Honestly, I typically hear the opposite: 'no one bothers with hot sim'. The exceptions is, yes, when you *really* need that extra IP. Otherwise, why risk the Black IC? The +2 is usually not decisive, but also handy when you seriously need it. It *is* a desperate measure, or the purview of slightly crazy risk-taking hackers. And, in SR4, those not particularly inclined toward cost-benefit analysis.

Still, I'd definitely use that rule as written: "if the gamemaster feels a character is using hot sim too much". Everything nifty is bad for you in SR. That's the whole point.

I dig that, Epicedion. The GM was reaching in and teaching a newbie (honestly, not a 'hacker') a lesson. It's a lesson about not getting your admin account hacked, though. It's not really a lesson about what agents can reasonably do.

Cost benefit analysis eh? Well, you are effectively doubling your passes, since the simsense accelerator works on hot sim but not cold, and the booster works for both. All in all, it's 3 pass max in cold sim, 5 pass max in hot sim, and some nifty bonuses such as the +2 you already mentioned.

The game designers hate(d) cyberware, anything tech related that has the least bit of an upshot has some drawbacks tacked on. Cyberware makes you harder to perform first aid on, move by wire gives/gave you seizures, cyberlimbs use wierd caps based on racial statistics. There is no better, faster, stronger in shadowrun...unless you use magic.

I'm better now, but put simply no i don't in fact I want to make hot sim and DNI better, because as others have said, AR hacking is entirely too easy.

I have my technomancer make an addiction check if she is using hot-sim to run data searches and the like. Things that take hours. If she's just using it for the run, a few minutes in hot sim, I say that's not a test.
The reasoning is that if you're getting that +2 to minor Matrix Tests, you should have to pay for it.

AR hacking is one of the few Shadowrun rules I consider truly broken. I've mentioned before that I hate the term "broken" because it is often used as a synonym for "rule I don't like", but I feel that the ability to hack without fear of IC breaks the Sixth World. It kills that cool Gibson-esque danger of the internet being so fast it needs to be interpreted by metaphor and replaces it with typing faster. It means the Matrix isn't deadly, which means that hacking no longer has any jepordy. Storytelling wise, there is no longer anything at stake.
I don't think an extra IP or a meager +2 fixes this problem, either. If there were a piece of cyberware that made a street sammy lose 2 dice and an IP, but made him unkillable, we'd be all over that.

This is one rule I just can't follow. The Matrix in 2070 should be so fast you need that ASIST to be able to navigate it with any deftness, computing things hundreds of times faster than the human brain can make a decision. It's why we needed all that VR in the first place.
I like AR. It's a very cool addition to the game. I love the new hacking rules, because the decker should always die. But hacking in AR? It's just not Shadowrun.

I'll look into that, but I still feel that 5 IP max is nothing to laugh about. Not to mention sugarfooting doesn't seem to get much done.

Errr technomancers can't not hot sim, that's like making someone do an addiction check on air.

Not if they're using their bionode, yeah. They've gotta be immune.

longbowrocks, it *is* nice to have that extra +1 or +2 IP. It's just not vital most of the time, and … shouldn't there be a tradeoff for such a big bonus?