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From:	shadowrn@*********.com (Poe Saoer)
Subject:	Who understands SOTA?
Date:	Mon Jan 29 11:50:02 2001

Message no. 1 i am reading the rules over for SOTA (state-of-the-art) and i cannot figure
out what to do with them or exactly how they are supposed to be used...
any help would be wonderful..
Goldenfist

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From:	shadowrn@*********.com (Marc Renouf)
Subject:	Who understands SOTA?
Date:	Mon Jan 29 17:30:01 2001

Message no. 2 On Mon, 29 Jan 2001, Poe Saoer wrote:

> i am reading the rules over for SOTA (state-of-the-art) and i cannot figure
> out what to do with them or exactly how they are supposed to be used...
> any help would be wonderful..

SOTA is one of those things that different GM's interpret
differently. There have been some vehement debates on this and other fora
about what SOTA really means and if the FASA system is the best way to
reflect it. If you're interested, check out the list archives.
As for my own interpretation, I tend to look at it this way: SOTA
reflects the small, minor, incremental changes in technology as it
progresses over time. The entire FASA system is predicated on the idea
that for every advance, there follows in a very short time a
"counter-technology" to get around it, although access to this
counter-technology is expensive. Hence, keeping up with the
"state-of-the-art" is costly. Realistically, this isn't too bad a model
to work from, as it's been shown time and again, at least in the computer
world.
Under FASA's SOTA system, certain pieces of equipment will "lose
effectiveness" over time as new systems or approaches render them
obsolete. An excellent example is a Maglock Passkey. As new encryption
methods are used in progressively more and more sophisticated maglocks, an
old passkey may not be able to keep up. As such, it will become "less
effective" against the more sophisticated locks.
Further, the system represents the evolutionary nature of
technological development and "dead-end" technology. Trust me, as someone
who has spent the last 6 hours trying in vain to get a system in place to
read an obsolete tape format that's less than 5 years old, it doesn't take
long before something that's "cutting edge" one day is useless junk the
next. The SOTA cost reflects buying the newest equipment, software
upgrades, bug-fixes, etc.
One of the biggest gripes people have with SOTA is its effect on
Reflex Enhancements. A lot of folks think that it shouldn't make you
slower with respect to unaugmented people, but I think this is an overly
rosy view. I tend to think of cyberware not so much as something that you
install once and it works flawlessly until the end of time, but rather as
something that is so complicated and interdependent on a variety of
external factors that it needs constant tweaking and fixing. Viewed in
this context, SOTA rules for cyberware make sense. Yes, if one of the
four Synapse Acceleration Relays for your Sendako CyberEdge II reflex
enhancement package fries itself, and if Sendako no longer manufactures
that particular package, finding replacement parts is going to be a bitch.
Finding someone willing and capable of maintenance and repair of such a
system will be difficult as well. Taken your Commodore 64 in for service
lately? Good luck. So if you can't get parts or qualified technical
help, your performance is going to suffer, little by little.
Similarly, the "Computer Theory" skill is another area that's
subject to a lot of SOTA erosion. Ever tried to add functionality to your
old COBOL databasing system run on a Rockwell mainframe? Good luck.
Trying to keep up with advances in computer technology is mindboggling.
It used to be, ForTran was all you needed to know. Then, so long as you
knew C and/or C++, you were good. Now, you need to know Java, PHP, PERL,
JavaScript, and Visual Basic to make heads or tails of half the shit you
interact with on a regular basis. Yes, you may still be a really sharp
ForTran programmer, but your skills are less useful in the context of the
world at large, and as such, your skill rating effectively drops.
An important thing to remember with SOTA is that it affects
everybody equally. There will be companies that just can't afford to keep
their people/facilities/gear on the cutting edge. If the players are
facing an opponent that's not keeping up with the SOTA, those opponents
should be a little slower, a little weaker, or a little easier to bypass.
If there's a SOTA advancement in ballistic technology that renders
existing Body Armor less efctive, it'll take a while for the
"counter-technology" to propagate down the "food chain." So the
players
may encounter goons wearing older body armor that's not as effective
against their rounds. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
To keep track of this, I recommend keeping a "SOTA log." Put
simply, every month (or however often you roll for SOTA advances), add the
newest advance to the list. Then, when it comes time to tool up the
opposition for the players, simply decide how far "behind the curve" the
opposition is and lower the ratings of their armor/'ware/gear
appropriately. So if Rent-A-Goon, Inc. is 6 months behind SOTA, and if
Body Armor has come up twice in the lase 6 months, the Armor Jackets that
the Rent-A-Goons will be wearing will be 3/1, not 5/3.
Put simply, this means that SOTA is both a reward and a
punishment. The punishment is that the players need to pay through the
butt to keep up with it, but if they do, the reward is that they may be
better equipped than those who can't afford to keep up. This is both fair
and realistic.

Finally, you might occasionally want to throw in a *revolutionary*
change. This is something that's not covered under SOTA, as its something
that fundamentally changes how something works. For instance, the
introduction of cheap, man-portable masers would be a revolutionary
change. It makes existing Body Armor (even cutting-edge Body Armor) less
effective by the very fact that it works differently than ballistics or
even lasers. Similarly, a quantum leap forward in computing speeds might
make existing networks crawl by comparison.
Revolutionary changes can make for great plot devices, but use
them sparingly. They have (by their very nature) far-reaching
consequences, and introducing a cheap, easily administered cure for HMHVV
might play hell with the verisimilitude of your campaign if you plan
on having vampires or ghouls play a major role down the line.

Marc Renouf (ShadowRN GridSec - "Bad Cop" Division)

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From:	shadowrn@*********.com (Sebastian Wiers)
Subject:	Who understands SOTA?
Date:	Mon Jan 29 21:20:03 2001

Message no. 3 >i am reading the rules over for SOTA (state-of-the-art) and i cannot figure
>out what to do with them or exactly how they are supposed to be used...
>any help would be wonderful..
>Goldenfist

I'd personally just stay away from them. The ones for the matrix are OK,
but IMO are not really needed. The other ones have some serious logical
flaws that, while they won't ruin your game, but theres also not really any
need.
The end effect of the SOTA rules (and the commonly used purpose) is the skim
off characters extra cash and money, or slighlyt adjust relative power
levels of technology. If you want to skim characters monye, just charge
them equipment maintenance or use any other method you want. If you want to
change items power levels, I think its easier to do with a few specific,
well considered changes than across the board inderterminate SOTA effects.

-Sebastian

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