[ProfessorCirno]

Honestly, IMO, all this is just a bunch of wafer-thin excuses for a mechanic that could have been all right and was pretty cool in theory but that turned out as nothing more than "Oh, hey Mr. Decker! You don't ever have to touch a non-hacking skill ever again to outright 'omgwtfbbq' a Street Sam in combat."

First off, this is really hilarious because you're the guy in other threads whining that deckers can have combat capabilities if they invest in a cyberarm.

And second, "wafer-thin excuses" describes like 90% of Shadowrun.

[Sendaz]

And second, "wafer-thin excuses" describes like 90% of Shadowrun.

Wafer?  pffftt.....

It's the 2070's now... we can get down to Nano-thin excuses thanks to Science! 

[Namikaze]

Except, you know, that Decker is probably sitting safe and sound in a nice armored van (possibly even several blocks away), and the now slow as molasses--comparatively--Street Sam gets ground into bite-sized chunks of hamburger by the Decker's friends.

But not more than 100m away without Noise compensation.  All of the changes to the Matrix, the wireless bonuses, etc. were designed to get characters more involved and to take more risks.  Period.

[Twilight]

Not quite a rules question (since the rules are pretty clrear)...

It's clear that the designers decided that devices with wireless on get a bonus because they can be hacked.  However, can anyone come up with any explanation of why this would be the case?  If anything, wired should have an advantage over wireless (less interference, higher bandwidth, etc).

My theory is that in the shadowrun world wireless have less latency / have higher bandwidth / have less interference / is faster.

(Crazy i know but) If you have that mindset then wireless bonus start to make a lot of sense.

I thought of that but it fails the logic test.  Fiber cable will always be faster and have higher bandwidth than wireless (unless you think there's a wireless signal that can compete with light speed).  It's possible there could be something in the quantum arena (cf instant communication of bits over distance (but that's not "wireless" and only works between 2 fixed points)).

[Novocrane]

Has anyone brought up effects from the loss of Deus-inspired nanotech here? I think it's a pretty broad and widely ignored point of continuity, that in the aftermath everything has turned slightly brown. (not literal...)

Not sure how you would logically address the cable vs wireless issue in terms of speed, but then I'd rather just present it as a mix of "old gear has melted", "old gear is incompatible with other gear you can acquire" and "old gear is now represented by the throwback version".

[All4BigGuns]

Honestly, IMO, all this is just a bunch of wafer-thin excuses for a mechanic that could have been all right and was pretty cool in theory but that turned out as nothing more than "Oh, hey Mr. Decker! You don't ever have to touch a non-hacking skill ever again to outright 'omgwtfbbq' a Street Sam in combat."

First off, this is really hilarious because you're the guy in other threads whining that deckers can have combat capabilities if they invest in a cyberarm.

And second, "wafer-thin excuses" describes like 90% of Shadowrun.

Yes, I expect them (and everyone else) to have to pay for the attribute and buy the skills for combat to do combat instead of using the same set of skills for everything and/or cheesing out on the attribute.

[Xenon]

I thought of that but it fails the logic test.  Fiber cable will always be faster and have higher bandwidth than wireless (unless you think there's a wireless signal that can compete with light speed)...

There have been quite a lot of progress data communications over the last 50 years. I think it is pretty bald to state that a 2013 Fiber Cable will always be the fastest and have the higher bandwidth than wireless even with technology 50 years from now... I think it is pretty obvious that in the world of Shadowrun you can push information faster when you directly send it wireless then to force the information through a cable. How? With today technology that sound like crazy talk - but we are not talking today, are we? And we are not talking current communications protocols either. Matrix 2.0 is designed for wireless communication from the bottom up. You can still send the information by wire, but it will not take advantage of the whole protocol. It will not be as fast. You will not get the edge you get when going wireless.

[WellsIDidIt]

I don't think you understand the issue Xenon. What does wireless use to communicate? What does optical wire use to communicate? In order to pass the optical wire that SR uses, wireless would have to travel faster than light. At that point, they should be able to make wires that send the signal in the same way.

It has nothing to do with the tech angle, but the purely scientific angle of the problem. If wireless uses radio signals as the fluff seems to suggest, they aren't going to overcome the speed of light. If they can, then there is absolutely no way that you wouldn't be able to slap a cable in for the same effect, albeit much more secure and with no noise.

[Insaniac99]

There is a difference between bandwidth and latency and that could be the issue here.

[Xenon]

I don't think you understand the issue Xenon. What does wireless use to communicate? What does optical wire use to communicate? In order to pass the optical wire that SR uses, wireless would have to travel faster than light. At that point, they should be able to make wires that send the signal in the same way.

Look, i am not going to pretend that i know what progress mankind make over the next 50 years when it comes to data communication.

Both might travel at the speed of light, but the amount of parallel information that can be send at the same time might or might not be limited with a cable compared to if you route it wireless through all nearby devices. I have cable internet, but when i measure how much throughput i get i am still limited at just over 100 Mbit per second. At the company I work at we have just over 1 PB disk storage (just over 1 000 000 GB, mostly video). 20 years ago I was lucky to have 1 Mbit per second straight into the university network (most my friends were suck on 56k modems). 20 years ago harddrives were measured in MB, not TB... Windows was an application that came on floppy disks. 640K ought to be enough for anybody, right?  50 years from now we will send vastly more information than we do today. The bandwidth of a single cable might or might not be the limiting factor. Sending the information wireless might or might not give you higher bandwidth. Higher throughput. Faster upload and download speeds. An edge compared to cables. A wireless bonus.

Is it so hard to swallow? We are talking about the world of Shadowrun after all. Elves. Orks. Magic. Technomancers. Dragons....  Wireless being faster than wired communication is one of the easier things to accept

[All4BigGuns]

Is it so hard to swallow? We are talking about the world of Shadowrun after all. Elves. Orks. Magic. Technomancers. Dragons....  Wireless being faster than wired communication is one of the easier things to accept

No, I for one would more easily accept it if a Dragon landed in the parking lot of my apartment complex tomorrow than if someone told me that a hard-line direct connection between two sources less than two feet apart was going to suddenly transfer data slower than transmitting data between them wirelessly and routed through the entire internet.

[Namikaze]

Is it so hard to swallow? We are talking about the world of Shadowrun after all. Elves. Orks. Magic. Technomancers. Dragons....  Wireless being faster than wired communication is one of the easier things to accept

No, I for one would more easily accept it if a Dragon landed in the parking lot of my apartment complex tomorrow than if someone told me that a hard-line direct connection between two sources less than two feet apart was going to suddenly transfer data slower than transmitting data between them wirelessly and routed through the entire internet.

That assumes the communication is "routed through the entire internet."  These devices communicate directly because they are within 100m of each other.  Therefore, there's no routing involved.

[All4BigGuns]

Is it so hard to swallow? We are talking about the world of Shadowrun after all. Elves. Orks. Magic. Technomancers. Dragons....  Wireless being faster than wired communication is one of the easier things to accept

No, I for one would more easily accept it if a Dragon landed in the parking lot of my apartment complex tomorrow than if someone told me that a hard-line direct connection between two sources less than two feet apart was going to suddenly transfer data slower than transmitting data between them wirelessly and routed through the entire internet.

That assumes the communication is "routed through the entire internet."  These devices communicate directly because they are within 100m of each other.  Therefore, there's no routing involved.

Over short distances, a hard-line is going to almost always be better than broadcasting. The only reason for it not to in-game any more is the 'hacker love'.

[Insaniac99]

You do know that EMF (and radio as a subset of that) travel at the speed of light out of the atmosphere, right?  Inside the atmosphere it travels a little slower, but the difference is functionally the same.  The parallel processing capabilities could very well mitigate any and all advantages that the wire gives.  Think of it this way:

You need something computed of which there are 5 distinct portions that could be worked separately.  Method one of the computing it is to do each part in turn with a single device; method two is to split the process and have the various parts worked on concurrently.

With wired running at the max of current scientific understanding you might get a faster latency, but it could very well be minimal compared to the loss of the bandwidth and parallel processing power that you would gain by using a simple mesh protocol to take advantage of any idle devices in your area using a wireless protocol that functions nearly as fast.

In this scenario wired = better latency; wireless = better bandwidth (and processing power). But the difference in latency would be minimal because it is functionally the same since they both start at near the same speed.

[Namikaze]

I'm not trying to convince you to change your mind.  I don't think anyone's opinions are changing on this topic.  I'm simply pointing out that by going to extremes with your examples, you're debasing your argument.