Meh.

I don't see the point of wireless tech for anything that will remain in contact with your body or clothing 99.9% of the time, and that 0.1% of the time might as well be the same moment you needed to fire your gun from 11 meters away.

Say what?

Did you ever see a sammie in SR3 take the SL induction pads? Admitted i only saw it a couple of times, but i suspect that had more to do them taking extra essense.

EDIT: Also i don't remember GMs usually strictly requiring that the PC take an action to jack in a different weapon, or to jack in a weapon that wasn't already obviously jacked in. It was one of those "we'll all ignore that logical requirement, for PCs and NPCs alike, to save the hassle". That would make the essense cost of the pads seem a lot cheaper, especially when quickdrawing that Predator 3 from the hidden holster.

Since it seems to be the DNI that really chews up essense (cyberlimbs aside) wireless might actually end up being essense friendly compared to wiring up everything internally.

As for the external wire harness have you ever tried this with cell phones and stuff IRL? Man what a pain, and i wasn't even scaling walls or getting shot at.

Well, there isn't a huge point to it. I don't think you're going to see everyone using wireless smartlinks. It's an option, and with it comes its own advantages and disadvantages.

A wireless smartlink system will certainly be cheaper and more essence friendly than an implanted cybernetic system. If you use a wireless smartlink and wireless smartgoggles, there's no implantation at all. Now, you could also use an old school wired smartlink/goggle setup, which is likely also cheap and definitely essence friendly. But it also can be somewhat obvious (unless the wires are well hidden, there's a cable going from your gun to your glasses) and a bastard GM like me is going to have fun with your cables when you roll up a glitch.

A wireless smartlink system can also be integrated easily into a network. You can bounce the data through other routers and to other users in the network (such as fellow runner teammates). Doing that with an old school external wired setup just isn't possible unless you shell out added cash for special wireless transmitters specifically for that purpose. Doing that with an implanted system requires additional implant tech, some sort of implant wireless transmitter. More essence loss.

A wireless smartlink system may allow you to perform some neat tricks, depending on how much gun control is built into the system (something I personally don't know). Since it's wireless, as long as you're within range, you don't actually need to be touching the gun to do whatever it is you can do with a smartlink exactly. Probably not terribly useful (though I guess that really depends on what a smartlink allows you to do), but it's something you can't do with an implanted or wired setup.

My characters, the ones who will use smartlinks, will go with implant. It's the safest, sure-fire solution. But a street ganger might not be terribly concerned about the safest, sure-fire solution. To him, a wireless setup is cheaper and easier to get, which is much more important.

Thanks for the [almost] confirmation.

Since when did this become about YOUR desires and preferences?

Whoa, whoa, whoa. What is this "9" you speak of? Is that the limit in total you have after factoring artifical sources like 'ware and such? Or just a post chargen limit like SR3 had, where every point is really expensive?

So more of a free-form than before for selecting how much punch you put in your spell. At first blush i like that tact.

P.S. I guess that means some big changes in the area of hermetic libraries and such.

Suh-weet. I have a feeling this means that spells in general are more "expensive" to buy, but at least it gets rid of that annoying "why buy Spell X at more than Force 1?" problem.

Actually, low-power RF doesn't cause an appreciably higher cancer risk.

Just depressing. These changes to magic are drastically affecting the setting, the feel of the game.

Now, these changes are kinda cool - if they were introduced say, several hundred years into the cycle, when magic is getting easier. But not now, and not this fast. (IN fact they do help me - I've been toying with a setting just before the Horrors come over, and looking for ideas to make magic easier, reflecting the rise in mana)

As far as hacking guns, clothes, etc - think of this - How many home networks are called MSHome, and How many routers still have the default login/passwords. And how many have had the WEP actually activated. The average joe on the street will not have taken his new toy, accessed it's system and changed the settings - if they even knew how.

And range? If your inflitating a corp facility, you'll be surrounded by WAP's. Once you are detected insystem, the corp decke can start in on your weapons, by the time the guards get there, you have no guns. And if your team is sharing data on some sort of network, well it's just that much easier.

*****************

A question for the player at orgins: - any word on the Technomancers? Do they need any hardware at all to access the Matrix?

Everything electronic has protiection on it to avoid getting hacked. Better quality offers more protection, and there of course will be ways to imrpove the "Store Bought" protection systems.

While I'm not sure if Fanpro is going to work up any sort of "In game" resoning for the changes to magic. None of the other editions did (Spells always get reworked... 1st-2nd ed, you not only bought specific force levels, but also bought different spells for different damage levels. 3nd did away with grounding, changed the interaction between auras, and made it so you could change the damage level of a spell).

I'm basically chalking it up to an aferteffect of the magic spike from YotC, and simple SOTA. Mages have access to a little more power now that the mana level has risen again. Thus they have a little more control of their spells, and can alter them a bit (aka, throw different force levels). As for spirits, I think a group of Shamans and a Group of Mages just finally got together to dicuss their different tradtions, and realized that with the inmcreased mana level, they could each do what the other used to.

<shrug>

Neither of these seems to have an apprciable aspect on the game beyond a little streamlining. And neither changes the feel anymore than taking away individual damage level spells did in 3rd ed.

Bull

I only give that Schleprock impersonation a 7.6. But a well placed "wowsy wowsy woo woo" would have likely gotten you into the high 8's.

That's right. Vibration modes of water are usually good frequencies to pick, although your signal will be better masked in the tropics than in the desert.

It's not that hard to get electronics that give you 100-1000x more sensitivity for detection, and an antenna 100-1000x larger than you have in a tiny RFID-reading device. So someone can snoop RFID from 100-1000x farther away than you'd expect. (That means four inches becomes ten meters, and an arm's length becomes a kilometer!)

Also, you can send signals using a r^2 law also, so the same thing applies if you use your larger and more powerful transmission antenna along with your receiver.

Basically, any radiation that decreases as r^2 is not particularly secure. Something that decreases as r^2 * e^(-r/s) is much better (taking advantage of atmospheric opacity) because exponentials drop off really fast; normally, you'd set up your system to operate within 1-2 characteristic lengths s; for someone to operate just 10x further away, they'd need to have a detector 100*e^10 = 2,200,000 times more sensitive. So there you're pretty safe outside of 10 characteristic lengths. I think there are bands where s is single-digit meters in the atmosphere.

Yes, the setting was changed for magic quite a bit. I almost didn't switch to SR3 because there were a number of ways in which the magic system was changed and dumbed down--anchoring, in particular, went from being powerful and versatile without (in my experience) being game-breaking, to being almost entirely useless. This was a big deal because my primary character got her Th.D. on topics related to anchoring, and that entire backstory (and a number of related runs) disappeared.

Since there were a number of improvements to the magic system (anchoring was not one, nor was grounding, but changing spells to sorcery was okay, and the damaging spells having variable drain levels was good), as well as some improvements in other places (and no huge new flaws), I stuck it out and wrote a few custom metamagics to avoid having my primary character's background (including a good deal of in-game play) become impossible.

I've seen a lot of downsides to SR4, and no upsides that couldn't have been had with a modification of SR3 rules, so the motivation is, at this point, rather less.

This "dumbed down" term i've found intreging. I've seen it used, by you and others here and others in very different circumstances, often to describe a situation where a established strategy that takes advantage of an aspect of the game rules is removed. With the strategy removed the strategy starts looking like it had become more of a crutch than anything since there are plenty of other strategies to be found and used. So the complaint with the "dumbing down" looks more like a complaint based on having to find another tool to leverage.

Ironic that "dumbing down" is more a description of intellectual sloth in user of the term than anything in the system or the designers they speaking ill of.

I just wonder if you weren't saying similar things 7 years ago. Bemoaning the dumbing down of SR2 to make way for the vastly inferior SR3. Till you actually saw SR3 and decided maybe it wasn't so bad and it'd be too much hassle to redo SR2.

That´s an awsome picture you painted there. Any megalomaniac organization would give themselves that power if they could.

This is a pathetic debating tactic. You didn't actually address the changes to anchoring, but instead seized on a term and speculated upon it, and then speculated further upon the intellectual sloth of people who use that term.

If you don't very carefully explain that you're not intending to discredit the argument or poster with irrelevant remarks, there's little incentive for other people to read what you say.

In this particular case, Anchoring was converted from something where you had control of which spells you linked, and how, and how long the anchoring lasted, and so forth and so on. There was a great deal of sophistication present in the way you could use anchoring. In SR3, this was dumbed down--you have a detection spell, a linked spell, you set it up and boom! it goes off, and we're all done now. That is dumbing down. That is taking a system of moderate complexity that allowed great variety in how you used it, and turning it into something really simple.

So your intrigue and supposition of intellectual sloth is completely off-base. I posit that a retraction or clarification is in order.

Anchoring became essentially useless with SR3 because quickening was almost always preferable.

I wasn't.

[edit](Of course, I had specific complaints, and I did complain about Anchoring then, but they were topical complaints, not systemic ones.)[/edit]

Yeah, but you need to get through the encryption too. Today's secure RFID tags use a challenge-response protocol, so you need the tag (or the smartlink) to talk back to you to complete authentication (so you need to read the tag from a distance, since the tag definitely won't have the power to reach you). You're going to need one hell of directional antenna to do that from a distance.

Ellery: 1, blakkie: 0

I don't even read his stuff anymore, personally.

I guess I must not have been clear in that I never said I was in favor of a modern cybernetic Smartlink or the cable version, but something else entirely, something which I described in (I think) my first post to this thread: non-cybernetic conductive technology. Serious, man, real life tech is already outpacing fourth edition if you're stuck seeing the only non-cyber, non-wireless option to be free-hanging cables. How stupid do you think I am? Just because I don't want cyber or wireless doesn't mean my PCs are going to look like the Borg with coaxial wires sprouting from all their gear.

Aside from that, I should mention that most of this is with regards to magical characters who aren't going to get a cybernetic Smartlink system even if the essence cost for a Smartlink routed to a radio or wireless receiver is 0.01 for both. Plus there is the whole matter of implanting a radio in your brain, which has always seemed to me to be really dumb.

Well, what are you thinking exactly? Conductive weave clothing? Personal body EM field transmission? I mean, somehow the signals still have to get from the gun to whatever is on your eyes and vice versa.

Since always, since the brain is capable of moving ions. Can't actually do anything useful with them, though. I suspect that if anything mfb is alluding to the rumored ability of the critters formerly known as Otaku to interface with the neo-WMI system without technological gear.

~J

Seriously?

Yeah, but if that's sufficiently impossible (or exponentially improbable) to make widespread use of the wireless technology practical, it's also going to be similarly impossible for hackers and technomancers to do the exact same thing to electronic door systems, databases, sensor networks, and the like. There's no reason why, if you can hack things that are intended to be of vital security, and thus possessed of state-of-the-art authentication, such as secure doors, databases full of trade secrets, and the like, that you can't hack anything with wireless connectivity, smartlinks included.

Heck, unless someone has an archaic central wiring scheme connected to a datajack, most cyberware with advanced processors and I/O systems, for diagnostic and firmware upgradeability purposes, will likely possess some means of transdermal wireless interface, and thus be hackable. Turn off someone's wired reflexes by setting them into diagnostic reset, or remotely engaging a reflex trigger? Automatically engage someone's RAS-override to paralyze characters equipped with simesense-immersion-enabling augmentations (datajacks and whatever the intended wireless equivalent will be)?

If these technologies use some kind of cryptographic security scheme that makes them unhackable, you encounter the argument of why such schemes aren't present just about everywhere. Without leaping into the realm of implausibility (or breaking out the hated "it just is!" response), hackers are going to be able to do some nasty things to cyborgs, or they're going to be left out in the cold when GMs start asking (or just doing it on their own) why the unbreakable cyberware-only security isn't used elsewhere.

[edit]
As a sidenote, on one particular adventure I played in a month or two after Cybertechnology was released, with the advent of cyberzombies, the team managed to defeat a trio of them by having the infowarfare specialist remotely activate their datajacks' RAS-overrides and jam attempts to deactivate, automatically causing them a +8 TN# to all physical actions. The GM gave us bonus karma for that trick.
[/edit]

You, sir, are my new ray of enlightenment and I wish to subscribe to your teachings.

A lecture about debating technique? How about you save it for a time when you don't just change subjects, you know to something unrelated like anchoring. The subject wasn't about how much magic changed between SR2 and SR3 overall, it was about how this change in spirits was relatively small.

I didn't really see much "debate" from you about that. So why bother respond. Instead you wander off on a tangent. *shrug*

So you get likewise.

EDIT:

Isn't that remarkable close to my point about tossing this "dumbing down" red word phrase about? Yes, i believe it is.

Well i guess SR4 is systemically screwed given your incredible analytical skills and dumbing down assessments. I would think that you would be best moving on anytime now as they obviously aren't going to switch from fixed TN at this point.

I'm really starting to look forward to 6 weeks from down when Eldrick's head implodes from what he sees as vast sweeping world changes, and there is much gnashing of teeth as the death of Shadowrun is pronounced 12-fold.

I do have a dream that all the sadsack moaning would then stop as the [edit:rabid] detractors put their money where their mouth is, not buying SR4, and then put their mouth where their gaming is, somewhere other than SR4. A naive dream you say? Yes, i suppose it is. I mean why else would you still be here if there wasn't a real possibility that you'd buy SR4? Even as systemically flawed as you believe it to be.

I didn't say it was safe. I don't think it should be. I think it should be the cheap and convenient alternative. I personally think it should be the kind of smartlink system you pick up off a back-alley table in the Bronx with a pair of imitation-Rayban wireless smartgoggles made in the Canton Confederation. Popular with gangers, pirates, and third world paramilitary thugs who just got them off a ship from the black markets in Greece.

I don't know if that's the way they are doing it, but it's the way I would do it.

I'm not entirely convinced you ever did.

P.S. I'd also would have to question your scoring credentials given your lack of reading.

So you share the dream too?

And then:

Who changed subjects? I thought you did, but I'm probably wrong.

You made a poor comparison. The comparison was elaborated on to demonstrate why it was a shoddy comparison. Then you try to blame the person for bringing up something you initiated? Then things get even wackier.

Yes,

Ellery 1 - blakkie 0

I don't think the bound/unbound is the real drastic change though, it is all traditions using the same spirits. And to tie it into the subject you broached about the changes from SR2 to SR3, those changes seemed more to the mechanics. This change seems more like a setting change. Just like hackers seems like a setting change.

I was comparing to the grounding change. She switched away from that.

But yes it is my bad that i gave her the openning to go off bitching an moaning about how SR2 to SR3 was bad and it dumbed down something or other (that apparently others had balance issues with?)....and then go on to explain that adding a metamagics fixed up her existing PC issues [with background story?]. So i guess the "huge" setting changes really were something that could be overcome with a little creative thought?

Which is why i really laugh at this SR3 to SR4 bitching and moaning about there being such deep changes to the Shadowrun world when the mechanics change a bit.