I'm not trying to be insulting here, but I am honestly confused as to what in the wide world of sports you think you are talking about here.


We are discussing the idea that a wireless connection is going to be faster than a hardwired one, which is one of the points the wireless bonuses for SR5 is based on. This is a flawed premise because the basic laws of physics don't actually conform to that model. At all.

Capability of a device is measured by device ratings. We're talking intercommunication between devices, which is absolutely based on connection speed between devices.

I'm curious: Who actually said that was the basis? Chem seal activating faster, for example, has nothing to do with connection speed - the rules assumption is that you are otherwise activating it manually.

So for some reason, a direct neural link interface (DNI,) which has been working for four whole editions (SR 1, 2, 3, and 4) to do things such as issue commands to your smartgun, or operate your cyberlimb, or command a piece of worn equipment which is wired into you through some means, now requires you expose your gear to the wireless Matrix for it to work.

I declare bollocks and shenanigans upon that!

Focussed concentration question. If I take it at rank 1 able to sutain spells of force 1 without a penalty. What happens if I cast a force 1 spell but use edge to break the limits? This isn't something you will liekly be casting more than once a day after all so using edge here is just awesome given the "new and improved" rates of edge return.

Actually, it isn't. The writing assumption is that is how it is working, but in the rules as written the assumption is that it is working faster because it is connected to the Matrix, full stop.

Many of the gear writers, as noted upthread, seem to share your assumption rather than the one the rules make explicit, and I don't blame them as the one the rules make explicit makes no sense.

Fun fact: The "repeat a lie a thousand times and it becomes the truth" statement which you apparently take as a motivation was never actually said. So even if you reiterate that lie (after being told you are wrong 20 times it became kinda obvious that you are misrepresenting on purpose) another 200 times ignoring all corrections, it will not work.

Heh, Back in the 2050's an partly through the 2060's an astral Mage could shove a spell down through a foe's focus or even an astrally perceiving for himself for fun effects all around (instant ground zero for that fireball- good times. Kept the astral Peeping Toms in line).

But then things changed... some say the barrier between worlds got thicker, others say the laws of magic themself underwent a revision.. no one knows, but grounding a spell like that simply didn't work anymore.

Maybe what we are seeing here is a similar alteration of the physical properties of the materials used, maybe even tied to the rising mana levels, some quantum effect in the solid wire/fibreglass connection itself degrading their performance to unstable levels.

We have already seen some nuclear devices act quirky since the Awakening, so who can say?

Thank the Sun Lion we still have the wifi to fall back on otherwise you would be totally boned.

So basically you have your gear using leftover Xbox One processors.

*ducks*

Where in the book does it say that a cyberlimb or a smartgun can't be used except wirelessly? I think there's some confusion here about the difference between a wireless bonus and normal operation. A smartgun with wireless off still increases the Accuracy of the weapon it's on, and since cyberlimbs don't have a bonus, there's no real reason to have the wireless on when in a tactical situation, and they work fine without it.

And in response to the cacophony of "but my +2 dice!" calls, when SR4 changed the smartgun from -2 TN to +2 dice, its efficiency dropped by over a hundred percent, and I don't recall the level of complaint we're getting today. In SR5, the bonus is still there for anyone who has the guts to play on a new battlefield; anybody who's not sure how to protect their devices should open up a new thread on how to protect devices from hackers in SR5, and I'm sure the collective cleverness of Dumpshock will pour into it and we'll have a list of best practices by Gen Con.

Additionally, I think there's also some confusion between time and attention. Take the chemical seal (or the bipod, or the smuggling compartment, etc.). Have you ever used a bread machine? They're awesome. You just put all the ingredients in and the machine handles the kneading, rising, whatever that second kneading step is called, and the baking. Then bam, you have bread. In the meantime, you've been reading, playing video games, or posting on Dumpshock. Your bread needed less attention than it would have had you not had the machine, even though it baked in approximately the same amount of time.

And yeah, a new edition's going to introduce new rules. But like the pop-fly rule, or the forward pass, or the zone defense rule, the game's not going to vaporize over it. Not if the turnout at Origins is anything to gauge by.

Well the massive difference is that while it might not have been as mechanically effective as before it atleast still performed it's base function witch is to make hitting a target easier, in SR5 it doesn't do that at all without being connected to matrix.

Given that guns have a base Acc of 4 and most people will have a physical limit >=4, +2 Acc equates a significantly increased chance to hit...

One who argued that limits make hitting targets harder (and I'm not saying the person quoted above is one of those people; I'm too lazy to look it up just now) must concede that raising that limit makes hitting targets easier. So there's that.

One of the design principles specified from Day One (and mentioned early on in Mr. Hardy's interviews) was that the ability to do stuff, including shoot people right in the face for money, must come predominantly from the character, and not from his or her gear. By that principle, the smartlink should only increase Accuracy and never offer dice. The wireless bonus mechanic allows a mechanism by which the dice pool bonus can be preserved in SR5 while adhering to that principle.

I actually had a very similar thought I forgot to ask in one of the other threads.

Rather than focused concentration it involved a sustaining focus instead though. If I get a rating 3 sustaining focus... i cast the spell into it and edge it to break the limits. Now do I effectively have the higher effective spell in the lower rated focus.

Why rating 3... because 1 and 2 point BGC's are reasonably common... and walking through one will dispel a force 1 spell by reducing it's force to 0... even if you're using focused concentration I would think.

You should read the word target in my post to mean just that a simple paper shooting target, of hitting witch smartlink no longer helps one bit and that is just utterly ridiculous.

Well, not unless you activate the Matrix connection to get the Expose Your Ass bonuses.

At least it appears that you can buy one comm device with super high ratings and slave your other stuff to it. That way you can get the bonus but a hostile hacker has to get past the chokepoint device to hack you.



-k

Some do, but not all guns have a base acc of 4. You should stop spreading that piece of propaganda; it's false.

Wait, are corporate combat deckers even a thing, anyway? Is Lone Star going to send a squad of 4 guys plus a mage plus a decker?

Yes and potentially.

Hasn't that how it's always been?

The speed of light through air is 99.7% of the speed of light in a vacuum. On March 24, 2013, just three months ago tomorrow, Nature Photonics published research on a new, hollow fiber optic cable that will allow that same speed as opposed to the 31% speed reduction of modern glass fiber optic cables.

Towards high-capacity fibre-optic communications at the speed of light in vacuum

The signal speed down insulated copper cable is only 66% of the speed of light in a vacuum.

Speed of elecricity

"Depending on the type of fiber, the neural impulse travels at speed ranging from a sluggish 2 miles per hour to, in some myelinated fibers, a breackneck 200 or more miles per hour. But even this top speed is 3 million times slower than the speed of electricity through a wire."
-- Myers, David G. Psychology 4th Edition.New York:Worth Publishers Inc,1995: 43.

Speed of Nerve Impulses

And radio communication has the benefit of being in an absolute straight line, therefore minimal distance. Not to mention some people's predictions regarding ubiquitous computing in the future.

Don't forget they've also been able to teleport information in modern experiments, which could be duplicated or at least advanced by 2070, allowing information to go from point A to point B without going between these points.

Lag? What lag?

I didn't mean that each gun has an Accuracy of 4, but that four is the baseline from which guns go up or down. Which is what the combat preview stated, so if that is propaganda you might want to check the political reliability of the freelancer pool

@Shemhazai: Nope, radio waves used in mobile comms usually bounce back and fourth a little. And even if it were a straight line, if a signal travels at speed X to the radio tower 200 m away and back, it's still slower than signal traveling through 1 m of FO cable at 1% of that speed...
And besides all that, propagation delay is not the limiting factor in distributed computing.

This all in record, I can come up with some fairly reality-based reasons why much of your internal cyberware might be wireless and need to broadcast.

I just wish the writers had.

A concern I have which I think Aaron says is dealt with, but not how is how a team of deckers can show up in the matrix to dogpile a team with active matrix devices. A rational defense would be to send a team of deckers to check things out whenever an alarm is raised if they can interact with the targets from the matrix. The lone combat decker with a squad isn't an issue for me and seems kind of normal, but 20 deckers showing up and creaming the opposition does seem screwed up. It is one of the reasons I don't like the idea of being able to command a spirit from the astral, similar issues can arise and you have to rely on the rarity of security mages as an excuse to keep the runners alive. I don't think security deckers have the same level of rarity as an excuse.

Also how bricked are we talking here? Game mechanic wise a character can be dropped in a single shot and recover in a few hours with magic/first aid, total bricking of my gear might take in and out of game months to recover from, very close to the make a new character level of issues.

I was talking about from the ball of your foot to your brain. I suppose you could be some meters from an access point. Your tower example sounds like something from the early part of this century. I'm not sure what you mean by "bounce back and fourth a little." I was referring to a signal traveling through the non-straight contours of a human body as opposed to the straight line a radio signal would travel.

By 2075, all site security is handled by a small team of deckers each commanding a squadron of drones, from the relative safety of corporate HQ, and backed up by a mage in the same room but out on astral overwatch with a couple summoned spirits in tow.

Not sure if serious, but it seems somewhat reasonable. Instant response does lead to the idea of everything being somewhat centralized in a secure area.

A critical glitch while trying to hack might trip something that a meatspace response team might want to investigate. How long would it take them to get there?

My original speculation was that the gear authors might have mistakenly thought that "wireless" meant "wirelessly controlled by DNI", as opposed to "someone using a meat hand to activate a physical button."

Do we know who wrote the gear?




-k

But that interpretation doesn't fit into the stated goals of making players choose to be wireless and thus open to enemy hackers. I think the gear authors knew what they meant with "wireless".

IDK, I thought that original dev goal could still work if it was "wirelessly connected via PAN" versus "operated manually with those things called hands".

If and only if it was implemented in a way that didn't work so well with complete wireless PAN isolation.

New Question:

The Rules state that a Focus that is active or a spell has a tangible astral form. Can this form be attacked astrally, in order to destroy the effect or deactivate the focus? Dispelling will generally get rid of a spell itself, but if Astral Security Mage X wants to shut down Big Nasty Troll Adept's combat axe focus, or a mage's power focus etc, can this be attacked like an astral barrier? Would this be handled kind of like Astral Intersections, where someone drags an astral form through a mana barrier, and the barrier resists with force x2?


Just a thought. What with all the whining going on about being able to brick cyberware, I figured there would be a way to "brick" magic stuff too. If only we could disrupt the bond altogether and force a rebonding ritual to get it to work again, much like forcing repairs to restore bricked devices, it would kind of balance out the "magicrun" people are complaining about.

In a different thread, they have said that yes, it is possible to disrupt and/or destroy a foci.

Including the Karma it takes to do that?

"To deactivate an active focus, make an Opposed
Disenchanting + Magic [Astral] v. target’s Force + owner’s
Magic Test. You can do this from the physical or
astral plane, though you must have line of sight to the
focus. If you get more successes on the test, the focus
deactivates."

Dire... deactivate... not break the bond or break the focus... it's a simple action to reactivate a focus or for a sustaining focus the act of casting a spell through it activates it.

So basically you can force the mage to waste simple actions to reactivate foci.... and counterspell/dispel already works on spells in sustaining foci as a way to turn those off as well.

Then modify it a bit.

Treat the focus as having a number of 'health' boxes equal to its Force.

Insert preferred contested roll between enemy mage and the focus with the pseudo-damage being applied to this 'health'.

When foci 'health' drops to 0, the enemy mage has effectively 'hacked' the focus, overriding its aura/energy/pattern and forging a temporary link with the result that the focus is no longer applying its bonuses at this time for the wearer but is still magically active.

Attacking mage can now opt to the following:
A) Shuts it down and breaks the link
B) sustain the link holding the item in limbo (no bonus from the foci for the target , -2 dice penalty on all actions as per normal sustaining for the enemy mage) and do other actions as normal
C) sustain the link as per B and do an old fashioned grounding spell through it. As the foci serves as a link to the owner, this reduces the dice pool of the defending mage by a certain amount (maybe equal to half the force of the foci, rounded up) against spells cast through the foci in this manner. AoE spells can also be shoved through with the owner/foci as ground zero, but only the owner caster suffers the dice pool penalty, others around him get normal resists though they may wonder why spells shooting out of the mage and hitting them. Casting enemy mage still has sustaining penalty while doing this.
D) Destruct (Raises the possibility of destroying it, but no idea on how to balance a system for this yet)


If option A is taken the foci is down for 1 combat Turn before it can be reactivated, a reset so to speak. Foci Health now back to full and back under owner control.

If option B or C is taken the owner of the now compromised foci can attempt to regain control with a simple action (once per action phase-counts as attack action). Insert plausible contested roll method between the two mages here.
If enemy wins link remains up with the foci still locked up , owner can try again next action phase.
If owner wins then he has broken the link, however foci is disabled with it's Health at 0 but will regain 1 'health' per combat turn with bonuses returning once back to full health. Owner would be wise to shut it off to reset otherwise someone could attack the foci and only needing to bring it back to zero ( or 1 hit if already at 0) to compromise it again. If shut down by owner, must wait 1 combat turn to be able to reactivate with Foci back to full health. So resetting is better solution and faster.

OR

If the owner mage does not want to risk a battle for control, he can automatically break the link by physically removing the foci from his person/personal space with a simple action (as per picking up/putting down an object), ie ripping it off and dropping it so it is no longer in contact with owner mage. Shut down occurs and link is broken. Foci can be picked back up with a simple action but still needs 1 combat turn from when it shut off to be reset before reactivation is possible.

No plan for option D yet, have to find some ruleset that could make this possible without being too easy or impossible. Item loss, especially when karma is paid for it, is a very sensitive issue and should not be lightly done.

***************

The idea is very rough and would need tons of polishing, but will leave it to the megamages to come up with a better version.

Sendaz... one of the worst ideas I've ever seen posted on these forums.

Go play a street sam and play with the hackers and leave the poor magical beasties alone.

The problem is the line dev and stable of authors who came up with the bricking routine and insisted that cyberware plugged directly into peoples brains be wireless. Not making everything and anybody suck as badly.

Question: How much do things now cost in Karma to improve?

Question: What are the inherent limit formulas?

Question: How did Stick and Shock ammunition change?

Damage is based on the weapon, and there were changes to electricity damage.

Damage is based on the weapon and stages the weapon down. If you want to go non lethal now you do pay a price for it a method I heartily enforce.

Has been posted somewhere else:
Mental = (Logic x 2 + Intuition + Willpower) / 3
Physical = (Strength x 2 + Body + Reaction) / 3
Social = (Charisma x 2 + Willpower + Essence [round up]) / 3
All results are round up.

Oh god they actually made that horrible house rule the actual rule.
So now S&S is the best ammo for every weapon and not just small arms, great.

Wait to you see the actual rules

so would be bad time to mention S&S buckshot?

It's not a big hit, and there's no reason for a Face not to cyber up.

Let's say you've got a dedicated Face, someone with 6 Charisma and 5 Willpower, cybered out the butt with an Essence of 1. His limit is still 6. If he were completely uncybered his limit would be 8. Whoop ti shit. Unless he's got 12 points in Negotiation it ain't gonna be an issue.

..... fine, I don't have to be evasidve anyway.

Stick and shock is now -2 damage (that is guns damage is reduced by two) stun, electrical. It has -4 AP that doesn't stack with anything else.

The electrical damage rules got better and got worse. Now you don't have to do the fish flop test. On the other hand people affected by electricty take a -1 to all tests but damage resistance and -5 to initiative. This is for one round and does not stack, however additional attacks will lengthen the duration. Devices take physical always from electricity and take matrix damage equal to half the physical damage. People are really enamored with the idea of lightning bolts destroying tanks and cars.

Edited to include important bits.

How long does the -5 to initiative last? Can it stack multiple times? What about the -1 to all tests penalty (I assume the answer to each will be the same, but asking just in case)?

1 round, extended by each additional attack, edited above.