see, that's an example of a wireless bonus that doesn't require the matrix to be magical.

have a set of small drones floating in the area which your wired reflexes can connect to for extra sources of information that helps you dodge better. that makes sense. there's a reason it has to be wireless (if the drones are flying 20 feet away, you can't realistically expect the system to work if it's wired). that i wouldn't have been upset with at all.

it's when you need the matrix to let your wired reflexes talk to your reaction enhancers that it makes absolutely no sense.

Note that for stuff like WR + RE, you can also say that the wiring job you'd have to do is physically impractical to the point that a wireless signal is the only way to get them working together without costing a boatload of extra Essence.

I know Move by Wire isn't out yet in this edition, but if it has no wireless bonus you could then say that Move by Wire is essentially an internally wired version of WR+RE, with the associated Essence hit (and higher-tier functionality).

If the wiring job is impractical, putting in Wired Reflexes in the first place is impractical. Both systems run through the spinal column as described, after all, so a connection would be minor compared to how much of the body is worked on to put in wired in the first place.

Reread the description of WR. It's described as a series of adrenal stimulants and motivators distributed throughout the body, not an augmentation of the neural pathways or spine.

Also if you're going to inject realism, WR is probably wholly fantastical anyway, so complaining that the limitations are unrealistic won't get you very far.

Yeah, but the WR/RE thing is also a case of reversing their own decision, which is a problem in and of itself.

not really.

it isn't enough to have the wireless enabled to get the bonus. you have to actually be connected to the matrix. in 5th edition, the matrix is more like some sort of magical entity that grants wishes when you fulfill certain conditions than anything else. you give it access to your reaction enhancers and wired reflexes, and it magically grants you the wish of letting them communicate.

that said, if the wireless reflexes is distributed throughout the whole body, it still shouldn't have too far to go to reach the reaction enhancers.

I think the idea is that, they might need some kind of extra computing to be able to coordinate the two systems. This is the only way to break the augmentation cap after all, so if both systems didn't have something to manage themselves, your muscles might rip themselves apart.

But also saying that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" –Arthur C. Clarke, also works.

first time I read that in the book I had images of tiny nanocoaches racing along the muscles and nervous system yelling at them with slogans like 'you can do it' and 'teamwork!'

I'm actually in the process of writing a piece of flash fiction for 365 Tomorrows with that theme.

I want you to think about that for a second.



Exactly how do you think you improve neural response times if you're still bottlenecking at the spine? What is a neural booster connected to if not the neural pathways?


Then consider Reaction Enhancers :



Again, replacing parts of the nervous system with something faster. Why these two shouldn't talk to each other by default since any boosted neural signal from WR has to travel through the replaced spinal column from RE anyway, I leave to your imagination.

The writers certainly couldn't be arsed to put in more than one sentence on how either works, after all.

in which case you could just as easily duplicate the results with a piece of wire connecting the two and a powerful computer.



the problem here is that it really isn't sufficiently advanced for that in shadowrun.

I'm sorry, I didn't know we had a working wireless mesh network protocols capable of handling limitless devices, full sensory virtual reality, prosthesis that are controlled from the nervous system that also offer tactile feedback, working cold fusion reactors, and so much more. I guess you're right. SR's technology really isn't that far ahead of us.

Also, considering we honestly have no idea how wired reflexes and reaction enhancers work or are implanted, that might not be feasible. But who knows, maybe the augmentation book will actually have rules to do just that. But for now, if you want to take advantage of the wireless bonuses you have to cowboy up and run with wireless on, or live without them.

Have you actually looked at how far we have advanced in the last 60 years? Now just extrapolate.

based on some of the things we are currently working on. Cybereyes & other such pieces of similar gear are not far off...We are already working on basic replacement arms that can activate use semi-normal finger articulation.

Limitless? The real world is more limitless than Shadowrun. Or did you forget about the "slaved devices" rule?
In the real world you can easily put 255 devices behind a network router, effectively slaving them, whereas in Shadowrun you can put a maximum of 21!

I was actually referring to the Shannon–Hartley theorem which is a non factor in SR4.

Ah, yes, that.

Actually if you use the 10.x.x.x network, you can get a whole lot more than 255 devices behind a single NATing network router.

Just make your subnet mask 255.0.0.0

And that too.

The slaving limits are pretty clearly a game conceit to keep things manageable. I'm not so sure it's really needed, but still.

If they have decryption methods to break any encryption in hours, no reason for them not to have compression protocols surpassing ours.

To bad the Web is still basically one huge a point to point protocol/application....
One proxy talking to another proxy.....

And that's why youtube videos are eternally buffering.
(Because Time Warner Cable is one of those proxies, gets most of the traffic, and throttles the ever loving shite out of the bandwidth).

No, that is because most Americans have cable internet, where a lot of people share the same physical cable

But yeah, the mesh networks of Shadowrun are pure handwavium. The RL term would be "scatternet", which are a favorite if somebody needs a topic for a paper, but more than a simulated network of four nodes simply won't fly due to Shannon and a dozen of other reasons.

I have the problem.
I have FiOs, not cable.
I can use http://www.proxfree.com/youtube-proxy.php and get the video to buffer in fractions of a second.

It's not user load.

The problem isn't the data throughput, the problem is that there is only so many things you can have transmitting wirelessly before you use up the entire spectrum. And in SR4 (and probably 5) the more wireless devices you have, the more effective bandwidth you have, despite the fact in reality that the more devices you have in an area the more of the electromagnetic spectrum would be used up, which would cap how many devices you can have in an area that run wirelessly.

But I just figured that they found a way to instantly and dynamically change each devices signal strength so that devices only need to communicate to the next nearest device, or they found a way to break the laws of physics and have more wireless signal then is possible, or magic or something. I don't know, its the future, so I can hand wave it away as technology just being so advance we can't possibly understand it.

Well, shared channels are already happening - all that does is lower the speed of everyone involved. So basically, future wireless just needs to be so fast, that a fraction of it is still fast enough.

Considering for example the mind boggling dimensions we're currently seeing in chip manufacture, I would not be too surprised if someone came up with a few tricks in the future to increase wireless speed beyond what we would currently consider physically possible as well.