Tacnet options analysisAs tactical network becomes more and more common among the teams of professionals, it becomes obvious that a shadowrunning team could greatly benefit from its analysis and prediction capabilities, as well.Establishing a tactical team-wide network requires several elements.Survival knife with a GPS, 1 channel 50YRFID or Micro-sized sensor packages, 1 channel Thermometer 20Y Directional Microphone, Geiger Counter, Microphone, or Motion Sensor 50Y Camera 100Y Laser Range Finder 100Y Radio Signal Scanner Rating x25Y Cyberware Scanner Rating x75Y MAD Scanner Rating x75Y Non-Linear Junction Detector Rating x100Y Olfactory Sensor Rating x500YSimrig, 5 channels 1000YAudio or vision enhancements varies Of course, there are relatively cheap ways to quickly raise the number of available channels.Microdrones 1Minidrones 2Small drones 2Medium drones 3Large drones 3Clive ?Drakuru 0Gringo 4Klutz 12Saul 3Smoboo 4Termagaunt 8The team currently possesses this many sensor channels available for being contributed:To get full benefits from a tacnet each user must contribute its Rating x2 sensor channels.Users not contributing this many receive accordingly less benefits.Sensor channelsTactical network software is worth 3000Y per point of Rating per user license, with available Ratings ranging from 1 to 4.Expansibility concerns dictate the need to purchase the software as advanced as possible.Software costsThe following cost calculation will feature both variants.1) The tactical network software itself.2) Enough information from the team members for it to function, measured in sensor channels.3) The hardware for it to be run on. Can be either a) a decentralized network with each team member running his own copy of tacnet soft b) a centralized network with the software being run on the central node.Page 1/3There are a few options for the hardware base.HardwareThe first and the most obvious is using what hardware the team already has. This is a viable option, although it means buying a tacnet license per team member (including whatever drones the tacnet can be run on). That brings the tacnet cost to Rating*3000Y per user.The sensor software making most sense to be used is lie detection and empathy routines, allowing for easier social interactions, facial recognition and vehicle identification to spot specific people or vehicles the team may be looking for, visual spotter, weapon watcher and noise analysis to raise overall team awareness of its surroundings.The linguasofts already purchased can be installed on the nexus, and there is little need to add any other language software to them right now. Should the team decide to move, however, using a common nexus allows for quick online translations for everyone in the team.With the nexus getting sensor feeds from each of the team members, it'd make sense to install some additional software all team members could benefit from on it. This software includes, but is not limited to linguasofts and sensor software.Additional softwareSuggested nexus costs have been calculated according to these considerations.It is also absolutely obvious that the Firewall rating should be as high as possible, and the Response and System ratings should be high enough for at least the tactical network software to get enough system resourses.Preliminary calculations show that the number of processes needed to be running on the nexus, if we want it even remotely safe, ranges from 20 to 30. Minding that after slaving the team's devices to the server it essentially remains the only strong point in the whole team network, running as much IC and other protective software seems more like a necessity than a whim.It has been established that the persona limit for a nexus also equals the number of slaved devices it may have. With 7 runners in the team, of whom 3 have drones, and minding the expendability concerns, the number of slaved devices should be around 20.The second option is making a centralized tacnet, with a single central node and the user nodes slaved to it. The problem with this layout, however, is that a single commlink can only maintain as many as 12 slave device connections (with its System and Response as high as it is possible to get at all, for the cost appropriate). This leads to choosing between a nexus, a cluster of commlinks or a stack of slaved devices. The latter variants are both more expensive and harder to control than a single nexus, so it is obviously more preferable to have a single machine in the center.Page 2/3Sensor software costs 500Y per Rating point, with Rating ranging from 1 to 6. Additional sensor software 3000Y/programNexus with System and Response 6, 50150YProcessor limit 30, Tacsoft 4 andfull hardware modifications list Additional sensor software 2000Y/programNexus with System and Response 4, 30000YProcessor limit 20 and Tacsoft 4 Decentralized network Tacsoft Rating x3000Y per userAs shown above, the tactical network can be quite a flexible system, so it makes sense to state the lowest and the highest possible prices, with the multitude of available options in between.Final calculated costsFinally, we are quite likely to run lots of agents both for protection and data search on the nexus. Optimizing it for this particular program is only 500Y, and makes the agents work much more smoothly.Nexus, as well as most up-to-date computational devices, is optics-based, but it never hurts to add some surge protection. Hardening against EMP pulses is 25Y per point of rating, rating ranging from 1 to 6. First of all, the nexus can be armored. The usual armor case, similar to what you have on commlinks, costs 50Y per point of rating, with rating ranging from 1 to 10. However, since nexus is a stationary and not a carried device, it can be heavily armored. As a matter of fact, the vehicle armor can be added to it, adding up to 20 rating. Each rating point costs 200Y for such armor.With the nexus being literally the central most important node in the team network, it's likely to pay to modify its hardware to better suit the team's needs.Hardware modificationsPage 3/3