Narcoalgorithms are amazing!

hi hi

There are plenty of people who overclock their computers without much trouble at all, and some people that are less successful at preventing the CPU from overheating and turning into a pile of slag. I don't know about how the psychological effects of withdrawal work in Eclipse Phase, but if someone goes off of a brain enhancing drug/narcoalgorithm, I imagine they would feel a sensation similar to velocitation in drivers, where everything feels slow.

I use Narcoalgorithms the same way BTL is done in Shadowrun. They are specially designed to only work for a limited amount of time, and the encryption on them is beyond the abilities of your average junkie to get rid of. If it bothers you that much make them a physical product, a chip you have to insert into your Access Jacks (Which all Synths have anyway, so thats no trouble).

Yeah, narcoalgorithms really needed more than a paragraph or two of introduction, because while they may simulate the effects of drugs, they are really a whole separate thing.

For instance, narcoalgorithms are software. Medichines shouldn't have any effect on them; medichines don't repair software, they repair hardware. Medichines have no effect on nanodrugs, I see even less of a reason why they'd impact a pure software modification like a narcoalgorithm.

Software modification can be harmful to a cyberbrain. The way I'd house-rule narcoalgorithms, they modify the software environment of a cyberbrain, deliberately exploiting the code to achieve certain effects. They only last for a limited duration because cyberbrains include error-handling and self-correcting code that will eventually root out the narcoalgorithm and repair the damage it has done to the software environment's integrity. Much like a virus scanner for the brain.

Technically, an infomorph or synth could override this self-correcting code, but doing so is dangerous. I'd play this out as less of an addiction Durability penalty as more as mental stress points. The cyberbrain is operating outside its safe parameters; after all, if there was no risk to permanently applying a narcoalgorithm, it'd basically be an enhancement, not a drug effect.

But then, it's you who are houseruling. In this case you should not complain about the mechanics not being balanced - you should complain about them not being "realistic". Also, while I do not completely disagree about the DUR the penalty being a little stretched, I think there are in-game ways to justify it, even for machines. To look at a very simple example of software causing hardware problems even on relatively simple machines like today's, if I keep the CPU speed of my personal computer constantly on overclock, yes, my machine will "perform" better, but it's also going to be far more fragile.

My point here is similar. According to the rulebook, the basic mechanics are identical for biological drugs and narcolagorithms. You might complain about this not being realistic (though see below). But if you change the mechanics giving narcoalgorithms a boost, it's unfair to say that the rulebook mechanics give narcoalgorithms too much of an edge - *you* are giving them that edge. Also, I really, really think that it's perfectly realistic that a narcoalgorithm might take several minutes to have an effect: for example, it may need to analyze the workings of the cyberbrain and its I/O over an extended period of time to optimize certain code pathways or to decide how to cache/reorganize some frequently accessed contents.

My analogy may not have been very convincing, but what I'm trying to say is that narcoalgorithms try (like bio-drugs) to squeeze "performance" out of a system by making it operate outside its "safe" operating limits. I am not sure why you rule out the possibility that this impacts the hardware/wetware as well. The OS (software) of my own very humble PC can tell the CPU (hardware) to scale-up its frequency and/or to ignore the overheat warnings coming from the temperature sensors.

No, because they may well be, at least in part, context dependent.

This is certainly a possibility. The fundamental problem is that you are essentially resleeving a fork of yours (with all the attendant continuity/alienation/integration issues), and if you've kept it "on ice" for quite some time after the fork, merging back with it might not be easy (or you could simply have re-programmed it to self-erase it after the combat ... but this also opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities).

root@Narcoalgorithms are amazing!

I wasn't actually trying to be funny when I said that hedonism comes at not cost in Eclipse Phase. With psychosurgery and resleeving, there is no addiction that can follow you if you don't want it to. There is no piper to be paid, not cum-uppins to be had, no karmic backlash to suffer. Hedonism is without cost.

What running a narcoalgorithm constantly does do is change someones worldview. Have you ever met someone who is in a constant drug haze, but are fully functional in society? Their world view gets to be strange, and they eventually develop some difficulties empathizing with the rest of the transhuman race, but there is no damage or disaster awaiting them.

If your players want to run these narcoalgorithms all the time, just remind them that their characters are going to start thinking through the frame of the narcoalgorithm. This will lead to decision making that the rest of the party won't be able to follow or trust, and then the paranoia starts to kick in. If the character isn't as effective while not on the narcoalgorithms, but their thought processes can't be trusted while they are on them, double-guessing a companion's decision making while under fire can cause more horror and damage than any drug can manage.

In a sense, yes... narcoalgorithms ran 24/7 could be seen as a form of permanent mental enhancement. However, it does still have drawbacks. A person with constant exposure to a narcoalgorithm is going to develop a permanent attachment to it, and any possibility of having that disabled (such as someone hacking their mesh inserts and disabling or deleting it) would probably transform them into a nonfunctioning person nearly immediately.

Also, some logic has to be applied when dealing with narcoalgorithms. Since they are programs, they are not capable of certain things that real drugs are. You should not be capable of having a real narcoalgorithm that can enhance the musculature of your pod... while it might be able to "overclock" artificial musculature hardware in synthmorphs, it should have no effect on the biological musculature of pods. Also, while narcoalgorithms might not provide physical addictions innately, many manufacturers likely implant viral code designed to have such an effect, making a person's pod or synthmorph have slight malfunctions until new copies of the narcoalgorithm are purchased. Furthermore, mind-affecting drugs might simply have a mental-equivalent addiction, despite the real drug having a physical one.

I like this solution. It seems in line with the negative dur. penalties applied to bio-drugs. Also, like bio-drugs, players should be roleplaying the personal social effects of the narcoalgorithms! Check out what a quick search on the short/long term side effects of amphetamine use produces:
http://www.clearhavencenter.com/substance-abuse-treatment-resources/signs-of-Methamphetamine-use.php

Because we all know that paranoia + hallucinations + "mood disturbances"= best inter-party conversations ever.

One problem I have with the reduction of LUC is that it implies that any mental addiction should have detrimental effects on your mind. However, a drug addiction that actually affects your biology is significantly different than, say, a gambling addiction. Once we start arguing that addictive mental activities can have detrimental effects, then we get into ludicrous ideas like "penalty to LUC for sating your porn addiction".

Now, it might be possible that certain drugs have negative side effects on your LUC, but it shouldn't be a universal element applied to all addictions.