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Re: Your opinion, Networking Skill Specializations.
You might go for select departments or individuals. For the Argonauts you could specialize in AI researchers, technology manufacturers, Defense researchers. Autonomists you could say something like tribal leaders, techno-democrats, unitarians, dissidents, etc.
Just a quick deduction that made sense to me.
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"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."
Re: Your opinion, Networking Skill Specializations.
Right oout of my mind, I would forbid specializations like minor, major, etc... favours. Things that can be used, I think, are:
- Gear, equipment, weapons, and other nanofabricated stuff (it might include the selling of the loot from defeated enemies at the GM's discretion).
- Gossip, rumour mill,
- "Inner intel" (for example, g-rep rolls for knowing who is "in" this week, or the latest on Milay Cirrus, the singer in a neotenic body that works as a star for the Sidney Hipercorp ;) )
- Blueprints
- Technical data (essentially required stuff to justify levelling skills, and I'd say the skills you can implant in your ego)
- Ego favours (new identity, burnable identity, disguised identity, all that is know about somebody and a little more, etc...)
- Morph haggle (no, you can't use the gear spec for this: morphs are really valuable due to high demand)
- Human support (mercenaries, technicians, etc...: usually for a skill test, a mission, or an operation)
- Law enforcement (this would gather people able to bend the rules for you, in g-rep they might overlook that you assaulted a paparazzi, thus negating some g-rep loss, while in A-rep they would allow you to do something that could endanger the habitat).
- Secrets (things really juicy regarding that faction)
Remember that each reputation can have its own specialty that would only apply to that one. Having C-Rep (gear) means you get the specialization bonus only when asking for c-rep favours regarding gear, without being affected by your Secrets specialization in the g-rep skill.
Re: Your opinion, Networking Skill Specializations.
Both existing statements are pretty much spot-on. A specialization only needs to be so specific that it can't be used in most instances of the skill, but not so rare as to be useless virtually all the time. In the case of networking skills I would recommend either specific favors (specializing Networking: Criminals with Murder or Smuggling) a specific service (Networking: Autonomists could have a specialization for Transport or Morph Brokering) or specific equipment (Networking: Hypercorps could be specialized with Weaponry or Software). Then there's specializing it for use with specific subgroups within a network; Networking: Autonomists could be specialized with TITAN, while Networking: Hypercorps could be specialized with Go-Nin Group.
Lastly, one variant might be to allow players to specialize in hybrid networking. For instance, a player could take Networking: Scientists with an Autonomist specialization. This would give them a specialization bonus when trying to get a favor from someone who is both a scientist AND autonomist (not "or", they must be from both political blocs to garner the advantage in any way). Note that this variant shouldn't be used in ways that might be potentially contradictory. Networking: Hypercorps probably won't be compatible with an Autonomists specialization, though it could be if there are outer system hypercorps that participate in autonomist economic models.
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age.
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