Uhh not really for reflex 3 you need 3.5 power point which is more than half of the character at chargen and afterwards in initiation it cost 48 karma (unless they also need to raise magic, i cant remember right now if they do for adepts) which by mission thats 10 games if they dont spend it on nothign else which is more than half my promedium campaign. As for the essence, that not important to the adept he mostly has passive powers that arent affected by essence lost. I guess its a money vs karma long walk.
Karma is generally valued at about 2000 nuyen.
Let's use your 48 karma as the standard. That's 96k to get the equivalent of Wired Reflexes 3, no essence cost, and you can get that right out the gate. Standard grade wired reflexes 3 cost more than double that at 217k, along with almost all of your essence. You cannot get it used to lower the cost, because it would then cost more essence than you have (unless you have biocompatibility, in which case it's still even closer to all your essence). You cannot start off with it at all due to availability, short of Restricted Gear, which makes the price tag even more painful, now at 282,100 nuyen for standard grade. 338,520 nuyen for alpha grade, which takes the hit down to 4 essence, or 3.5 if you also have biocompatibility. Counting the 15 karma in qualities necessary to get there, we're talking an equivalent of 185 karma to get those wired reflexes in a way that still takes up just over half your essence.
And essence is a much more precious resource than power points; you can't sit around singing kumbaya to get more of a soul.
Also, keep in mind just how powerful initiative is. On average, Wired Reflexes 3 or Improved Reflexes 3 is going to be a whopping +14.5 to your initiative. That's a damn good initiative roll on a muggle, and it's a full action and a half on top of whatever you were rolling to start with.
That said, it's rarely worthwhile for an adept to start at rank 3. Usually, it's best to start at rank 2, then advance to rank 3 after initiating, which is dead simple to do, unlike going back and upgrading 'ware at a later date.
Adepts' Improved Reflexes are probably the cheapest and most powerful initiative booster in the game, except for the Increase Reflexes spell.
I think this right here is the root of the problem, when we read the book (my last campaign finished before i got chrome flesh) when we read delta ware it wasnt as this massive secret thing, we got the idea it was just an expensive alternative to the normal augmentation in the same vein the iphone is a expensive alternative to the other phones. Yes is expensive but not a state secret but then i read that on chrome flesh and that threw a monkey wrench on things.
I use the example of the gauss riffle because i gave them after a difficult mission a gauss riffle which was broken irreparably and only got 1 shot and they look at that as if i was giving them the holiest of swords to play with but deltware? They just think its expensive ware and nothing else because of our impression from the corebook and i dont really know that i can get that genie back in the bottle.
That's a discussion to be had with the group on the lore of the game. Giving deltaware such a clear and, quite frankly, low number on how to get it was very much a mistake.
And honestly? Most of the time, alphaware is the most practical upgrade. Give 20% more, get 25% more. Or 40% more if you have biocompatibility. Past that, you have some severe diminishing returns, and the price tags get so high that you're not likely to get there without selling your soul to Ares.
