Maybe I'm misremembering- it's been a solid three to four years since I tried to play, after all- but is it just me or are cyberlimbs/cyber-eyes/etc pretty much useless nowadays? I can get a cheap pair of contacts and some goggles that'll have all the mods I would normally stick in my eyes, and they're fine. What I mean:
[All calculations done at "Standard" value.]
Contacts: (Rating 3)
Image Link
Smartlink
Flare Compensation
Cost: (2,875¥)
Goggles: (Rating 5)
Thermographic Vision
Vision Magnification
Vision Enhancement (3)
Cost: (2,500¥)
Total Cost: (5,375¥)
Versus, for the same effects (I left out low-light vision 'cause I was swinging an Elf when I figured this out)
Cyber-eyes (Rating 3)
Image Link, Smartlink
Vision Enhancement (3)
Flare Compensation
Themographic Vision
Vision Magnification:
Total Cost: (60,500¥) and .5 ess.
Just. Good lord. That cost seems to me that anyone with cybereyes made the dumbest decision of their career!
And then you look at a cyberlimb. My Sammie is swinging Strength 5 and Agility 6. To replace a limb with an obvious one and get it -just- to where he normally is:
Cyberlimb (Obvious)
Customized Agility (6)
Customized Strength (5)
no additional functions, mods, or addons
Total Cost: (40,000¥) and 1 ess.
Where the heck's the advantage? Contacts and stuff get hacked, and you can still see if you yank them off. Cybereyes get hacked and you're farked until the decker on your team can do something about it. It looks like all you get for trying to make a chromed-up char with anything other than reaction or strength mods is slapped around on prices, essence cost and more. What am I -missing?-
[edit; completely fried some of my math. But the result is the same.]