How do you work sleep regulator as it relates to extended tests for work done in day, week and month intervals.

I initally ruled a day for interval purposes as 8 hours of work, but didn't get into what a week or month was as far a man hours. If you worked 16 hours a day could you get 2 roles and add sleep regulator on top of that for feasably a 20 hour day...you can see where the system starts to fall apart a little. Assuming a character worked non stop on a program which has a month interval or a hardware chip that has a 6 month interval you could easily cut those times by half or more.

Yes, this is what the sleep regulator does. This is what it was meant to do.
But you still need to cook and eat and drink and poop and so on . .

Aye... and you can still overwork yourself.

I myself let people work double the time normally, but not for more than one or two weeks. After that the rushing rules should at least apply (or whatever i am in the mood for as gm *g*). With Sleep Regulator, i give tham double working capability in downtime without any questions asked.

AIs should get three 8-hour work intervals for programming...
so yes, sleep regulator and sustenance should make you capable of working two shifts a day.

Our group decided that you could work 12h per day if you really wish to make all the calculations in man-hours. We never had any trouble.

why only 12?
hell, I do 12 hour shifts from time to time . .
and i certainly(sadly) do not have such a device . .

Well maybe you do, Stahl.

Edit: I routinely do 30 hour shifts every third night.

Yes, yes i do . .
and i need to sleep . .
hell, i need to sleep MORE than most people i know <.<

That sounds like a good way to handle it.

What i have always wondered is how to handle combinations of various means to stay awake.
Would a Sleep Regulator, the Sustenance adept power and Long Haul stack, and if so, in which way?

well, first you double the time you can stay awake. from the sleep regulator.
then you double THAT time from the sustenance power i think.
and then you add in what long haul allows you to do.
and then you crash.
basically, you can work for 3 weeks straight and then you are out of comission for the rest of the month.

When you look at extended tests, all of them right up until you get to the 1 day one people think of as being you are working on the problem the entire time. So other than our mindset being set to our regular 8 hour work day, why should this change? If the test says 1 day, or 1 week then use it as 24 hours and 168 hours of work to be done. Then the character/player can break this time down however they want.
The problem I see arrises when you say 1 month, 3 months or 6 months. How long exactly is a month, there are 4 possible answers to that, depending on which months you use, and if it's a leap year or not.
I think it's better to change month into weeks, and say 4 weeks, 12 weeks, and 24 weeks. Then you can easily convert that into hours and let the character/player decide how to divide that time up.
Having a sleep regulator would then be easy, the character gets to stay awake longer and therefore gets to spend more time working on whatever it is he or she is working on.

At our table we have been discussing this issue and have created the following House Rule:

<begin house rule>
Extended Test Intervals:
1 Day = 8 hours
1 Week = 40 hours (5 days)
1 Month = 160 hours (4 weeks)
3 Months = 480 hours

No character can use one skill more than 10 + (lower of Willpower or Intuition) hours in a day. This time includes but is not limited to learning (for increasing the skill) and using the skill for an extended test. If the character wishes to press past this time the player rolls a Willpower + Intuition Test and adds the hits to the number of hours the character can use the skill, however when doing this treat that interval as “Rushing the Job” (see SR4 p 59) for determining glitches. A player can not use the “Rushing the Job” option to halve the interval as this house rule already allows for the interval to be shorter.

If the character pushes past their usage limit even one time during the interval, the entire interval is “rushed” for glitch purposes. Use the standard glitch results for the test in question.

If training with an instructor for more than 40 hours in a week, you can count on the instructor wanting overtime.

For Intervals of a week or more, a character must put in at least 20 - (Intuition + Willpower) hours per week or the test aborts.
<end house rule>

So far seems to work, but we are still play-testing it.

-D

Edited to make the rules section more clear.

Basically you pick the 4 extra hours of awakening state and apply it to work.
Of coursem if you wish to increase the time you want to spend working (like 16 hours) then the GM would require willpower + body rolls to keep pushing.

We really don't know how long the intervals refer to. Are you doing nothing else at all, or is it just part of your normal day? It might be easier to just use hours for everything, and let the player explain how many hours they're giving.

If you dont want to convert to workhours, you could also just aply the percentage of waking time. If you asume that during the extra waking time, the pc works /rests at the same ratio as during normal working time, then you will have 25% more work time. Thus you can reduce interval times by 20% (is my math correct there?). Then if the character wants to push it, by spending more time every day, then you use the rush job rules (making it a mix of doing things faster/slopier and working more hours a day). I think that is both logical and in the spirit of the rules.

If you want to convert to working hours, you may want to considder a 60 work-hour week, as 10h/6d seems to be more in line with the fluff of shadowrun...

I thought the sleep regulator was that thing you had for when you needed to share quarters with other runners. Stay awake so they don't stab you in the back or stay awake so you can stab them in the back.

Most of the NPCs I have that have Sleep Regulators got them to help with Stake-Outs. My Accountant From Hell got his so he could work longer hours as a Wageslave, and so that he could have complete control over his sleeping patterns.

Which are also useful as a Shadowrunner, come to mind.

Typically, I have these characters be exceptionally well-read, as they use their "Extra" downtime to educate themselves. Murphy, my "Typically Dumb Muscle Trog" character that gets mentioned a few times, is better read than his University trained Mr. Johnson chummer.

I love that bioware intro fiction in Augmentation (or was it a piece from the 3rd Ed Sprawl Survival Guide?), with the wageslave, who get´s a Sleepregulator, so he can play his Sim-MMORPG 8 hours a day, after his 10 h work day

Neither. SR4 BBB gear intro. He's playing the Shadowrun MMORPG, BTW.

I realy hope that one was not done by Microdeck - otherwise I don´t see anyone getting a Sleepregulator over it