Is there any real advantage to taking Cybereye's instead of goggles or a helmet? Yes I'm aware that cybereyes take up essance.

The usual stuff: More difficult to take away cybereyes than goggle/helmet. Sometimes, depending on location walking in with goggles/helmet can set off scrutiny. Whereas Cybereyes are less noticeable and extremely common. Walking in like Vin Diesel as Riddick with goggles or a helmet like Cobra Commander or Snake Eyes can be detrimental for 'not being obvious' purposes.

Yet Snake Eyes makes it look Good.

last i can recall, cybereyes count as perceiving a target for the purpose of magic. helmets, goggles, glasses, etc definitely do not.

Cybereyes can easily be made to look indistinguishable from natural eyes, so they have that stealth component to them. They beat out Contacts, which are equally concealable, by having a greater capacity and by being DNI controlled rather than wireless only.

Personally, I'm a fan of the Glasses option. It's unlikely you'll have an object that is thought of as a visual aid taken away from you, after all. And you can always turn off any suspicious HUD displays before going through security, and turn them back on after you've gotten in.

Of course, if you can pull it off, rocking Goggles gets you +20 points for style, and while it just screams "Call HTR, mutha' fragger!", a nice helmet on top of your full body armor does wonders for intimidation and badassery.

~Umi

From a fluff standpoint, Cybereyes just give so much more convenience. You cannot lose them (well, if you do you have bigger problems...), you never have to worry about your eyesight diminishing, or getting dust in your eyes, etc. They are an overall quality of life upgrade.

Until bricked by the hacker.

Keep them wireless off. Or, for the average consumer, how likely are you to have your eyes hacked? You're probably more likely to get them destroyed than hacked.

Surprised no one has mentioned it yet... as of SR5, a smartlink installed as cyberware gives a +2 dice bonus to shooting, whereas smartlink in an optical device only gives +1. (Both give +2 to accuracy IIRC)

"A wireless smartlink provides a dice pool bonus to all attacks with the weapon: +1 if you’re using gear with a smartlink or +2 if you’re using an augmentation for which you paid Essence." page 433

Holy crap I did not notice this.

So then, because a Smartlink installed in a cybereye does not take Essence, does that mean you only get the +1 dice pool bonus? As I recall previously, a magician couldn't use thermographic vision implanted in a cybereye to target for magic, but could if the thermographic implant was implanted directly into a natural eye.

I dissagree, because its "in" an augment that took up essance it still counts for the +2.

That would mean a sensor array in a cyberlimb would count, too.

No, because a smartlink is a device to display the smartgun data directly in your field of vision.

Unless your field of vision is in your arm, putting a smartlink there won't allow it to display data properly, hence it doesn't work.

~Umi

Yep, that one dice boost was totally worth the trade off of being able to be blinded by enemy hackers.

/sarcasm

Why do you have the wireless in your eyes turned on? It gives you no benefits whatsoever.

Wireless bonus: access to the freeporn channels.

In SR4? You can take hacked googles off. you cannot take hacked cybereyes off. Actually, having cybereyes in SR5 is a very bad idea. At least if you want to actually get any relevant (dice pool) boni out of them. For IR, Lowlight, flarce comp and all the rest, googles cost less, take up no essence and perform the same (including hackability).

The optimal setup is Cybereyes R1 with Smartlink, and then wearing contacts R3 and glasses R4 over them with all the enhancements you want.

Like SR4, Cybereyes are only interesting for awakened characters (and possibly Ghouls, once they become PC options).

Smartlink is either waving hello to security hackers, or practically worthless except with shotguns. On the up side, with wide choke settings, you can disarm an entire corporate security team with a shotgun with one shot fired, so maybe it's worth that. Until the spider bricks the shotgun and it is destroyed with fire and explosions next turn, of course.

Essence loss for something you will likely never need unless you have a massive pool isn't the best investment.

It is kind of sad that the changes to smartlinks and the downsides of being a throwback are really the only thing machineguns have going for them. With belted ammo, mag changes don't matter. With only 1 fire mode, there are no changes for that. Going from 1 point of Limit boost for a non-cyber smartlink to 1 point of Limit for a throwback laser sight doesn't cost you anything either.

You can wire your gun to Smartlink glasses/goggles, and still get the +2 to Accuracy with the gun. The Dice Pool bonus is what's dependent on everything being wireless.

Uhm, yes, that's what I said. And googles cost you no essence. The bonus is still crap, but at least it's cheap crap.

Guess I missed that you said that.

Want your bonus dice from your smartgun? You need your smartlink wireless, want the bonus dice from your enhanced perception? You need it to be wireless. I am of course referring to SR5.

want to be immune to having your eyes shoot sparks and smoke out of them as they stop functioning entirely, you need it to be not wireless.

personally, i'm a pretty big fan of my eyes not shooting smoke and sparks all over the place (including inside my skull), whether or not the rules insist that this has no drawbacks.

as it happens, i'm also a pretty big fan of being able to see, especially in the sort of critical situations where you could reasonably expect an enemy hacker to be trying to remove your ability to see.

as a result, i personally would rather *not* go wireless with anything even remotely important, barring specific reasons (for example, i would have no problem turning on the wireless for a grenade, throwing it, and using wireless to detonate the grenade, all in the same action).

Remember those ridiculous costs on cyberdecks. Not every encounter will have Decker opposition out there to get you.

It's like mages and adepts complaining about Background Count 6 everywhere... except they don't. Because high Background Count is as rare as skilled, well equipped Decker opposition. Or does every run nowadays target a AAA megacorp?

p 453 (PDF) specifically says 'Note that smartlink installed in a natural eye or in a pair of cybereyes is more effective than a smartlink installed in an external device'. So yes, cybereyes appear to qualify for the increased bonus.

As far as I can tell, Matrix security (including decking overwatch for security teams' gear) will be done at the host level. Getting a mark on a device slaved to a host will mark the host, which will give security deckers the opportunity to track the mark back to its originator and then interfere that way -- though the security deckers will have to contend with noise.

Night security at an office probably won't have a decker unless it's a very secure facility, so immediately consider that an enemy decker is stationed probably at least over 1km away, for 3 noise (reduced to 2 noise for a datajack) to perform directed attacks against gear. Then they probably have to deal with a cross-grid penalty for another 2. The only other real option would be to station a decker in the building which is a major investment.

Actually...on re-reading the Smartlink rules, I don't think they require wireless enabled for a cybereye w/ smartlink vision enhancement in order to get the full bonus.

The Smartlink System weapon enhancement has a Wireless entry. The Smartlink vision enhancement does not. In fact, the Smartlink System specifically mentions the possibility of being attached to the display system via a cable. As written, I'd assume the extra Wireless bonus derives from the WEAPON having wireless turned on and having extra environmental data (wind, blah blah, handwave handwave) rather than using wireless to communicate to the display.

Am I missing something? Alternately, was this already obvious to everyone else?

Vision Enhancement appears to be the only cybereye option that requires making your eyes vulnerable to a surprise HCF instruction to get full benefit.

not quite.

a wired connection does not suffer from noise. as such, if you have a cable going from the security location to the location you want secured, there should be no noise for anything within 100 m of wherever that cable comes out.

now, not every facility will be equipped for this, and there are drawbacks to this method as well (like potentially having to worry about securing the cable if there are any vulnerable points, which there most likely will be for longer cables). but it does mean that potentially you can have long distance hacks without noise.

Or just get like 6 datajacks

Right, but honestly if you are not going wireless, or you are really concerned about wireless you really shouldn't be using cybereyes. You should probably be springing for goggles for the wireless stuff. I think we're agreeing on more stuff then we are not.

Not sure about the 'remote antenna' idea, where you plug into a line that lets you effectively be somewhere else Matrix-wise. I'd certainly say you could plug your deck into a line that takes you straight to a host with no noise, but there doesn't seem to be a way to piggyback a connection off a secondary device -- that is, you can't directly connect to a host and then use the host's physical location as opposed to your own for your local decking.

Note that there's no reason that a host would actually have to be at the physical location. So long as it's within a few kilometers most things can compensate for the added distance noise, at least enough to keep gear and locks and cameras functioning -- high background noise locations might have to be managed differently. Wageslaves in an office could connect to an offsite host pretty easily for standard work, as well.

I could see several facilities for a corp being constructed around a central host (within a few kilometers) that handles daily office work as well as functioning as a central security office for Matrix security and on-site security teams for those locations. A really high security location might feature its own host with its own on-site decker team focusing solely on that site's protection. Or even several hosts with their own teams to break up the individual security roles even further (Team A might watch Host A for file security while Team B might watch Host B for physical security like locks and cameras).

I suppose you could plug into a direct line to a cyberdeck at a separate physical location and use the deck's location.

Either way I think it'd be a pretty monumental task to actually set up direct connection infrastructure in a city and for the most part would expose you to some unnecessary risk from data tapping in areas outside your security's normal jurisdiction.

In certain situations Cyberware is a liability. For example sub-orbital flights require all cyberware to be disabled. Bit of a bugger if you can not see. Not only that, but cyberware scanners in hi-sec areas can be hard to avoid, let alone bad guys who disable your 'ware if you get caught.

My current char uses a combination of contacts and glasses so that if she gets captured and 'disarmed' of her augmented senses there is a chance they simply take her glasses but miss the contacts. A rare circumstance, but one where you need an edge. If uou hadcybereyes they might brick them or just rip them.

Actually Cybereyes are really damned secure. The only wireless security vulnerabilities have are for using Vision Enhancement dice pool bonuses and Smartlinks, and there are ways around the Smartlink since the wireless bonus is actually connected to the smartgun system in the weapon, not the receiver in the cybereyes.

From what I can tell it would be kosher to connect the gun directly to a commlink, and the commlink directly to a datajack (or just go straight from gun to datajack), at which point only the gun's smartgun system itself has to be wireless-enabled and then only to get the dice pool bonus. You'll look a little retro, but the DNI requirements are satisfied.

Then, if someone bricks your Predator, you pull out your spare Predator and keep going.

Contacts are the ultimate in not secure, since they have to have wireless on all the time for practically everything. Goggles are as secure as cybereyes but obvious, and glasses are similar but stealthy due to the fact that they can wire directly to your datajack which is conveniently adjacent. Glasses are just relatively expensive and limited in capacity. Plus glasses and goggles are only worth +1 dice pool for the smartlink.

Really your best option for the total stealth and security package is an implanted commlink with cybereyes and your guns connected via cable to your datajack as needed. The commlink and the eyes don't connect through wireless, so your eyes are wirelessly dark (unless you want them to be online for the extra Visual Enhancement dice) but you still get all the image link and recording benefits. Your commlink is a wireless target, but it's almost always going to be a target anyway.

if your cybereyes are connected to your gun which is wireless, for all intents and purposes your cybereyes are wireless. they don't have to start by hacking your gun, then your eyes.

if you are benefiting from a wireless bonus on your smartgun, and the gun is linked to your eyes, your eyes are vulnerable.

I don't think so. A device is only vulnerable if its wireless is on. What you can't do is route through another device -- that is, you can't plug your gun into your commlink and only expose the commlink to get the smartgun's wireless bonus. When a device provides a wireless bonus, it needs to be online itself.

But the smartlink wireless bonus doesn't say anything about the eyes, goggles, glasses, et cetera having any sort of related wireless bonus. Only the smartgun system in the gun provides a wireless bonus. So long as you have a non-wireless link between the smartgun system and the smartlink display, the only exposed wireless-on part is the gun itself.

So either way at least one thing in the PAN can get bricked and negate the smartgun bonuses. And if it's the gun it's also likely worthless until it's repaired; your eyes, well, obviously you'll be blind.

Not so - first off, you run silent so that they can't even see you without Matrix Perception from within 100 meters (and even then it's an opposed test - of course, this may lead to a situation where street sams are stealing decks off the corpses of HTR combat deckers so that they can get nice high Firewall and Sleaze ratings).

Secondly, most Assault Rifles have an accuracy beneath 6. At Accuracy 5, with Agility 6( and Automatics 6, you're going over the Limit 31.02% of the time. With Smartlink, that drops to 5.76%. In other words, a non-wireless smartlink provides extra hits to that character with that weapon about a quarter of the time.

Optical devices like glasses, and especially contacts, have issues with availability. Vision Enhancement and Thermographic are both availability intensive. Each vision enhancement installed into them increases their availability rating, possibly putting it above the limit for starting characters. You can't get Contacts with Smartlink and Thermographic at game start because their availability is 16. Vision Augmentations installed into meat or cyber-eyes have their own individual availability instead of adding up.

Don't forget that you can slave everything to your commlink (or your 'deck, or your decker's [holy hell it feels good to be typing that again] deck) and use its defenses, then run it silent. Hell, carry two like everyone seemed to in SR4. One silent with all your gear slaved to it, another one looking like its your main but just there as hacker bait.

If you slave everything to your commlink, can you then slave your comlink to your cybereyes/optics, and get some measure of protection from hackers while still using a smartlink?

I don't think a device can be a master and a slave at the same time. As I recall, it didn't work this way in SR4, either.

your eyes are connected to the gun. they must be, otherwise there's no way for them to transmit the information to your eyes.

if your eyes are communicating with the gun, and your gun is on the matrix, your eyes are also on the matrix. there's no bottleneck in SR5. it's either all the way online, or all the way offline. as you said, you cannot route the information such that you must first control another device.

if the information is coming from the matrix, through your smartgun, and into your smartlink-enabled cybereyes, there is a direct passage from the matrix to your cybereyes. otherwise, you could perform that same trick through any other device. there is nothing magical about your gun that turns it into a super-special-awesome impenetrable matrix barrier, otherwise every single corporation would be routing their matrix security through a smartlink-enabled gun located somewhere on the physical premises.

if it was possible to locate hardware behind an impenetrable barrier while still enabling full matrix communication, the new matrix would not have noise (which is designed specifically to prevent long-distance hacks). the only reason they need the new matrix to incorporate noise is because it is not possible.

Ya this sounds better, making things convolotued is annoying. Can you use a cable connect your smartlinked weapons to your helmet or something?

You can, but you get no wireless bonuses for it.

There's no trick, and it's not introducing a bottleneck. Having wireless online is a requirement for 1) getting a wireless bonus and 2) getting hacked. If you've got a paragraph somewhere that says "plugging an offline device into an online device means that the offline device can get wirelessly hacked" I'd like to see it. Otherwise wireless on = hackable and wireless off = not hackable, per p421.

Remember that you can't piggyback a connection through another device -- you can't offline your cybereyes and online your datajack and get the Vision Enhancement online bonus, so none of your "impenetrable barrier" stuff matters.

But the cybereyes/smartlink system is fairly unique, because the wireless bonus is only a part of the smartgun system in the actual gun, not the smartlink system in the eyeware. That means you can have the cybereyes offline (or even throwback) with the smartgun online.

Let's say you've got a vehicle rigger with a souped up van with a huge machine gun on it. The rigger plugs his datajack into his RCC and his RCC into his van, and turns the wireless off on everything. The van has an internal wire to the machine gun. The rigger turns the wireless on for the smartgun system on the machine gun. The question is: can a nearby decker use that to hack the rigger's cyberears?

I don't believe he can, and it's the same thing with the cybereyes -- they're not an online system, and thus can't be wirelessly hacked.

you are arguing that you can transmit data from the matrix through your smartgun to your cybereyes, while somehow preventing data from being transmitted from the matrix through your smartgun to your cybereyes.

this is complete and utter nonsense. either the data can get there, or it can't. if it can, you can enjoy the benefits, but you also face the risks. if it can't, then you don't enjoy the benefit, but you also don't face the risks.

anything else leads to idiocy where everyone has completely impenetrable security by accessing the matrix for all purposes through a smartgun since it is the only device capable of 100% reliably filtering out all the negative aspects of the matrix while allowing full access to the positive aspects, with the caveat that you'd better keep some spares handy otherwise someone might brick your impenetrable matrix wall as the only drawback.

It really looks like you're not reading anything, because I've responded to your points and all you've done is restate them.

Find something in the book that says you can hack X offline device if it's plugged into Y online device. Otherwise refer to page 421 where it says that if a device's wireless is off it can't be wirelessly hacked.