I'm the drone guy. I've got the little nuggets all over the place sneaking around before the team makes contact.

I can draw a map and relay this information to my team, I can keep track of moving targets and relay this, and I can monitor escape routes are still viable.

But I want to add dice. I'm sure I've read it in one of the books somewhere, but I can't remember where, is there any way of me adding dice to my team mates attacks, it tell g their smart links where a target is they can't see or aiding them in any other way dice wise?

As I said, sure I've seen it, but I've got a lot of books and I can't remember where


CoyoteNZ

Dunno. Maybe something like the TacNet from SR4?

Bye
Thanee

Technically, the extra information should allow you to do Surprise Tests with your team members being sitting in ambush (+6 dice). You can essentially repeatedly lure them into ambushes.

You could also slap some automatic weapons on your drones and spray Suppressive Fire from above. That's gonna ruin someone's day fast.

SR4 had a generic rule that, at the GM's discretion, if a team had superior information, the GM could could grant +1 to +3 dice for all actions. That isn't in SR5 (that I remember) but your GM might allow it. Then again if he does, I also expect you're drones are gonna start getting knocked out of the sky on a pretty regular basis.

Careful what you wish for

There is a new version of TacNet in one of the books. Can't find it now, I have two many books; but from memory it cost a fortune

One of my drones did that. Poor thing is smoke and ash now

The stupidly over priced PTAC is in Run & Gun on pgs 104 -105. I have no idea how the SR4 Tacnet went from 3000¥ a rating point to half a million and up in SR5. It's like who ever was pricing things decided to do it in Pesos or something. Most of the prices seem too high by a factor of 10.

You guys just keep supplying more and more reasons justifying my sticking with 4e.

Oh you don't need more reasons. The ones you have are enough. We tried it for a while and it ended up being the almost edition. That is, you could almost make the character you want, but not really. You could almost do all the same things you could in 4th, but not really. You could almost play the game with just the core book, but not really. So many good ideas in there with terrible execution. I'm sure those who are fans of 5th will disagree and good on them but for me and my group it was a failure. This 'revamp' of the tac-net is just one of many examples why.

Actually I always suspected they thought it was $3000 and converted it to (nu)yen which would jump it up to 313216 yen and then added a bit on top for 2070 inflation/converting to nuyen.

Yeah, SR5 surely has some issues. Pricing is strange in many places (cyberware is too expensive, also).

But there are quite a lot of good ideas in there as well.

Bye
Thanee

The things I hate about 5th edition is that they got rid of the half Essence rule for cyber/bioware, the wireless rules are completely insane, and the cost of a deck is so ludicrous that NO hacker would ever be able to get a good one.

If they made rules for building your own deck then I could see how Deckers would work, but if you want to be a Decker, you pretty much are just a Decker. In 4th edition you could be a Decker and Street Sammy. Hell, if you wanted to, you could be a Decker/Support Mage (Heal/Fix/Fashion/Makeover). With Chummer4, I made a number of characters and the Decker/Mage was not half bad. His skills in a firefight sucked badly, but he could deck well and could heal up teammates. The Decker/Sammy build was good in a Firefight AND in cyberspace.

The costs were Errata'd. They are still quite high, but... less quite high.

P. 105, ADJUSTMENTS IN PERSONAL
INTEGRATED TACTICAL NETWORK COSTS
Costs are changed as follows:
Level I: Avail 12R, cost 115,000¥
Level II: Avail 18R, cost 325,000¥
Level III: Avail 18F, cost 855,000¥

"Quite High"? How about "Completely fragging insane"! You can get a level 3 PITW or a Level 3 Deltaware Synaptic Booster and 135,000 extra to spend on other things like Fake SINS, or you can get a Fairlight Excaliber cyberdeck... implanted (Delta grade for giggles), a Delta grade datajack, and a Ford Americar, and still have 7,000 to play around with.

That is at once the saddest and yet most likely explanation I've seen yet. It would explain so much.


No kidding. Funny thing is that in 4th ed they talk about high school sports teams using tac-nets to aid in play strategy. So these things would be pretty damn common. And along comes 5th ed with the PTAC. Nope, not common anymore. No non-professional sports team is going to use this. Hell, even some of the poorer pro teams won't use it because they can't afford it. Yet it gets included as stuff shadowrunners would use except, as you point out, you can get much more useful gear for less money.

LOL! I am so tempted to add this to my signature...

Teamwork Tests?

Feel free.

Aaron are you trying to help the OP? Why would you do that when we were all setting off on a nice tangent? Tangents are fun.

The ONLY way I see 'Runners using this is if they pirate it. I, as a player, would never waste that much money for software that gives some nice bonuses, but honestly not THAT nice. There are way too many better things to blow your cash on.

Ok, that is really annoying.

What is the point of me buying all these darn PDF's if I still have to keep looking up errata!

Update the darn PDF's guys!

/rant over

It's CGL
What did you expect ?
Free Customer Service ?
Pah

Hough!
Medicineman

It should happen, eventually. In SR4A, all the PDFs got updated with errata as well.

Bye
Thanee

Sort of. They also got unerrataed when they added the correct page numbers to Arsenal. Quality control is not Catalyst's strong suit.

I would think the biggest advantage to having "the little nuggets all over the place" is Information Guided Fire (from Arsenal) if that still exists in SR5. Get the latest position of enemy units' positions and when they're clustered, soften them up with artillery / RPG before entering the building yourselves (as an emergency response team just passing by). The microdrones can seek refuge in wall cavities at the last minute. Or if big guns are out, simply knowing exactly where and when to fire through the ceiling / wall to ruin their day offsets their home advantage.

In SR4 at least you could use Optimised hardware (from Unwired) to get a +1 dice to rolls (getting the benefit of a virtual Rating 5 tacnet for +500Y). So there might be similar beneficial options in the SR5 books, located just as distantly.

While you're doing the comparison, keep things in perspective with the considerable investment required to run a Battletac System in SR3. SR4 had it (too) easy.

Bodak, it's software. There is no hardware you have to buy with the system. If there was hardware you had to buy to get it working then I can see the cost, but software... please NOTHING is that expensive in the software world.

Indeed, it is hardware. Implanted cyberware, plus an external Tactical Computer, which required a specific Skill to use: See what I mean now?

SR2 had it powerful
SR3 had it costly
SR4 had it powerful
SR5 had it costly

I see a trend here. Maybe in SR6 we can it get balanced. I wouldn't think it would be that hard a thing to do. Just don't overdo things in one direction or the other.