For some reason it is deep in my brain that tacnets require 4^(rating) sensors to add their bonus.

So + 1 needs 4 sensors linked
+2 need 16
+3 64
+4 256.

Anytime the sensor minimum isn't met, the net is degraded to next level down, even if it is higher software.

I can not find the relevant info in unwired. Am I on target or remembering an old house rule?

Sounds like an old house rule. RAW is something like 2*Rating sensor channels per participant, and the worst participant drags the tacnet rating down to his level.

Indeed, RAW is 2x rating sensor channels and at least 2+rating participants to get the full bonus. Drones only contribute as many sensors channels as their sensor rating.

Actually, the worst participant either:

a) can't join at all
or
b) makes the entire system shut off for everybody

Why do you say that? At worst, the Tacnet operates at the lowest of the Participants. If you have 5 people with a Tacnet Rating 3 operating, and a character who can only support a Tacnet 2 links up, the system only provides bonuses at Rating 2 from that point. Why wouild it shut down, and why would it not allow the lower rated guy to link in? Now, the other particiapnts on the Tacnet may not let him link in, but that is a different thing altogether.

Because the rules say so. It says that a person cannot join the tacnet if he can't provide enough sensor channels.

This results in scenario A.

Scenario B is an extension where the rules make no indication that it operates at a "lower level" if not enough sensor channels are supplied and thus cannot function at all without enough channels from all participants.

So, you set it at Rating 2... Done... You can have 50 guys all at rating 2 in the same net.
I agree that it would not work as Rating 2 for one guy and Rating 3 for another, but you can run software at lower ratings than it has. It is in the rules.

Unless of course you decide to upgrade the drones sensor package. This can get quite fun....

BTW-as I understand it a Drone counts as a participant and can recieve tacnet bonuses..

Yes a drone can count as a participant and receive bonuses. However the rules for tacnets specifically say that drones can only contribute as many channels as their sensor rating. So even tricking out your drone with the best sensors you can the best they can do is a rating 3 tacnet since you need 2 * (tacnet rating) worth of channels.

IIRC, they don't 'specifically' say that. They say that drone *can* contribute channels=Sensor. AFAIK, this is merely another shorthand (just as Sensor itself is), so there's no reason drones can't contribute individual channels the same way a person does.

And this is how we do it. Not that it matters much anyways, we have yet to actually use a Rating 4 Tacnet in game.

Unwired page 125.

"Sensor Systems: Data acquired from worn, carried,
or mounted sensor systems of various types (cameras, microphones,
range finders, motion sensors, etc.) may also be
contributed to the network as a sensor channel. Drones sensor
systems also count; each drone can supply a number of sensor
channels equal to its Sensor rating."

Seems pretty straight forward to me.

Miri, the problem with that is that once you meddle with the sensor package there is no longer an overall rating. The overall rating is a shorthanded sensor rating, and that is the number you use if you don't modify the sensors.

So do you go with the rating 6 camera or the rating 4 ultra-wideband radar.
Also note that thermo, lowlight, regular vision, shotgun mike and so forth count as seperate channels.

There is a nice big paragraph in 4A, page 334 to determine what the rating of the sensor suite is if you have different rated sensor modules. In the case of your above example of a rating 6 camera and rating 4 radar, the overall package would be a rating 5 suite.

As far as the thermo, lowlight, regular vision, shotgun mike counting as separate channels, that is all fine and dandy.. but the drone still can't contribute more channels then its overall sensor rating. A drone can only contribute between 1 and 6 channels because there are no sensor modules that go over rating 6 to bring the average up.

The problem is that the rating is higher with one rating 6 sensor rather than a rating 6 plus a rating 4 or less sensor. So if you shut down/remove the rating 4 sensor the sensor rating goes up? This to me makes no sense from a logic stand point. Note, you're right by RAW from what you have quoted-but I've kinda given up on that rule cause it seems to be one of those instances where a serious errata/rules rewrite is needed.

If you are using a stock Doberman, it has a sensor rating 3 and can only contribute 3 channels, enough to take part in a Tacnet rating 1.

If you decide to trick out your Doberman with a rating 6 camera, a motion sensor and a rating 4 ultrawideband radar then your sensor rating for all that is 5 (the motion sensor doesn't have a rating and is thus not used in the calculation) and can participate in a rating 2 tacnet. Turn off the wideband radar and it will go up to a 6 allowing you to participate in a rating 3 tacnet.

Once you start defining with detail what is in the senor module you have to keep its specifics in mind and recalculate what is going on on the fly. If you just say, its a stock rating 3 sensor thats the end of it there, if you upgrade it to a stock rating 6 sensor then thats it. Once you start defining what is in the sensor you have to start keeping track of what is turned on or off and or is working in that environment.

If you are using a drone for a tacnet buddy then you are well served getting a single rating 6 camera with 6 vision options (plus the standard vision and generic microphone). That gives you a rating 6 sensor and you pick the 6 input channels that it will dedicate to your rating 3 or less tacnet.

This.
Makes.
No.
Logical.
Sense.

The explain why it doesn't make logical sense, cause it makes perfect sense to me.

Yes, the Sensor rules are busted, and because TacNets rely on them, so are the TacNet rules.

I've used a house rule whereby the TacNet worked a bit differently. To participate, you needed a camera, smartlink and gps, so the net could create a composite picture of the battlefield. Then, against any target, everyone used the best (= lowest penalty) visibility that any member of the TacNet enjoyed. And of course it tracked ammo and medical condition.

By REMOVING a sensor channel the tacnet gets BETTER?

The radar doesn't provide as much detail as the camera does, it is afterall a lower rated module. Since you have to take the average if more then one sensor is running the radar drags it down. Find yourself a Rating 5 or 6 radar (since you round up) and your good to go with a rating 6 overall sensor suite.

That doesn't matter.

Information is removed from the tacnet. This is not how you upgrade it logically.

So.

If I have a computer with 1 stick of RAM (4GB).
And I add a second stick (2GB).
It's "the same" as if I replaced that 4GB stick with a 3GB stick?

You know what.. never mind. Figuring out how a drones sensors contribute to a tacnet seems very straightforward to me. If you have problems with it.. just don't put anything other then a rating 2, 4, or 6 module into the drone so it can contribute to a rating 1, 2, or 3 tacnet without issue.

Just because the rules are clear doesn't mean they makes sense.

That's all.

That's not a great analogy as storage memory is arithmetically cumulative whilst the effectiveness of different sensors in unison are not.

The way the sensor rules are designed is that the overall effectiveness is the average rating, but whilst a sensor array consisting of only a rating 6 camera is reduced to 5 by a rating 4 motion detector, the utility of the array is much improved by no longer being purely visual. Whenever you are only using the camera for your sensing needs you use the full 6. So that's all well and good.

I speculate that the tacnet rules are trying to imply that the sensor rating is relevant to the number of channels that can be offered because a minimum level of sophistication is required by each channel to compliment the others in such a way as to form a useful member of the net. So the rating 4 sensor brings down the capacity for interplay within the channels the array offers. That's the only way I can think of to make sense of it.

What I think is not included in the rules (presumably for simplicity) is the ability to ignore sensors that can't pull their weight. If that rating 6 camera can offer the full 6 channels by itself then that should be all fine regardless of whatever else is available. It comes down to whether one can pick and choose the sensor rating according to the various sensor combinations available. You can do so outside of a tacnet, so if RAW forbids it within a tacnet then that's the bit that needs overturning.

I really don't think they had any specific idea in mind there. The Sensor rules are unintuitive and it probably confused the writers too. And then SR4A adds camera options.

I'll agree with this conceptually, but just because the "average sensor rating" is used when "generic sensor" needs to be rolled, doesn't mean that that's the BEST it can do.



This, on the other hand, is technical gibberish. Lampshadium, if you will.

For example I have a Really Fancy Camera on my drone, but it only points forward and gives me a 60 degree field of view (your average RL not-a-phone camera has a FOV of about 60). We'll call it rating 6. It's also the only "sensor" this drone has, so its average sensor rating is 6 (great for my tacnet 3!).

But I want more, I want a rear-view camera for when I'm backing that drone up and the one I have isn't on a swivel mount. I don't use this camera much, so I don't need it to be very high res (it's going to be taking up a tiny corner of my screen anyway). It's got a wider FOV, about 90 degrees, so things look kinda flat, so it's only rating 4, but hey, I've got a wider area of vision covered by my drone's sensors.

Wait a sec, my tacnet rating decreased? The additional input and wider field of view (that is, a total of 150 degrees around covered) meant my tacnet couldn't function as well!?

Simply put:
There no reason, ever that "less information is better" for tacnets. The detail might be grainy, but if its the only data available on that channel, it's always better than nothing.

If you know that rear facing camera is less quality and you are not going to be using it all that often, and your tacnet channels are already filled via the front facing camera, why would you put that rear facing camera into the tacnet stream to begin with?

I'll concede that my post was not a lot more than off-the-top-of-my-head supposition, but you have ignored what it was saying. IF you are including that rating 4 sensor in the sensor channels you are providing to the tacnet (either by choice or compulsion by RAW or GM) then my angle was that the rating 4 sensor is not sophisticated enough to work in conjunction with as many as 5 other channels to the degree required by a tacsoft.

As I thought I made clear, it's not an issue of quantity of information but the ability for the sensor channels to work together in forming a detailed account of the drone's environment for the tacsoft to draw accurate and beneficial conclusions.

That's not gibberish or logically unsound, but it is not a strongly substantiated interpretation of the RAW implications so I won't be nailing my colours to this particular mast.

Simple solution, only the highest rated sensor is looked at when determing what the tacnet gets from the drone.

Our HOUSE RULE is simpler:

Standard drones can not count towards TACNET. A standard drone can contribute sensor channels equal to its sensor rating to an individual’s sensor channel input to the TACNET by being subscribed to that person’s PAN. Bio-Drones however can contribute to TACNET as with proper augmentation they can be treated as trained meta-humans. Bio-drones are treated as meta-humans for the purposes of TACNET so their augmentations and senses provide the sensor inputs.

This house rule makes it so that not every person with combat experience is running around with TACNET 3 or 4 for the cost of a few thousand nuyen. It helps to slow the power creep that happens oh so quickly in MagicRun.

Remember the is a total house rule so YMMV.

-D

To be honest, it isn't that hard to get the 8 channels needed for a rating 4 tacnet. A good set of cyber eyes, some ear buds, bio-monitor. *shrug*

Bio-monitor...?

It counts for some reason. :\

Sure it does. It measures the wound levels of your allies, and calculates how much it will hinder them, which is relevant to your cooperation in battle.

So which tests would you consider it relevant to exactly...?

A lot of the +X from TacNet is because the participants can coordinate angles of fire and such. So it matters to know what kind of performance you can expect from the other teammembers.

I've always run it as simply count all sensor channels all the time. It is not worth the book keeping effort for determining that extra die or not applies to a specific situation.

The sensible solution seems to be to use the sensor rating for stock drones but if you choose to modify the sensors on the drone, you need to determine exactly what sensors it has - each sensor supplies one data channel, the ratings are irrelevant.

Standard sensor packages are detailed on page 105, Arsenal



As with everything else, the default device rating for each sensor should be 3. Whether camera upgrades take up sensor package slots is not specified - GM decision.

Lots of good houserule ideas here. I think in the future I'll just run Tacnets as a "Friends in Firefight" bonus of +1 to +4, similar to the "Friends in Melee" bonus. I'm going to require smartguns to participate in the FiF bonus, as per Ascalaphus' houserule, and have anyone with reasonable line of sight on the target contribute (e.g., not if you're hiding behind a wall or shooting in the opposite direction). I'll ignore the sensor rating requirement for the more expensive tacnets and just make it a team aiming thing up to the level of the TacNet, that seems like more fun. I really like Ascalaphus' idea of using it as a tactical command channel, kind of like the APC from Aliens - if you're kitted out properly, you automatically know the location, condition, and status of your allies and any enemies they have locked on to - otherwise, you need to actually spend Free Actions communicating.