| From: | shadowrn@*********.com (Damion Milliken) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | What/Where are the rules of maximum deck upgradability? |
| Date: | Mon Sep 3 23:10:01 2001 |
> What's the current Upgrade for CPUs? 1.5 Ghz, right? (I've been out of
> touch, It could be higher by now.) That's because they only make 1.5 Ghz
> CPUs. Same goes for Memory (both Active/RAM and storage/Hard Drive).
> I guess the only real limit is the balance on the invoice and the time
> needed to build it and write the code for it.
Well, that's not a problem if you go for multi-processor mainboards, or even
for something that's not a i386 style PC - it might not have the MHz of a
current PC, but it may well have more actual capability. Likewise, even
though the biggest HD produced might be 80 GB or something, that's not
stopping you from having 7 x 14 disk RAID arrays or some such silliness to
get ridiculous amounts of storage.
Anyway, getting this back to SR:
MPCP is more like the motherboard or even the operating system of a deck
than the processor, if I recall correctly. It dertermines, more than
anything, the limitations of what else you can hang off your deck.
The limitations of increasing MPCP seem to be more a point of diminishing
returns, rather than some absolute limit, to me:
* Every time you upgrade MPCP, you also need to upgrade (or at least
completely redesign) the ASIST interface, ICCM, reality filter, Response
Increase, and RAS override.
* The design test TN is the MPCP Rating. The base time is MPCP Rating x 2
days. It requires the Cyberterminal Design Knowledge skill.
* The Software Program Plan requires the Cyberterminal Code Design Knowledge
skill, a TN of 4 (5 if Rating of code is 10+). This takes the program size
(MPCP Rating x MPCP Rating x 8) hours. It requires a computer with a tenth
of the program size in Mp.
* The actual programming task requires a computer with half the program size
in Mp. It is a Computer (Programming) test with a TN of the MPCP Rating, and
a base time of the size of the program in days. (eg a Rating 10 MPCP takes
800 days! Thats 3 years!)
* The maximum MPCP Rating that can be programmed is equal to the programmers
Computer (Programming) skill x 1.5, rounded down (p 76 Matrix).
* Installing the thing takes MPCP hours in time, a Computer B/R test with a
TN of the MPCP Rating, and 35 nuyen x MPCP Rating x MPCP Rating.
Basically, the _time_, gear, and sheer number of skills required makes
creating anything higher than about a Rating 6 MPCP Rating an impossible
task for a PC decker.
Buying the stuff is a little complex, actually. Hmmm. The hardware bits cost
about MPCP x MPCP x 10 nuyen minimum (the 10 = 8 for MPCP + 2 for hot ASIST;
add Response Increase x 2, 8 for a Reality Filter, and 4 for an ICCM
Biofeedback Filter). The software bits cost, um, something like 100 times
this (there is a table with multipliers that depend on the MPCP Rating,
ranging from 10 for MPCP 1, to 90 for MPCP 6, to 140 for MPCP 10+).
So by my reckoning, a Rating 20 MPCP would cost, at a minimum (assuming no
Response Increase or anything else useful) about half a million nuyen. Not
too bad. Adding in Response Increase and other useful bits might make it a
lot more expensive, though.
--
Damion Milliken University of Wollongong
Unofficial Shadowrun Guru E-mail: dam01@***.edu.au
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