Academics: matematics could be used, for example, to claim a +10 bonus on a roll when plotting an optimal curse for a spaceship. Or to help code/decode some file using mathematical algorithms. Academics: memetics could be used for making viral campaigns, instate new modes, or even to help with psichosurgery (neurolingüistic programming might be considered part of this skill, and it's extremely useful to transmite concepts to other people). Pesonally, I use the academics field skill to get a +10 bonus on active skills most of the time, the most clear example being nanotechnology rolls. I also allow for Academics: Firewall / Autonomists /etc..., to know about that faction (since there is no Knowledge skill, and Trivia strikes me as not really serious)

technoshaman wrote:

What are some examples for Academics: Mathematics and Memetics that are used in the setting?

Mathematics of course allows you to solve mathematical problems - and a surprising number of problems can be reformulated as math (e.g. space warfare strategy, optimal allocation of resources, understanding alien puzzles). In my games characters have been designing memetics to subtly influence societies by spreading certain ideas. One of the surprisingly useful skills we have used is Academics: Cognitive science - how do minds work, especially really odd minds? The most narrow skill that ever turned out to be relevant was Art: Nano-origami. Just how did that petal nanomachine do *that*, and who is behind it?

technoshaman wrote:

I am starting to think what type of usage and bonus could Academics: Psychology can give in a campaign, cause I see listed under the Smuggler sample character.

Could be used as a bonus to Psychosurgery when used to repair mental damage. But really the biggest thing I could see the smuggler using it for is building a psych profile of someone he is doing business with which would help them figure out what kind of style of negotiation would be most effective.

CodeBreaker wrote:

Actually, you could argue that any roll involving people could be influenced by a bonus from psychology.

Yup, and there are other knowledge skills that can do the same, opposed to Languages, which are quite useless thanks to muses (unless we are talking about "secret languages" that are not trusted to any computer, or xenolanguages, that need to be decoded the first time they are encountered). The most obvious use for a smuggler regarding the Knowledge: psicology, is bonus to lying, and reinforcing what he says with a corporal language (kinesics) that transmits honestity, and phrased in a way that the listener will think as sincere. He would also have general profiles of different kind of guards in different factions, allowing him to get of the hook easier. For these reasons, I usually only allow to apply a 10% of the knowledge skills value to any given task. Of course, I have to fight with the "stacking skill bonus", but it's easier because I can always say "no more than +10 from related skills as a bonus" or compensate it with "yeah, but the guard also knows about XXXX".

Laborat, as far as I understood the rules, knowledge skills cannot be used in place of active skills, but they can be used to provide a bonus to them. In the case of psychology, for example, the player might ask for a 5% bonus of the skill to his social skills when he first meets someone, specially if his muse also has psychology as a knowledge (because the muse will be accessing the other person's public profile, and getting a rough estimation of his profile). Mathematics, while won't be really usefull for a sudden trick shoot (and frankly, physycs would fit best here), it will be useful for preparing a sniping fire. I still remember McGuyver's pool game using physics to win... (or at least, explaining how was he using physics knowledge to win). Of course, the only problem I find with all this stuff is that, since the players can do it, the NPC's can too... which means more work for the GM. So I cheat, adding a flat 5 to 10% in sinergy bonuses to several skills to the NPC's (the more important the NPC, the more it gets). And I don't really need to make enemies like payer characters, I use my player's character sheet to create a challenging group of enemies (or easy to defeat if that's what I require).

UnitOmega wrote:

Synergy is great, but sometimes knowledge skills are useful just as knowledge skills.

Never said they couldn't, just that players might hope to use them instead of active skills by having a high COG and spending few points. For example in my last group I have an AGI player with COG 40 (and 25 int and 20 will, with all the rest of the skills at 10. He bought adaptability lv2, though). That means 20 points per knowledge skill at 60... (of course, he bough the exceptional aptitude in COG for himself, and I'm waiting to see him paying for the extra creds of raising the top of his masked sttel morph's COG by antoher 10). Imagine if, instead of rolling pilot he asks to roll Knowledge: piloting, or instead of networking (faction), Knowledge: networking (faction). Also, that's the reason behind me not applying the 3 levels of bonuses from related skills, having a starting player with 80 in all cost-reduced skills for AGIs and 60 in related knowledge fields can mean an easy 110% level between the muse's support and the knowledge skill. Of course, NPC's can do the same... but that makes me create full characters for even the lesser mook, and frankly it's too much work to bother ^^

technoshaman wrote:

What does it mean when a software says with a "It functions with [Name] skill of 40 or provides a +10 modifier to a Skill Name Test made by someone using it" ? I somewhat confuse by that.

For most equipment, that's the presence of an AI with a skill of 40 that can use the skill on its own, or the AI provides a teamwork bonus to a character using it if they've got a higher skill rating. For software, I'd assume something similar -- your calculator app can run in the background and give the results to the character, in which case it has a mathematics skill of 40. If the character is using it to assist as they do computations, it just makes things quicker and easier for them, giving them a +10 on their own roll (which is presumably higher than what the program could do alone.)

Skillsofts provide you with a skill you might otherwise not have. Other than that, equipment can provide a bonus to an ego trait, but it doesn't actually change the ego trait. While these are almost identical from the IC perspective of the character (who has an effective skill 10 points higher than before), this avoids Rez/CP cost wonkiness and issues that would arise with resleeving.

Social skills are Active. There are several (mostly for biomorphs) that boost things like deception (via emotion self-control), but Knowledge skills aren't something a spare arm or a super-spleen can help with.

I would just add implants as needed. Here are a few examples: Multidimensional visuo-spatial scratchpad: a boosted visual working memory, allowing the character to not just keep complex 3D objects in mind, rotate them and treat them as in a CAD program, but to visualize higher dimensional objects. This gives a +10 or more bonus to Academics: Mathematics, Pilot: Spacecraft (spacecraft dynamics is pretty simple in a symplectic phase space) and other skills relying on handling multidimensional data. Statistics cortex: Add-on to the intraparietal sulcus, giving the user ability to perform statistical manipulations easily. This helps make quick estimates by glancing at data, perform financial or sociological calculations and detect pattern in numbers. Physics simulator: Implant that connects to frontal visualisation networks, allowing the user to run accurate physics simulations in their mind. This is useful for engineering work but also for figuring out tricky movements (freerunning, dodging). Motion stabilizer: Partial override of the pyramidal tract and enhancement of muscles/actuators that "downshifts" movement. Movement becomes slow, fluid and precise, with no shaking. Useful for surgery, fine crafts, disarming some bombs and certain dances.

Xagroth wrote:

Arenamontanous,I think most of those things are software (or some hardware expansions at best) that can be easily installed on the ectos / mesh implants.

Maybe, but then your mesh implants need pretty root access to your brain. For example, to itemize (to directly know how many of something there are) you need the right neurons in the parietal cortex, not just a convenient count ("There are 459 enemies in the room."), so the mesh implants need to be always on and act as extra parietal cortex. To understand the rotations of an 8 dimensional objects it is not enough to have a nifty 3D picture, you need an additional visuospatial system. And so on. Nice AR is useful, but only to a point.

*Knowing* the exact number, feeling the shape of a probability distribution or getting preattentional pop-outs of anomalous data in the middle of a massive spreadsheet can be worth getting an implant.

technoshaman wrote:

For doing booby traps in EP would these skills work: Demolitions, certain firearms like Kinetics/Beam/and others, engineering and Robotics? robotics is for remote control drone that has explosives and/or attached to ranged weapons. What do you think?

Firearms skills are probably going to be less useful except as a possible complementary skill, since it won't be you doing the shooting -- what you really want is hardware: armorer.

technoshaman wrote:

Which I have. :) The skills+level I have so far are: Academic: Engineering: 45, Demolitions: 30, Hardware: Armorer: 40/Industrial: 40/ Electronics: 40. Robotics: 40, Kinesics: 55 and possibly: Interfacing: 40 Would any of these skills help for bonuses and time for skill synergy?

Depends on the trap you try to produce. The Hardware skills are going to probably be the main skills you use for making traps... Electronics for computerized traps (perhaps also Robotics), Industrial for mechanical traps. Academic: Engineering would probably be a universal synergy bonus. Demolitions would affect any traps that utilize explosives.