devices.

True, maybe force you to take a mod noise or other such flaw. However, how many GMs actually tally up everything on the character sheet? They just review for reasonableness. Might not even take notice.

Two qualities immediately spring to mind from Augmentation: Buggy 'Ware and High-Maintenance Implant. Buggy 'Ware specifically gives the implant(s) being "second hand and past their expiry date" as one possible explanation for the quality.

Also, klinktastic, beware of that kind of attitude: should the GM discover at a later date that you've been pulling the wool over his eyes, his wrath may be far greater than if you had been up-front about it. "Yeah, that arm full of used 'ware? It suffers multiple simultaneous short-circuits and catches on fire. How fast do you think cyberarms can be removed?"

That's a dangerous path to walk. "It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature!" *Boom*

'pull one over on the GM' is not a good tactic in general. Personally I absolutely despise the way they did used ware. It would have been so much better if they just made it a 5th grade of ware.

They kinda did, with 2nd hand 'ware.

So long as you don't allow used alphaware (in my games, alphaware adjusts permanently to its host after implantation and so can't be reused), used 'ware is essentially inverse alphaware. Re: the op, by raw limbs can only accept ware of their own grade. Barring a houserule, if you want used accessories you need a used limb.

No, they didn't. Second hand ware is a modification that can be applied to either standard or alpha grade ware. It is not a grade unto itself. This creates stupid things like used alpha costing the same as normal but giving a discount and being able to grab a standard cyberlimb and then stick used standard cyber into it for half price.

I don't know. I'd allow a 'juryrig' roll of logic+cybertechnology with the net hits giving the specific ware a juryrigged dicepool.

Everytime you use the ware in a stressful situation, you roll the juryrig pool, tn(1) If you get 0 successes the ware needs maintenance, if you glitch, the ware needs repair, if you crit glitch, the installed component is so damaged it needs to be replaced completely.

maintenance doesn't cost any money, except service cost if you can't do the juryrigging yourself.
repair costs 20% cost of the implant in parts.
replacement is obvious, you have to buy a whole new cybergun, or what have you.

For what it's worth, I and the people I play with treat it as a grade. Making buggy and high-maintenance 'ware modifications which reduce cost, similar to how used 'ware works by raw, might be a good houserule for the op to suggest to his gm.

Ah yes. I'd forgotten about used Alphaware.

Its only a 4% discount, with possible role-play disadvantages (quirks in the fuctioning, old files / visruses buried in the ware, people reacting negatively because you have used cyber). Hardly a game buster.

Plus, its not even a 4% discount if you interpret the rules the same way as they are supposedly done for stacking discounts in the errata. For example, bio-compatability plus alpha-ware is -30% (-20% plus -10%) to essence, not -28% (80% x 90%). By the same logic, used alphaware would be -0% (-20% plus +20%) to essence.

What would make sense is slapping a stiff availability limit on used cyber. Something like nothing above availability 8 or maybe 6 can be found used (at least not at character creation). Used alphaware should also be really rare (people don't upgrade alphaware as much), so availability x 1.5 normal would make sense.

I also treat it as a grade unto itself, I just find it annoying that the rules don't do so. I suppose they didn't want to break the tradition of there being only 4 grades.

Well, if you take cyber (regular or alpha grade) out of a corpse, you have used cyber. If used was its own grade, how would that work? Maybe all used cyber would have the same mods, regardless of original grade? Kinda makes sense that it wouldn't be alphaware for anybody but the original buyer, I guess. Could introduce its own problems. Those mainly involving alphaware cyber with capacity, and used alphaware cyber going in said capacity- a valid reason to have used alphaware, perhaps.

Yep. You have five grades:
Standard - made for general public, a couple last second modifications to make it fit a particular person
Alphaware - some effort made to fit the particular person
Betaware - Alot of effort made to fit the particular person
Deltaware - Litterally made for the person.
Used - Ware that was fitted to someone else (even to the degree of standard ware) unless they happen to be your twin/clone.

Treating second-hand as a "Grade -1" would work nicely. That way you can't put 2nd hand ware in a new limb, which makes sense and is balanced.

By the way, I've thought about using the rules for 2nd hand to also represent outdated but not necessarily used ware. Seems fine to me; it costs less nuyen and more Essence.

If you treat 2nd hand as its own grade, you also get rid of the Alpha2 exploit.

Simple and fair.