Wild Card Nano Prototype is one of the hardest to justify qualities from a cos reward standpoint. It's useful but to uterlise it to it's fullest you need to sink even more BP in to reprogramming skills and a nano hive. So I ask you what can we do RAW and what can we do with tweaks to make it worth 30BP.
The important limitations:

Now if the limit to programing hard lets you mimic soft nanites, on-demand Neural Amplifiers makes them quite worth while letting you gain knowledge and launguage skills cheap. Aswell as +3 to logic or int skills.

Other uses are tailored healing picking the right rating three for the moment not fast enough for in combat but could help keep recovery times down a nice perk but not worth 30 bp at all.

Nantidotes again become very powerful if you know what you'll be up against or can program well enough on the fly this could make them worth 30bp if played right. Though that will be the hard part. Nanite hunters are again another set of handy defense if needed.

Last but not least is the ability to hide your dirty internal tricks as something more legal and inccouius such as a nano tattoo.

The main issue is that rating 9 universal-nanidotes can be reprogrammed to do ALOT of the above and at a higher rating if slower and with more difficulty tough not all and that's something.

Now if we let you form external systems, if you have means of delivering and retrieving the nanites, such as say a cybergland, we can have a lot more options, with task-able nanites at hand, one thing I've been thinking of is programmable mapping of objects at the nano level, then using that data in conjunction with a second reprogramming to "clean" guns remove marks from barrels perhaps even fake prints or remove them, while both would be to slow for in field use this could be come handy especially if you are found of your fancy modded side arm, the ability to "freely" change barrels or make a barrel of a stock gun match that of another is something I'm sure many runners can come up with a use for.

The important part of letting external systems exist, is that you need to recollect the nanites after the job is done, or lose them at least until the nano hive can rebuild them from rating zero if the GM is feeling kind making the use of the more weaponised nanites a sacrifice that might not be recoverable.

So I ask you? Do any of you use them, if so how and if not what would make you consider it on compatible characters?

P.s Yeah I'm back from my year and a bit hiatus from SR just acquired all the pdfs I'm missing, what a way to "waste" a windfall

I'm still looking for a Damn Good Reason for a mage to have a nanohive inplanted. The essence cost isn't worth it to get a 'hive, due to the total lack of any good nanite systems to have while awakened.
(You get two concurrent nanite swarms for 1 essence,* or do you get three?)

*Before reductions.

@Draco18s
Well, mages are among the characters getting a lot out of a nanohive. Just build it into one foot or an lower arm. (I suggest the lower arm, this way you can tell different storys about how you lost the arm)

But I've never had a need for a cyberlimb of any kind.

Seems like you avoid such concepts like the Plague, then.

I'm glad to see a topic about this. I've plowed through the nano tech, and never seen anything I'd consider worth the 30BP for qualities, much less the essence lost to an adept.

Though you're likely aware, I would point out that as Magician/Mystic Adept is a positive quality, 30bp for a Wild Card leaves you without enough points in RAW

I was speaking to nanites in general, not necessarily mage/adept AND this quality.

My point was: I've never seen a nanite system that was worth losing 1 magic over.

my point was to agree with that. Though I've seen no nanites I've seen worth 30BP regardless.

this quality wins in the aspect of versatility. Therefore your character concept needs to focus on versatility, a jack-of-all-trades kinda build. usually these builds focus on high edge and a broad skill set.
as the OP pointed out, neural amplifiers come in handy some times, but you don't actually need them 24/7.

I'm looking at an Adept with Demara build.
0.75 Ess for the hive and 0.5 Ess for some bio.
he can prepare for really any run a GM can think of. Need to shadow someone tomorrow?
"Well, I'll watch some detective trids of how to do that and then program my nanites for a skill 1 and +3 bonus"
"Here's our escape plan: this boat may be a wreck, but I'll just watch some how-to-repair-a-boat videos and program my nanites. That'll do"
With Linguistics he can learn languages super-fast.
Disguise-Nanites should be possible, too, right?

So a mixture of social/infiltrator/techie seems an idea to work on.

We can rebuild him, we can make him better, we can make the most interesting man in the world.

I don't always reprogram my nanite hive, but when I do I choose wild-card... Stay techie my friends.

Damn you, Jeremiah Kraye. Now I feel the need to make The Most Interesting Man in the World as a veteran runner, the kind of guy who's in FastJack's league, only he's a pornomancer.


"The key to finding success in your career, my friend, is this. Find out what you don't do well... Then don't do that thing."

I try... extra points for an armored cyber-beard.

You could barely be Awakened anyway, this leaves a pathetic 5BP for all other PQs. :/

I just can't see what this give you RAW that's worth it, you could price this at 15 and while it would overlapp in the area with the immunites that this can give you on the fly, you still need to program them, plus forgo other uses and most importantly this quaility is gear. That requires additional gear. Even at 15 and allowing you to expel and retrive the nanites your not in O-type body in the level of power or savings.

I agree. Rating 3 is less than most nano's max (which aren't that great to begin with), reprogramming is actually *very* slow, and they aren't even that expensive to buy the real things. 30BP is just way too much. Oh well.