Okay, I just don't get this. Basically the Cat's Eye bioware replaces your eyes with, shock horror, catlike eyes. In practical terms this replaces your existing vision with lowlight vision, and is incompatible with any further augmentation.
It costs 4 grand, has an availability of 4, and uses up .1 essence.

Compare the cyberware implant. Low-light vision implants cost .1 essence, 1,500 nuyen, and have an availability of 4. This IS compatible with other implants and does NOT replace your existing special vision if you're non-human.

So my question is: Unless you're playing a cat-girl, why would you take the Cat's Eye over the implant? What am I missing here?

I think Cat Girls is it Fuel Drop. Back in the days of Bio Index it made some difference. The only other perk is you won't set off a Cyber Scanner.

Depends on where you are trying to fit in. Cyber eyes are well cyber eyes. Cat eyes are organic eyes. Though I think it is silly you can't add augmentations to them as they are natural eyes just like the characters originals, except you know, a cats.

I wasn't actually suggesting cybereyes, you can get the implants separately if you want to.
I think the main problem I have with the Cat's Eyes is that every metatype other than human either gets no benefit from it (Elf, Ork) or lose something (Dwarf, Troll) by getting them. Cat girls is a fairly niche market, and for the same price you can get custom cybereyes that look like cat's eyes with integrated image link which is, in your everyday life, more useful.

I think I'm just disappointed because bio-enhanced eyes is such a cool concept but these are so unworkable that I can't see any way I'll ever get them
If they'd had some other stuff packaged in (EG vision magnification, vision enhancement that works without wireless, something along those lines) that might compensate for not being able to get an implanted smartlink and image link. As is however, I just can't see any time when they're worth it.

Tbh I'm not sure they have ever been "worth it". Even in Man and Machine the cyber eyes were better (can't recall if cats eyes were in Shadowtech).

I know this will probably be scoffed at but maybe if your normal eyes don't work anymore you don't have as much choice.

that could be a possibility, or if they tweaked the essence / magic thing more for bioware it would be more appealing to mages.

And that is the point i think.
I may be misremembering, but when these eyes were introduced, bioware did not fuck with magic.

Yes and No.

You had an Essence Index of Ess +3, this was the upper cap you could take of Bio stuff, so if you had 4 pts of cyber gear your ess was 2 and ess index was 5, representing what you had left to play with.

You didn't lose ess, but your magic was impeded still sort of. If you normal magic was 6 and you had 2 pts of Bioware your effective Magic was 4 for determing if Drain was physical or stun, max levels as an adept or any time the Magic rating was a direct factor.

You could have real weird situations, like having 6 pts of bioware, which would render your magic a virtual 0, but you could still cast and such. Course in that situation all spells would be physical drain and such.

This was the SR3 way, yes, i remember this.
But i think in SR2 the Eyes were introduced and it worked differently then.

You are Misremembering since SR3 (and I think even SR2) Bioware was "fucking" with magic just as much as cyberware

Yup, back in SR4A they had a slight advantage that they don't have anymore.
no Cats Eyes are simply inferior ......
Hmmmm,welll when Surge "reappears" (I guess/hope in Run Faster/harder) a surged Catgirl can pretend to have bionic Cats Eyes even though they're surged Eyes....

He who dances with (slim) Catgirls
Medicineman

Aye, page 5 for Shadowtech said mages/adepts paid ess equivalent to the bio cost.

It was still considered better as the bio cost in ess was often lower than the equivalent cyber gear

Still working on details, but had an idea:

Custom-grown eyes.

Basically the concept is similar to cybereyes with options such as:
Cats-eye lens (Low Light vision)
Keen vision (Vision magnification)
Inner eyelid (Flare compensation)
Troll retina (Thermal vision)
and others, with each one increasing the cost by a flat amount and adding X% to the base essence cost, possibly having each option add to the availability.
Advantages over cybereyes: low essence cost, not hackable.
Disadvantages: High cost, limited options compared to cybereyes, certain mods make it look unnatural (EG cat's-eye lens), cannot be upgraded only replaced, has to be custom grown.

Thoughts?

only thought is maybe having a limit on how much you can stuff in the bioeye at one time or some features may not be normally compatible together, like should you really have low light & thermal in same eye? A cyber eye uses different sensors to achieve this, in a bio eye you are having to play with the cones and rods and other bits, so can you adequately pack in both as a bio option?



Just a thought.

y
Very good thought. Having options be incompatible with each other also helps differentiate them from the cyber option.

Here's a thought, what forms of upgrades could you plausibly get by messing around with the part of the brain used for processing senses? That's another bioware option for sense upgrades.

actually scrap that concern about fitting it in...

If the Mantis Shrimp can fit in 16 different color receptive cones, compared to our base 3, fitting in infrared (thermal) and ultraviolet should not be a problem.
Course you may need some brain rewiring to process that much info.

Any more than what cybereyes would need for different vision mods? I know assist plays a part in those but for the most part the brain itself would have to rewired for us to see those spectrums regardless though that's hand waved because original cyber punk fiction was written before as much of the brain and it's functions were understood as they currently are

Well for cybereyes, the cyber takes in the visual data and usually translated this into a visible spectrum anology. We are familiar with the style used for infrared. Red for hotter, Blue for cooler.

Likewise for the bioeyes using thermal the brain would probably adapt and assign some kind of 'color' to the data, hence it shouldn't be a problem.

I was referring to the 16 extra senses of color that the mantis shrimp has when I said that would probably require some serious rewiring to take that kind of load.

Even with it being a visual spectrum analogy though it wouldn't come across so much as infrared or thermal truly so much as a blurred initially hard to figure out effect on your sight as your brain tries to understand the new data entering it. It would eventually be able to, but would take a long long time for that and tons of complication along th way I would assume.

And didn't know that about the mantis shrimp. Perhaps the next apex species after we all kick the bucket?

Assuming they decide to wait that long and not help us along.

Would NOT want to see the awakened version of this baby.

With merrow and leviathans (the awakened mega orcas not the sea dragons) under their thrall...

i like it
makes sense for a high price