QUOTE (Makki @ Jun 28 2013, 01:18 AM)
The first plot I'll run in SR5 is the re-discovery of the Skinlink technology. The team will unveil a megacon conspiracy that tried to make every device wireless for better tracking citizens.
The rediscovery of skinlink technology happens on January 3rd, 2076, when a team of Runners who have just had all of their gear and 'ware forcibly removed and replaced with brand-new, 1984-OK corpware online-DRM-scheme equipment escapes the secret shadowrunner conversion facility in the company of some Jackpointers and makes their way to one team member's old,
old bolt-hole where a tricked out 2073 Ares Predator IV with a skinlink installed in the pistol grip that was left over from 4th edition was found in a lockbox. Duration of Skinlink's LosTech status: three days.
QUOTE (Epicedion @ Jun 28 2013, 01:34 AM)
I'm saying it's totally manual, or assisted-manual (still have to perform a specific physical action to set it off). Or you have 'trodes or what-have-you and think 'BLADES' really hard and your commlink reads that and activates the blades automatically via a wireless signal way faster than your brain can move your arms. Hence taking a simple action and making it a free one. Again, there's no direct line to your arm blades because there's no more skinlink. It's either got to all be wireless, or your glasses, earbuds, gun, monowhip, arm blades, chemseal, micro-transceiver, holster, clothes, watch, survival knife, trauma patch, lockpicks, and ponytail holder all have to be physically wired to your commlink, which just sounds lovely.
Alternatively, your forearm blades snap out because you think "BLADES" really hard and thanks to the wonders of skinlink technology (and maybe a few hours' practice to get it to work consistantly,) the weapons deploy. Or you have an implanted set of cybereyes in which you have an AR field of view and you 'click' on the 'deploy blades' button. Hence, taking a simple action and making it a free one, without exposing either your eyes or your blades to being bricked by a hostile decker.
QUOTE
Visually it's either got to broadcast to a screen (including glasses, monocles, etc), broadcast to a cybereye (which sort of works like a screen in that way), broadcast to a device that can stimulate the visual cortex ('trodes), or be wired directly to the visual cortex. Audio takes similar channels.
Or it can transmit through skinlink. Or even fiber-optic cable, as they did in the 2050s.
QUOTE
What I'm saying is that getting all of your internal devices to talk to each other even in the most basic ways, for example so that they don't all project their information in the exact same spot of your vision, has got to require some processing power somewhere. Somewhere, there's got to be a computer that tells everything what to do. This is why in SR3 you needed cybereyes with image and display links to access internal data from sources like datajacks and headware memory without having to wire yourself up to a screen.
That computer is in your cybereyes themselves, or if you prefer, in your display shades, or if you have one, your implanted commlink.
QUOTE (Epicedion @ Jun 28 2013, 02:11 AM)
Except that skinlink was a terrible idea to introduce in the first place, because it was just a simple checkbox: Are you an idiot? Yes/No.
Skinlink is a great thing for the game, because you'd have to be an absolute idiot to run around with fifteen high-tech gadgets all squawking about radio chatter upon your person whilst you
attempt to fucking break into a high-security building. For fuck's sake, tracking someone's cell phone signal is easy to do
today, and with the cooperation of the telephone company can even be done even if the phone is
off. If you want to be absolutely sure you don't get nailed by it, you have to take the battery out of your phone and put it in a fucking radio-blocking bag of some sort.
So if you go run around in "High-Power Choice Made: Hacking risk: OPEN" mode and try to break into an Ares facillity, what's going to happen is that the security spider, or likely one of his Agents tasked to the job, is going to notice you (and your team of dipshits) on the local wireless grid, recognize you as a gaggle of wireless devices which are
not authorized to be on the premises, sound an alert, and then goon-squad of Ares corporate hackers and supporting Agents numbering about 20 are going to log in from the Ares Matrix Security Division 500 miles away and they are going to Hack you. They are going to Hack you like you have never been Hacked before, they are going to Hack you so hard you'll think FastJack took umbrage to your existance, and suddenly your gun is a paperweight, your cybereyes are serving the exact same function a pair of glass eyes served an 18th-century sailor, your commlink becomes their commlink, your chemical seal suit decides to unseal itself, your cyberleg becomes a massively heavy peg leg, your grenades either detonate or become inert, your drones become their drones, and your car decides it's not going anywhere. And this is BEFORE their on-site security team shows up, against whom you are useless and the only ones capable of putting up a resistance are the Street Shaman and the Physical Adept, so why in god's name would you play a cybered character in Shadowrun 5? Or even 4, for that matter, without fucking skinlink?
QUOTE
"Bend over" and "rip-off" and "force down throats" and so forth is very reactionary language. There's the possibility of consequences, so everything's an instant worst-case scenario.
It's appropriate language. Taken at face value and treated sensibly in-setting, either your gear will
never perform to its full potential unless you're engaging somewhere or against someone over whom you have
absolute and unquestioned Matrix superiority, or you'll get your ass handed to you the moment you try to combine your Wired Reflexes with your Reaction Enhancers.
QUOTE (phlapjack77 @ Jun 28 2013, 02:21 AM)
I agree - exactly what DNI could and couldn't do was always a little unclear to me. I would have appreciated more effort in spelling that out in something like Augmentation. How much control did a character have over things like cyberware with DNI and gear with skinlink, especially if the character had no commlink to coordinate things.
Skinlink going away doesn't bother me so much - I mean, I think it shouldn't have TOTALLY gone away, but it did seem a little too magical and ubiquitous, like dikote of previous versions. Maybe cut back on it's effectiveness somehow, like if a PC uses skinlink they're not considered "online", but the skinlink creates a "field" that can be sniffed and hacked anyway (like SR4 hidden mode?). Sort of a middle ground between no-hackability (DNI) and the "hey everybody I leave a datatrail a mile wide everywhere I go!" phenomenon of always being online.
A character has enough control over their gear to use every function of it even without an image link. An image link just gives you pretty DEHR style HUDs.
