Fria Ligans forum

Are info cubes intended to be used directly? IE, do they have human usable I/O like a small LED screen and tiny keyboard? The descriptions make it seem like one would bring an info cube to a delve, but others almost make it seem like you have to plug it into a terminal to use it.

Mostly trying to make sense of the gear bonus of an info cube (+2 to research) vs the Ibis 4 terminal (also +2), since I think you can only use one piece of gear for a roll.

Looking at the equipment list on page 104, it states that the info cube contains a database that must be loaded into a computer or tabula. That implies you need an external interface — like a terminal or tabula — to actually access and use the info cube.

Based on the gear bonus rules on page 48, it also seems you can only benefit from one gear bonus at a time. So my interpretation is that a terminal (or equivalent device) can serve multiple functions, one of which is accessing the data stored on an info cube. In that case, when you're using it to accessing the information on an info cube, it should be the info cube’s gear bonus that applies.

That's really not a bad view of it.