Training a skill up to rank 4 from scratch costs 22 karma.
A rank 4 skillsoft costs 40,000 . Pirated: 4,000 . A program option - say, DIMAP - adds 3000 legally or 300 pirated.
Emulating it as a permanent complex form with Biowire costs 4 Karma. Add in a program option and that climbs to 5.

So with a good connection to a pirate group, a submerged TM can pay 4300 and 5 karma for what amounts to a new permanent skill at rank 4 with no degradation and partial Edge use, right? But how does that interact with surrounding rules? Like...

- Since the 'soft is now known as a CF, can it be threaded to increase the skill rating?
- Does Biowire limit the number/ratings of concurrently active skillsoft CFs the same way skillwires limit the real thing? Or are they as unrestricted as other CFs?
- Since TMs are such Karma pigs, is there a good reason not to do this? The cost progression for emulated skillsofts is ludicrously cheap compared to normal CFs as well as skills. Let's not even bring freeware into this.

Once you've spent the 13 Karma to submerge and grab Biowire, this kind of setup seems so much cheaper for increasing skill ratings you'd be a fool not to use it - it covers its own Karma cost on the first emulated 'soft. True, your "skills" are only rated at 4 by default and don't get the full benefit of Edge use, but skills available that cheaply (especially if they can be threaded higher) are still bloody handy. Thread them up to obscene ratings, link rating 1 sprites to sustain them, and now you've got semipermanent double-digit skill ratings for 6 Karma and under 5,000 a pop once the Fading heals.

Thoughts?

Let me answer your questions.

1. The threaded 'soft can't exceed its original rating. Sorry, but that activesoft you bought at 4 is stuck at 4, and you can't get it any higher.

2. Yes, biowires act as a skillwires system of a rating equal to your Submersion Grade. So if you're only Grade 1, you can run at most Rating 2 skillsofts on your biowires.

3. The biggest reason is basically you're limited to the rating of the skillsoft you get, unlike with regular skills. You're also restricted in how you can spend Edge, even with DIMAP.

I'm certain i remember coments from the devs alllowing the threading of all cfs actisofts included.

Hmm. Got a source for this? This makes a big difference, obviously, so I'd like to see for myself why it doesn't work.


Ah right, forgot that bit. You can add more program options into the skillsofts (at emulation or afterwards via threading) to mitigate that in the short term, I suppose, but a TM with Biowire and a focus on activesofts is probably going to resubmerge a few times for Acceleration anyway. Still, multiple submersions are gonna jack up the overall cost a huge amount, no doubt.


If you're right about #1, then yeah, this follows. And the Edge limitation does admittedly suck.

you are emulating the program. that is the only way given for you to thread the activesofts. it isn't the kind of test where you succeed more or less depending on the roll, it's the kind of test where you're checking if you did it at all. there is no question of how well you emulated the program; once you have a perfect copy, you can't make a more perfect copy. it's like asking if you can do an edit test to copy an exploit program at a higher rating than the original. of course you can't; that's not what copying does.

[edit] that said, if you're looking for a cheap temporary option, you could always exploit the rating 1 linked sprite to get a temporary version up until you're ready for rating 4 versions; 1 karma for 256 days should tide you over until you're ready for a full-strength activesoft.

Yeah, I know. I don't mean the actual instance of threading used in the initial emulation test. It's no longer emulation once the CF is bought with Karma, only when you're copying from standard code. Once I have "Exploit 4" and "Activesoft: Automatics 4" in my list of known CFs, what says at that point that I can use threading to boost the rating of one but not the other? It's not what copying does, but it's exactly what threading a known CF does.

EDIT: Although even allowing threading, the total activesoft CF ratings in use would still be capped by Biowire at (submersion grade x2). Maybe that's enough of a restriction. Or maybe not. It'd definitely encourage more use of program options to manage the rating cap.

A couple things to consider:

The Rating 1 SkillWires can use up to 2x RTG 1 ActiveSofts, not 1x RTG 2. Also, you can only use two 'softs at a time, but nothing says you couldn't learn more and just switch off the same way somebody with genuine 'wires could. It's quite literally the skill-download from the Matrix, if you have the Karma. At Immersion 5, you have up to 10 RTG points of 'softs running at once, but nothing says you couldn't learn them at Pluscode RTG 3 and have 10 'softs performing at Skill RTG 4 taking up a single "point" each on the 'wires.

Right. Program options (either emulated from the initial software purchase or threaded up after the fact) would let the TM get a lot more use out of his sklllsoft capacity. Adaptive Scale, Personalized, Pluscode, maybe even Overdrive would help.

Also, the description for skillwires says "Skillwire systems allow the use of activesofts with a rating up to the skillwire rating." Since Biowire acts like skillwires with a rating equal to submersion grade, that could be used as a cap on threaded skillsoft ratings, I suppose.

Just remember the total NUMBER of options you can attach = ROUNDDOWN(RTG/2), or for RTG4 softs (the best ActiveSoft available in 2070) that's no more than 2 options, whose own RTG may be any level applicable.


That's what I was reminding people of, correct.

I believe the karma cost is not so much learning the skill as a CF, but removing the neccessity of having to re-emulate it each time. Because it's emulated at all that would preclude you from threading it higher. If a dev has ruled on it I'd like to see the post, or better yet the errata.

Also, has it been ignored that you could simply buy both levels of Swap and never worry about penalty from sustaining again? Paying 1 karma for a linked sprite is a good plan, except that they can only sustain that thread for so long as a service before it is over. At the end of that service the karma point is wasted too.

Well, I don't have anything like that, but Unwired says:

Emphasis mine. Paying the Karma cost lets you memorize an emulated skillsoft as a CF. The emulation test you make beforehand creates the CF; if you pay Karma to learn it at that point, you're learning a complex form.


IIRC, Swap isn't cumulative. It's a flat reduction to your total sustaining penalty at any given time.

From the unwired errata:

Aha, look at that. Thanks - question answered.

Also:


Seems to read that the +2 modifier is reduced by one for each level of the echo. Makes sence in that you could only take it twice. If it was a flat reduction, why limit it?

I dunno (like I said, I heard this from someone else), but submerging twice and ignoring all sustaining penalties forever sounds a bit OP. Every TM would thread everything to the max in downtime and just sustain it all forever. Why not, right?

As you cannot thread these skills, you may as well learn another Echo, get yourself a skillwire system and use a small amount of all the karma you'd otherwise sink into the emulated softs to buy up your Resonance again.

Biowire is an option for characters who don't want to reduce their bioelectric integrity (read : Essence).

If it's all about the cold, hard numbers, Biowire is clearly an inferior option.

Because you do need to concentrate to sustain something. You'd loose everything if you slept or fell unconscious, at the wim of the GM a sudden surprise or loss of focus could do it too but that's not strictly written.

I don't see any reason for the clarification other than to make it clear that two levels of swap remove the numerical penalty to treading. Of course I read it this way the first time as well, just seemed to reinforce it in errata.

Correct, swap is not cumulative.

Also, even if you allow threading to increase the rating of a activesoft, you are still limited by your submersion grade to the highest rating you can get in it. Add to the fact that the activesoft has a hardcap on the number of options tied into it of rating/2 (round down). This is going to limit your crazy boost with it. And I don't think to many GMs would let you thread options for the actvesoft on the fly.

Don't get me wrong, their great in their own way. They just suffer from most of the same problems as skill wires do, with the added problem of adding karma to the (granted lower) cash cost. Oh, and that is assuming that your GM actually lets you buy them as warez at 10% cost. Some won't.

It's true, it takes a lot more karma to get out of echos what you get out of Move-by-Wire. But for my most recent TM it made sense.

Good point. I bought some skillsofts for my TM and made sure to purchase them with the options. Doesn't make sense that you could DIMAP+Customize on the fly after all.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone; I understand what's going on here now.

which, to my mind at least, makes it a spectacularly pathetic excuse for an echo. adept centering applies to EVERYTHING, and has a rating equal to your initiation level. technomancer threading works on only 1 specific modifier in the matrix, and has a rating of 1. 2 if you spend 2 echoes. which makes it a truly pathetic excuse for an echo. if you buy swap with your first two echoes, you'll get the same ability as an adept gets with adept centering from spending 1 metamagic technique, except it only applies to one specific modifier, and the adept's ability will improve with experience whereas yours never will.

heck, even mages get psyche, which reduces the modifier by 1 per sustained spell, and they don't even have to initiate at all.

swap is a worthless piece of crap, as written. if i had already submerged maybe 50 times, i might consider swap in it's current form. then again, it'd probably be better to just raise resonance a few times for better fading resistance, and drop the threaded CF and rethread it every time you need to use it.

You do understand that as written in the Unwired errata, two levels of Swap remove the threading modifier completely, right? Threading is a limited ability, but the fact that it takes no action and can have a significant impact on a technomancers ability in the matrix means Swap is quite useful. Not as useful as some magical abilities, but there's no spell that raises your Stealth.

On another note on biowire:

While you are not allowed to thread it higher than its rating, it's still a complex form. As such, a registered sprite can still assist operation it.

This means bursts in skill of up to 8 ( ! ) if your GM will allow it. I don't think that's terribly broken, since you'll be burning remaining tasks like mad if you try to sustain the skill at high levels for very long at all.

Hmm. There's still the linking trick, if you so choose.

But at least Assist Operation requires a reasonable high-Rating sprite. A Rating 1 sprite can sustain threading on anything.

everything i've read on it is that the official stand is that swap reduces the total, not the per-threading modifier.

if it does totally remove the threading modifier, then yes, it is a worthwhile echo. but everything i've seen indicates that it doesn't work that way. (mind you, when they "clarified" this issue, it still didn't sound very clearly phrased, but it sounded like they intended to have it reduce total modifier).

Yeah, even having gone back and compared the original version to the errata three times due to this thread, I still can't get a sense from the text of which way Swap is intended to work. It's either pretty solid or totally pointless, but even the errata doesn't clarify which.

Ok, look at it like this:



That's the Unwired errata again. Now the section in Unwired reads:



It used to read:



Now compare that with the wording from the Threading section in SR4A:



This section defines a -2 modifier for each complex form. Swap specifies that it effects this modifier. If Swap was meant to only reduce the cumulative effect of multiple -2 modifiers, it would have stated so. Instead, it states that it lowers the -2 modifier by one for sustaining a complex form.

That's how I read it initially, the fact you can only take it twice being a clear indication. And you can only conclude that the errata clarification which supports the above interpretation was meant to do just that. After all, why errata ambiguous text with ambiguous text?

Clearly, two levels of Swap remove any penalties for sustaining a complex form.

clearly? it's about as clear as mud. i read that whole thing and followed along, and i'm still not getting how you can say it's clearly one way or the other. the errata is just as unclear as the original. it really desparately needs an example.

What is unclear about the -2 modifier for sustaining a complex form being reduced? Where does it point out this effects the cumulative total of penalties from sustaining any complex forms and not, as it states clearly, the -2 penalty for sustaining a complex form? You do see the difference in language?

It's ok if you don't like how it works. You're free to drop or modify it in your games. But please, point out where it's ambiguous.

I don't want to sound confrontational here, I'm sorry if it comes off that way. I'm curious what part of the rule, now modified by errata, is unclear.