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How do you get High Availability Gear?

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falar

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« on: <11-16-15/1353:29> »
So, for getting higher availability gear, you need to follow the standard Availability Test rules with your contacts rolling Loyalty + Connection times two. Outside of actually acquiring gear during a session, this will generally be done as a downtime action. This means that you don't roll dice - you buy hits.

If you yourself are a face, you should be able to get up to 19 availability fairly easily. Your contacts, however, will have trouble exceeding 14 availability. Given that most Missions connections only have a Connection rating from 3-5, this means that they can really only provide upgrades if you're Loyalty 2+ with them. Loyalty maxes out at 6 (and many contacts have a maximum loyalty), which means that you're stuck at nothing greater than Availability 15, outside of a few options.

Do I have that right? Or am I misinterpreting the contacts roll? Is it (Loyalty + Connection) x 2 or ( Loyalty + Connection x 2)? One of them makes it far more possible to acquire high-level gear than the other.

falar

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« Reply #1 on: <11-16-15/1402:06> »
As a bit of a thought experiment - I'm a nova-hot decker and I want to grab a Fairlight Excalibur from my girl, Becky 99. I've done a fair number of runs for her, so I'm sitting at a pretty respectable 4 loyalty. With her connection rating of 4, that means she rolls 12 dice to try to find me my next deck. She will always fail though, since it has an availability of 16 and therefore buys 4 hits and she can only buy 3 hits.

To make it possible for her to find it, I need to find a way to get more on her availability check. The way to do that is to spread more cash around - 25% of the item's cost per dice you want to add. So I can get her to be able to find it if I spend another 100% more on it.

Oh, and she's a Fixer, so I have a 10% markup.

That'll be a cool 1,728,825 nuyen to get my new deck and it will take a month. Ouch, that hurts. Let's see if we run it through Simon Andrews instead.

He has 5 Connection and 3 Loyalty. I'm still going to end up paying an additional 75% of the cost of the deck to give him enough dice to find my deck. So I'm still out 1,523,012 nuyen.

Beta

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« Reply #2 on: <11-16-15/1415:17> »
In my game we discovered that the 8 availability on most spell formulas made them close to impossible for the shaman in my game to get his paws on, if following the rules as I understood them (and while I don't have the book in front of my, I thought contacts rolled their Char+negotiate+connection?)

We are trialling a house rule of making it a modified form of extended test.  All the usual extended test rules apply, except that each additional roll adds 25% to the price. 

Basically on the first roll, you've checked your usual network, if they've got it and are willing to sell, you get it at the usual price.  If they don't have it, or whoever has it is reluctant to sell, you can keep digging, and upping the price either trying to convince someone to sell, or your contacts are reaching farther into their networks so more people are adding a mark-up along the way).  You can give up at any point if the price is getting too high for you, and can start again from scratch after twice the usual aquisistion period.

I need to do a bit more math to figure out if I need to add a fudge factor onto the availabilities to keep rare gear from being too easy to get.

falar

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« Reply #3 on: <11-16-15/1450:59> »
In my game we discovered that the 8 availability on most spell formulas made them close to impossible for the shaman in my game to get his paws on, if following the rules as I understood them (and while I don't have the book in front of my, I thought contacts rolled their Char+negotiate+connection?)

Contacts roll Charisma + Negotiate. Their Connection is a modifier on their social limit for that roll. It does not affect their dice pool.

In Missions, since you don't usually know the Charisma or Negotiate ratings for your contacts, you use Loyalty + Connection x 2. Since this is expressed in English, it's unclear if it means (Loyalty + Connection) x 2 or (Loyalty + Connection x 2). Or, for a 3/5 contact, if it's 16 or 13 that they roll (respectively).

ScytheKnight

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« Reply #4 on: <11-16-15/1542:22> »
It's Connection x 2 + Loyalty.

Also remember that you can spend an extra 25% of item value to gain an extra dice on your availability check.
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falar

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« Reply #5 on: <11-16-15/1615:36> »
Also remember that you can spend an extra 25% of item value to gain an extra dice on your availability check.

Yeah, I covered that in my second post. It basically makes already expensive things unattainably expensive. Which I don't think is a Missions design goal. I also don't think it's a Missions design goal that you should have to pay 185% to 210% markup on the most commonly used bullets (APDS).

ScytheKnight

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« Reply #6 on: <11-16-15/1804:25> »
Well a few more things to consider. The Availability test is opposed, thus it could be argued that powers like Authoritative Tone apply, as may things like Tailored Pheromones as it's reasonable to assume much of this is being done face-to-face.

Honestly even for Missions getting to 12 dice on an Availability check isn't thaaat difficult for a Face. If you look at the examples from Run Faster, most gear focused contacts have at least 4 Connection giving them 8 + Loyalty dice from the start.

As for insanely expensive things... Foci and 'ware can be upgraded while RCCs and Cyberdecks are having upgrade rules looked into. Outside of those, you're looking at fragging big guns, top of the line armor and premium ammo, all of them should perhaps be extremely hard to get for simple balance reasons.
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Raven2049

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« Reply #7 on: <11-16-15/1856:27> »
As far as your first post goes and if you are the "face" doing all the legwork and talking to the right people, you ARE the contact your using to get the gear. i have a friend who spent the downtime to find his own milspec heavy armor and helmet. basically the rule for it is that however long the time it would take the fixer/gear person/talismonger etc to get you the gear, you are marking off that amount of time off of your calendar and you cant do anything else during that time.

And it is (Connection x2) + loyalty and any extra dice you need to buy is 25% markup of the cost.




falar

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« Reply #8 on: <11-17-15/0941:01> »
As for insanely expensive things... Foci and 'ware can be upgraded while RCCs and Cyberdecks are having upgrade rules looked into. Outside of those, you're looking at fragging big guns, top of the line armor and premium ammo, all of them should perhaps be extremely hard to get for simple balance reasons.
There's plenty of 'ware that you might have saved a spot in your character for that you're not upgrading. For instance - Pain Editor for your friendly neighborhood Street Sam or Neocortical and Limbic Soft Nanoware systems for your Decker or Rigger. Or, heck, an Adapsin Geneware treatment, which is basically sitting out there saying, "Pick me!" before you upgrade or otherwise change your cyberware.

And, even if you are upgrading, you still have to make the Availability test to get it, presumably. So if you're going from your Centaur Liminal Body to an Alphaware Centaur Liminal Body, you'd still need to hit an availability of 14 for that upgrade. Heaven forfend if you want to upgrade to Betaware, which means you need 16 Availability. And to replace/upgrade the Armor Enhancements you already had would be now an availability of 17-19.

I'm pretty sure that the +25% option isn't meant to be required to be used to advance gear-dependent characters. In normal play, you would be rolling something like Charisma 4-8 for your contact, plus a Negotiation of 7-10, which would pretty easily get you gear up to a 19 availability.

jim1701

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« Reply #9 on: <11-17-15/1844:27> »
In missions anything with an availability up to 15 should be attainable by any starting contact with a connection rating of 5 and a loyalty of 2.  Since you are  buying hits and the gear is buying hits you still end up with a tie which is good enough to get the item at list price it just takes longer to acquire (pp 418.)  That generally shouldn't be a problem except with the most expensive items. 

Gear with a rating up to 19 is a little harder to get and probably a little more expensive unless you have a good Face (or are a good Face.)  But a contact with a connection of 5 and a loyalty of 4 (stock contact that you have done a few favors for) plus a couple extra dice (+50% cost) will still get you those items too. 

I do agree, however, that contacts in Missions could use some tweaking.  I also wouldn't mind seeing them change the cost modifier for extra dice from +25% to +10% as well.

falar

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« Reply #10 on: <11-18-15/0933:44> »
I do agree, however, that contacts in Missions could use some tweaking.  I also wouldn't mind seeing them change the cost modifier for extra dice from +25% to +10% as well.
I was thinking something like:
  • Swag contacts automatically get Connection/2 (round up) hits to acquire gear. Anything that can be obtained with the automatic hits counts as succeeding, even if it ties.
  • If more hits are required, roll Connectionx2 to add to their base.
  • Swag contacts that are for specific gear categories automatically get one additional hit when acquiring anything in their purview.
This means that a Connection 4 fixer could get you anything up to Availability 19 and a Connection 5 fixer can get you anything up to Availability 23.

jim1701

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« Reply #11 on: <11-19-15/1304:27> »
Connection 5 getting availability 23 gear makes it too easy in my book.  But YMMV.

falar

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« Reply #12 on: <11-19-15/1432:48> »
Considering that barely touches good cyber/bioware, I think it's okay. It still wouldn't get me Betaware Wired Reflexes 3 or Betaware Mscle Replacement 4 or even an Alphaware Suprathyroid Gland.

jim1701

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« Reply #13 on: <11-19-15/1831:29> »
Considering that barely touches good cyber/bioware, I think it's okay. It still wouldn't get me Betaware Wired Reflexes 3 or Betaware Mscle Replacement 4 or even an Alphaware Suprathyroid Gland.

Well IMHO considering Betaware is the best quality stuff available on the open market (Deltaware isn't the open market) it should be somewhat difficult to get.  And an Alphaware Suprathyroid Gland is 22R so you could get one under this scenario. 

Raven2049

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« Reply #14 on: <11-19-15/1930:19> »

I do agree, however, that contacts in Missions could use some tweaking.  I also wouldn't mind seeing them change the cost modifier for extra dice from +25% to +10% as well.

god this would be nice, and i would have a ton of extra $$ on my rigger, but i highly doubt a drop of that much will be implemented. I doubt a drop of anything will be implemented, but we can pray.

Connection 5 getting availability 23 gear makes it too easy in my book.  But YMMV.

agreed, dont know how you would work it but a connection 6 contact should be the only type of contact that can get you stuff 20+

And i love the idea of having a contact be able to get you anything but if it falls under their purview they get one automatic bonus success. that sounds like something that should be added somehow.