For linguasofts and knowsofts do you need a datajack or would an internal commlink work to upload? My understanding is that there's nothing special needed to store them. Also, if you wanted to have a group have silent communications can you do that and talk with just implanted commlinks? If you don't have implanted commlinks would imagelink and soundlink fit the bill?

Also, astral perception will still work with full cyber eye replacement rather than just eye enhancements, correct?

Thanks!

With a sweep of his...

Hat

Concering the Question of astral perception:

It is independent from your physical eyes. So, yes, you can still perceive astral while having cyber eyes implanted.

Since everything else in the SR4 setting seems to be WiFi enabled, I suppose skillsoft-type chips are too, even though I had never thought of them that way before.



Imagelink and Soundlink are playback devices only, they won't help you send information. If your brain can issue commands to a commlink (either implanted or external) via Direct Neural Interface (which comes with the implant commlink automatically, and can be obtained on an external commlink by using a trode-net, or a datajack & cable) then you've got the sending portion down. On the reciept end, the receiving commlink needs a way to output the message, which is where the imagelink and/or soundlink (or if you're really slumming it or one of those purity of essence types, display glasses and headphones) come into play.



Although astral perception isn't really a visual sense and has nothing to do with the eyes (except maybe that unseen mystical "third eye"), the answer is yes.

When it comes to issues of magic and how it relates to technology, the quote "Of course these are my eyes, I paid for them (with essence)!" applies here. As long as it remains in your body, you get to treat it as if it were a real flesh and blood part of your body and not the little electronic camera that it is. This is also why mana-based illusions still work on the heavily chromed.

(SR4 introduced an odd corner-case to this issue: for an occular drone, it stops being considered a part of your body the moment it leaves the eye socket, and resumes its status when it's replaced.)

Internal comlinks can do what you want from them if they have an internal SIM-module. There were some debates on wether or not they come with that automatically, IIRC the RAW answer is supposed to be "no". What your book says apparently depends on the printing, search for the relevant threads if you want the details.

Yes, only the even numbered printings have been correct on this. But even though the devlopers say you have to buy it seperate, it's well worth the 0.2 essence.

You can get it cheaper by using an external Simlink in the form of an datajack plug-in.

And you can get that even even cheaper by doing a snatch and grab on somone else's external sim-module datajack plug-in next time you ride the subway, just be sure to dash back out on the platform just as the doors are closing.

Can't get that sort of five-fingered-discount on an implant, no sir.