Sinthalix,
Thanks again for the quick response. Regardless of whether or not we like any specific ruling, the attentiveness with which you respond to these questions and the frequency with which you update the FAQ is exceptional. The Demo team and it's leadership really are an outstanding example of the things that are going right within Catalyst. They should take the whole demo team and and raise it up a few levels within the company.
I would love to get in some facetime with you and Banshee, but on this subject I think my thoughts are pretty well laid out in my first post here and I don't want to waste anyone's time rehashing the same points, I know you've heard them and will take them up at the next call. Thanks very much for that.
I would like to address a couple of the points you made.
As far as making a metaplanar quest to find an ally formula, I completely agree. Anything side-quest thing like this is WAY outside the scope of Missions and simply can't be allowed.
Having someone else craft an ally formula (by themselves) is fraught with the danger and Missions play simply does not have the ability to give that level of individual risk taking its due attention (and well deserved trouble).
However, assistance in creating the spirit formula is different, particularly if that assistance ends in or near the first 1/2 of the whole process. That means the NPC was not there when the formula was completed, so does not have access to the completed formula. At best they only have a premature piece which is certainly different from the final version. While that might give them a bonus if they wanted to seek out the completed formula via metaplanar quest or some such, it's not nearly on the same level has having the keys to the castle in their hand.
As for the players listening it's important to remember that there's 3 basic concerns these guys have when making missions rules:
1) The first constraint is practicality, if a rule is not practical to implement in Missions - It gets the axe and we can't bitch about that. You might as well complain that your car doesn't fly. It's just doesn't and there's no amount of rule making that will fix that.
2) The rules have to honor the fluff and setting of the game, otherwise we're not playing Shadowrun anymore, we're playing in some other contrived setting that may have been shadowrun once, but compromised to too much "I WANT". If you want to change the the fluff, get on the writing team for the next edition.
3) The missions rules have to be balanced so that gamemasters and players can present and overcome challenging obstacles with reasonable effort while having cooperative fun at the game table. Advantages can and should be able to be gained but not without commensurate cost. The only thing that comes free is cleverness and you have to bring that yourself.
If something violates any one of these three, it's breaks the reason we're doing this whole thing.