Loose thoughts while I'm at work away from my books. If this is a listed modificaiton somewhere or has been covered to death, I apologize in advance.

I also want to preface this by saying my experience with firearms is extremly limited, so if we start talking specifics and statistics, expect me to do a lot of smiling and nodding

I was wondering if you could build recoil compensation into a cyberarm? Would it be possible to put "shocks" of a short into the forearm to deal with the force generated by a gunshot? The arm would move back, slightly, absorbing the shock, but keeping the gun level and on target. Good idea? Stupid? Horibble flaw I'm not seeing? Tear it up.

The "Cyberarm Gyromount" is found on pg36 of Man & Machine.

Me and Arethusa also reason that a cybernetic non-datajacked smartlink going through a cyberarm linked with a router could provided improved impulse control that would effectively allow you to control the gun with less difficulty.

Basically, it's an idea I came up with for another project of mine: you take your standard cyberpunk weapon link that contains information about the impulse generated by the weapon's recoil and feed that data into the system controlling your cybernetic implants. It them responds by tensing the right muscles with the right amount of force in order to at least partially cancel weapon recoil. I will say that it does not really suit Shadowrun, however, and really would make more sense as partially canceling recoil than compensating up to a certain amount.

Like I said, I didn't come up with it as a part of an SR cyberarm. In the case of what I'd imagined, there were cybernetic muscle-like systems. In SR's case, sure, hydraulics or whatever else it uses.

And, no, it's not as simple as increased strength, because a very strong and otherwise normal human being is not going to have this kind of capability. I don't believe there's anything in SR canon like this.

Wouldn't that work just as well with a meat-arm?

What exactly does the "limited simsense rig" bring to the smartlink party anyhow?

It wouldn't work with a meat arm unless that meat arm is cybernetically controlled.

And it brings nothing. It was a ridiculous concept. Supposedly, you get different tactile sensations depending on weapon capacity, because, clearly, a simple HUD display was impossible.

I always thought it was to track the exact position of your arm while pointing the gun.

This is what confused me - I'm sure that in SR1 the smartlink explaination was that it had a laser sight (or equivalent) which then mapped back to your field of vision to generate the crosshair. Of course I might be wrong and that could just have been my interpretation of it.

However - the presence of the simrig, to me, indicates control over the muscles in the arm - the arm is kept steady and in the correct position by the targeting system, which would allow a certain benefit against recoil (assuming the arm was strong enough).

If it's just to provide feedback - and feedback only comes from the arm/wrist/hand then how can it tell where the *gun* is actually pointing - I don't know a lot about this IRL but surely every gun has a slightly different grip style (some of the examples in Plastic Warriors' Running Gear mention about holding the gun in a different way) so how does the smartlink system know where the gun barrel is in relation to the hand?

Whilst I'm ranting, how come in SR2, the intro story (Plus Ca Change) they mention that the Ork Sammie has "nerve contact pads, the kind they use for cheap smartgun links that don't form a dermal circuit" - sounds like induction pads to me - even 10 years later they're still in use. What gives?

No, the simrig only gives sensory feedback. As silly a concept as it is, it does not in any way suggest even minor motor control over the arm itself. And, no, tactile feedback has nothing to do with tracking the position of the gun relative to the shooter. It's strictly a one way system and does nothing for calculating or gathering information; it's only intent, however conceivably useless, is to provide the end user with information about his or her weapon.