[Tecumseh]

I love the idea of Wireless Skillsoft Networks (Chrome Flesh, p. 78) but I'm having trouble digesting the listed prices.

Basic membership is ¥2,000 a month and gives you access to Rating 1 Knowsofts. Rating 1 translates to Beginner. If we go back to SR4A's table of skill descriptions (which has been diluted somewhat since skill caps are now 12-13 instead of 6-7), rating 1 was the equivalent of a high school graduate. All of that for ¥2,000 a month, even though in many situations a simple Matrix Search could likely answer any question that a Rating 1 Knowsoft could address. The Matrix Search, I should note, is ¥0 a month.

Silver, Gold, and Platinum range from ¥10,000 to ¥20,000 a month. So, a Silver membership, which entitles the user to any Rating 2 Knowsofts and Activesofts, costs the equivalent of a High Lifestyle. I'm having a hard time envisioning who the target market is for these services. Maybe a corp drops ¥20,000 a month on their VIPs so that they can have a bunch of knowledge at their fingertips and maybe the skills to get themselves out of a jam but this still seems excessively expensive to me. The only Shadowrunners I can imagine affording this are Prime Runners or Legends, and if they have that much nuyen to sling around then they should probably get out of the game and be eating pineapple on the beach somewhere.

This could be a fun perk for a PC to get from the Johnson - "I'll throw in a month of our Gold service to sweeten the deal" - but who could afford this out of their own pocket? If you have that much cash to spare it seems like you should be saving up for Synaptic Boosters 3 or your 100 months of High Lifestyle to retire in style.

Again, I really like the idea. Maybe I'm just GMing games where nuyen is scarce, but I'm thinking about adjusting the costs to Yearly instead of Monthly. I grant that the service is powerful, but hit to initiative, the fact that you can only access one skill at a time, and the necessity of being wireless enabled all seem to reign it in from abuse.

Am I missing anything? Wakshaani, any behind-the-scenes insights?

[adzling]

Considering the unending utility of the service and the comparative cost to stock up on similar rated active softs it seems like a bargain to me, whether or not you can afford it.

Although I did not notice that you can only load one skill at once time from the network, if that is true I would remove that restriction and let you load as many as your chipjack or skilljack can fit.

[I_AM_ZHOUL!!!]

The Skilljack/Skillwire combination becomes very powerful in the sheer utility & versatility offered because of them. They seem to be having issues trying to make them Balanced & Viable simultaneously. If they are to cheap, then everyone will get them. If they are to expensive than it becomes a very niche item contrary to the Lore where they are very prevalent. I also am not impressed by the implementation of "Cloud based" skillsofts system... even if the idea behind it is very solid. It seems like a better investment to just buy Rating 4 Activesofts during Chargen then expand your collection as you get nuyen from play. That way you always have the ones you need in you Skilljack/Chipjack and any secondary skills in your pocket to jack in as needed. The Cloud based system makes perfect sense in a Corp setting since they can cycle them through workers without any risk of loss (they definitely are worth stealing) as well as saving a huge upfront investment cost. It just doesn't seem to add enough to a Shadowrunner to be worth it. If an entire team (or at least most) was all using it then the costs would be defrayed enough to make sense like it is for a Corp. Except they would all be limited to the same Skill since only 1 can be loaded into the buffer at a time. If there was some way to have one account and everyone on the account was able to use 1 Skill each... becomes more useful.

There are things that could be done to tweak it into usefulness but as you said... dumping 2x the price of a High lifestyle per month is ruinous using the pay scale provided by SR5. That's a Rating 4 Activesoft a month... that you could have loaded in your head all the time.

This is in the same category as the Redliner Quality in that it's trying to address a deficit but in the end it isn't worth it. The cost for it is just to high  for the bonus provided. So either you ignore the Concept that involves it or you find other ways to mitigate the deficiencies.

[Hobbes]

All the skills in the game for the same cost of one Rating 4 Skillsoft?

The subscription actually makes skillwires much more useful.  A decent array of stats the Renraku Tradejack package and a subscription.  144k and .9 Essence for every skill in the game at 4?  20k a month is rough but doable.  And on a slow month you drop down to a lower sub, on a good month you pick up a new skill for the chipjacks.  Eventually you cover all your most used skills and you drop the sub and just re-up in emergencies.

[Herr Brackhaus]

It also gives you access to speak and understand every language, ever. A single Rating 1 Linguasoft is 1k, and for an ongoing 2k per month you can effectively speak every language ever transcribed to a Linguasoft.

For a face, that's endlessly useful. If you're an Adept, there are better options, but if you're not then this is gold.

[adzling]

Hmm how about a high stat, high $$, low skills street sam (or cybered adept)?

With those low priority E skills that level 4 subscription, a chipjack and some key active and knowlege softs and you might have an edge, making the ultime JoaT possible....

I'm going to have to play with this build...

[Rooks]

It also gives you access to speak and understand every language, ever. A single Rating 1 Linguasoft is 1k, and for an ongoing 2k per month you can effectively speak every language ever transcribed to a Linguasoft.

For a face, that's endlessly useful. If you're an Adept, there are better options, but if you're not then this is gold.

and speak at a grade 1 level

[ScytheKnight]

I think this is once again people falling into the trap of "This does not make me an uber shadowrunner of doom! IT'S USELESS!".

Not everything in the game is, or SHOULD be about making characters uber. Hell, my PbP game has just had a situation of a chopper going out of control, being able to DL even Rating 1 Pilot Aircraft to help stop it plowing into civilian population would be SO FRAGGING HANDY right now!

Rating 2 Move by Wire (via Restricted Gear) + Rating 4 Skilljack + Platinum Skillsoft Network is one HELL of a combination... Any skill in the game, Active, Knowledge or Language at Rating 4... Work on getting yourself a Rating 6 fake SIN, upgrade the jack to Rating 6 that then gives you Knowledge and Language at Rating 6.

Sure it isn't uber... but it can help plug that whole of "Ohh dreck we need someone who knows how to X"... and if the GM needs to keep the tension, then the situation will simply take advantage of gaps or limitations of the Skillsoft. 

[Tecumseh]

To Rook's point, the face would be limited to using 1 die from his or her social skills while relying on the Linguasofts (see p. 151, SR5). One die is better than nothing, and a chance to understand is better than no chance to understand, but it still seems very expensive for ¥2,000 a month. At that price you might want to consider purchasing the linguasofts on the fly as they become needed.

As for all the skills in the game at rating 4, yes, very powerful. But it also means no specializations and no Edge (p. 442, SR5). I think a PC with this service could be tremendously fun but it just seems cost prohibitive for an ongoing campaign. Maybe it would be a good fit for a PbP game or a one-shot, or a Prime Runner campaign where the nuyen flows freely.

I'm not quite sure who ScytheKnight is addressing, as nobody seems to be suggesting that it is useless. My original point is rather the opposite: I think it would be both useful and fun and would therefore like the barrier to entry (or the opportunity cost) to be lower so that more people could enjoy it.

[Hobbes]

Hmm how about a high stat, high $$, low skills street sam (or cybered adept)?

With those low priority E skills that level 4 subscription, a chipjack and some key active and knowlege softs and you might have an edge, making the ultime JoaT possible....

I'm going to have to play with this build...

You still run out of money  : )  Skip the softs completely, the sub should be enough for the first month of runs.  And it would tell you what softs and skills to prioritize buying.

[Wakshaani]

Lunch hour's about to end, but I'll be back on this one more.

Getting the price balance right was a BEAST, and I'm still not sure if it's there or not. Skillsofts are *expensive*, and teh monthly cost is *roughly* teh same as buying one a month... it'd be akin to a movie rental service running about $20 a month (the cost of a new movie) for unlimited watching of movies in their network. The problem is that the entrycost isn't 30$, but thousands of Nuyen. The average Runner can't handle the load with the payrates we have, BUT, as noted about Turbo Bunny and Marionette, the team all chips in and shares the cost for one person to use the network. The "SkillMonkey", in effect, is a "Team Van", where everyone pitches in and, in return, you get a medic/lockpick/Swahilli-speaker/whatever else you need.

In effect, you get a Bard.

More on this one in abouuuut... 4, 5 hours.

[I_AM_ZHOUL!!!]

Lunch hour's about to end, but I'll be back on this one more.

Getting the price balance right was a BEAST, and I'm still not sure if it's there or not. Skillsofts are *expensive*, and teh monthly cost is *roughly* teh same as buying one a month... it'd be akin to a movie rental service running about $20 a month (the cost of a new movie) for unlimited watching of movies in their network. The problem is that the entrycost isn't 30$, but thousands of Nuyen. The average Runner can't handle the load with the payrates we have, BUT, as noted about Turbo Bunny and Marionette, the team all chips in and shares the cost for one person to use the network. The "SkillMonkey", in effect, is a "Team Van", where everyone pitches in and, in return, you get a medic/lockpick/Swahilli-speaker/whatever else you need.

In effect, you get a Bard.

More on this one in abouuuut... 4, 5 hours.

There isn't a "Team Van"... there's a Riggers Van who as part of the team contributes its use to the Team. That's like saying the Teams Cyberdeck or the Teams Wired Reflexes or the Teams Spells. Heck maybe there are Teams that operate like that. But the Skill Monkey needs to bringing the Skill Monkey set to the Team not the other way around. If the Team needs to pay their resources to a player since he is lacking to be able to do his job, that's the characters failure. The Mage isn't needing the Team to invest in his Magic or the Decker needing the Team to invest in his Deck. That's why I said it might work if most or all of the Team was set up to make use of it since the would all be contributing to Themselves. But if a character is so deficit that he's requiring the Team to invest in Him instead of themselves, that character has failed as he isn't Contributing to the whole.

[Hobbes]

Team chip ins are all swell and good, but each character should be able to contribute equally with out needing help from the team.

Reagents help the mage and the spirits can buff the whole team, its not likely the team is chipping in on those.  Riggers have a non-trivial operating budget but are expected to pay there own way.  Street Sams chew up buckets of APDS ammo and on and on.

20k is manageable, but you're not getting any upgrades or buying new kit, and your lifestyle is probably low or worse.  That wouldn't horrible, but the upfront cost of 124k ( Tradejack package) means that likely you're feeling short somewhere.   

And an Edge 7 character effectively has every skill in the game at 6.  So unless your GM is throwing little used skills at your team many times per run and Edge 7 character can probably fill in as your generic Jack of all trades for any skills that can be defaulted.

[Rooks]

Feh, rather get hardwired activesofts, for 1 essence you can get gunnery 5 pilot grouncraft aircraft walker for around 120 000 online skill softs I see it as a netflix of skills or the matrix where you call up link and ask to learn how to fly a helicopter

[Wakshaani]

Huh. Localdevelopment I suppose. The general vibe for decades has been that everyone chips in to keep the van running... yeah, it's the Rigger's van, but it saves *everyone's* bacon. Helps balance out the fact that the Rigger's burning through cash like nobody else.

Interesting!