My thought is that some rep scores (g- and i-reps in particular) are only visible to those who have scores >10 in that network, therefore preventing customs from screening people based on their g-rep.

Yeah. That makes sense. One of my character designs was someone who escaped from Jovian space thanks from the help from the criminal underworld. He now helps on the logistics side of smuggling more people out and collects favors owed just in case he needs to escape Jovian space again (or somewhere else). I don't want him to run into trouble farcasting around just because he has criminal rep because he works in the underground railroad.

I really dont think there there is a literal aggregate rep score. I think thats an abstraction for gameplay. Rep is your social currency for being an active member in good standing. You get favors because your trading on your good standing. Thats your collateral, your risking besmirching your good reputation.

Do bear in mind: a high rep score is [i]very helpful[/i], but a high Networking skill is [i]far[/i] more important. You can get a favor of any level, even if your reputation in the network is dogshit or nonexistent (as long as you're not blacklisted,) if you have the networking chops to do so. Having insufficient *-rep applies a [i]penalty[/i] to your networking roll, but the penalty can be worked around in various ways. For example: Say your Sentinel has Networking: Autonomists at 80; Thus her base TN is 80. She has a Complimentary Knowledge Skill at 61+; thus she benefits from a +30 modifier to her Networking: Autonomists skill. She also has a muse and two expert systems, all of entirely different codebases and with the Networking: Autonomists skill; thus she benefits from a +30 Teamwork modifier. She's also got time to burn, thus she's willing to go long and take the +60 bonus from taking her time. Her total effective Networking: Autonomists is thus an astonishing [b]200[/b]. Unfortunately for her, she's on a mission, under a fake identity as a brutal Triad gangster who was just reinstantiated, and thus her fake ID has no @-Rep, and there's not enough time for her or Firewall to spin her up [i]another[/i] fake ID that has some. She [i]desperately[/i] needs some kind of favor from the Barsoomians, and it's a [b]huge[/b] favor. She also needs [b]not[/b] to be noticed whilst doing so. She needs a Level 5 Favor: She needs, for example, to call a Barsoomian hit squad to hit a location, and hit it [b]hard.[/b] It aligns with Barsoomian goals in that hitting this place would royally fuck a nasty hypercorp, and it also aligns with Firewall's goals in that royally fucking this hyperfuck will torch an X-Risk before it gets off the ground. But obviously, she can't really let the Barsoomians know that. So, she gets cracking, with her mighty @-Rep of 0. Of course, the Circle-@ List being what it is, anybody can get on it with bingo rep. Favor Exceeds Rep Level: -10 per Level: -50 total. Keeping Quiet: -60 (Keeping it Quiet). Total penalties: -110. She's still rolling this sonofabitch against a target number of [b]90[/b]. This character is a social networking [i]goddess[/i]. The GM may throw some complications at her - for instance, the Barsoomians she's networking with tracking her down and asking to know exactly how a brutal Triad gangster knows about this $NASTY_EXPLOITATIVE_HYPERCORP_BULLSHIT, why she cares and how she knows how to contact them, but assuming she can handle those curveballs - or handled them preemptively by spinning some believable bullshit in advance (for example, claiming that she's someone other than the triad gangster whose ego file was mis-identified as theirs, or claiming that the gangster has always secretly been a Scum sympathizer,) then she's going to pull it off, and call down a Barsoomian hit squad on the hypercorp nastiness. Hopefully, for everybody's sake, she successfully communicated what kind of exsurgent bullshit they could expect, without raising any suspicions with them, the Barsoomians can hit the place hard and torch the fuck out of it without getting all exsurgified, and everybody can go home happy. (Except the nasty corporate fuckers, but they're not "everybody," they're nasty corporate fuckers, so they don't count.)

Are you sure you can do that? I'm under the impression that the max cumulative bonuses/penalties for any dice roll is +/-60 (see EP Core Rulebook p. 115). Your example pushes the bonuses to 120, and penalties to -110, both being well past 60.

I've always thought you could get modifers up to +60 and penalties up to -60. Beyond that: A) Your actual skill basically doesn't matter any more. Shadow's example character could be defaulting to a Savvy of 5 and still be rolling against 125 before penalties (I'll come back to this in a sec). B) There's going to be overlap. If you get advice on a subject from 10 different people then some of that advice is going to be the same, and may be stuff you would notice anyway if you took Extra Time. Likewise, if you're trying to build something using incorrect plans then having incorrect parts isn't as much of a hinderance. Diminishing returns are a Thing. C) You begin eating up table time. The more time the player/GM spends working out every applicable penalty or bonus, the more time is spent not moving the story forward. --- Going back to the "penalties" bit from point A - this is "sort of" a house-rule, but if accumulated penalties would exceed -60 then I usually consider whatever's being attempted unfeasable (if not flat-out impossible). Finding a Barsoomian HitSquad willing to do the job whilst being that sneaky simply wouldn't be an option, because "obviously" they're a dirty Hypercorp sympathizer trying to sucker them into a trap. If the option isn't impossible, the character needs to do some extra groundwork to get rid of the penalties – getting some Rep, setting up hardware to make concealment easier, getting a favour from a different NPC or through iRep to set up an introduction... you know, Gameplay. To be clear, I do largely agree with Shadow's post – Networking is usually more useful than Rep because you can't actually use your rep without networking. Having Rep makes things easier, and opens up options.

I don't really like using the base rules for major favors. I think they work ok for getting gear and such, but for big services rendered I think it can be handled in more interesting ways, like reciprocal favors or additional stuff they might want. (A hit squad might want detailed plans for example). I don't really dislike the current rep rules, but I don't think they should be used RAW often.