Take any public transportation that goes under ground. (Subway, Taxi on Lower Wacker Drive, etc). At that point you're playing havok with camera range, signal range, and piloting ability. (The camera can't pay attention to me AND it's surroundings enough pilot well in a confined busy area. I still don't understand how a drone with only a microphone can even pilot safely. Even blind people use a sense of touch as well as hearing.)

Note that if I'm worried about being followed by a drone, I'm really just worried about being followed, period. I'd want to go through some high security areas and take advantage of their scannning for threats as well as some lower security areas (or anywhere I can simply turn off my comlink or have it's signal cut off). Anywhere where I blend in is great.

even minidrones have radar.

Can you show me where that's coming from? I'm seeing radar as a capacity 5 sensor. (pg 59-60 arsenal). Pg 105 of Arsenal describes the sensor package that can fit in a vehicle (12 capacity) which includes radar. According to the sensor package table in SR4, you could fit radar (and only radar) in a small drone (capacity 5). Minidrones only have a sensor capacity of 3 without being modified.

Okay you're right.

Although that makes absolutely no sense
I guess one way of doing it it the drone mode, enhanced sensor package.
Then your mini drone would have a 5 capacity so you could fit a radar in it (and nothing else)

Why do Radars not have ratings?
Why is there 1 mention of radar on page 60 of Arsenal and nowhere else.

GAH the drone rules are so frustrating once you start actually digging into them.

Not to completely derail this conversation, but a mini (or micro) drone can have both a microphone and camera as a 1 capacity item. use a Trideo camera rather than simply a video camera. According to SR4 p 325 a Trideo camera is capable of recording both video and audio and is capable of taking on additional enhancements (low-light, etc).

-D

Computers do not look for the intent of an order. They read the order and comply. It is the simplest and easiest way to make sure your rigger is telling his drones what he actually wants them to do and not just sending them out expecting them to do something. This applies to spirits as well.

Note that this will only work for a short amount of time before the rigger will adapt - but that's okay. This is only designed to make them think more about what they are telling their drones to do and the problems of linking many drones under the same subscription.


Actually, Pilot programs are simply specialized Agent programs. They are RAW one and the same.

1) Actually, SR4 jammers run on magic (apparently), and can target particular things and jam only them. So it is entirely possible to use a max rating jammer in the middle of downtown and only take out the drone that is following you.
2)That works well. Also remember that the drone is going to need to make a shadowing test to follow the target in the first place. Also remember that just turning a corner might put you out of sight for a bit as long as the drone isn't directly overhead as some building blocks the drone's view.
3) Once again, shadowing rolls need to be made to keep track of the target, especially in a crowded area. Also consider that micro drones are really small. Double back and try stepping on it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

You could also break out the camera disrupter thing from arsenal and have it blind the drone.

Hacking into the drone is also an option, or if it is being rigged directly, trace back to the rigger controlling it. Now you know who is following you, and they don't even know that you know. Depending on who is being tracked, the Rigger may find himself in jail (Or some corporate holding cell) when he finally gets out of his fly-spy or whatever.

Drones are powerful tools, but they aren't all powerful. One of the main things to keep in mind is that drones don't automatically succeed at everything. They still need to make shadowing rolls to tail people, infiltration rolls to not get spotted, perhaps the occasional dodge roll to not get stepped on. They need perception checks to be able to see stuff that isn't obvious (And even at 50x magnification, tracking someone through a crowd from 5km away is tricky stuff, facial recognition software definitely isn't going to get anything from that distance. It might manage male/female on a good day). And of course they have serious suseptability to things like hackers and jammers.

I'd be willing to bet money that the team of scientists who invented the Whirlwind computer (which was the first computer capable of operating in real-time and came online in 1951) would have similar feelings about iPhones and the Internet.

I'm not calling you out specifically, I'm just tired of people making "factual" arguments about technology 62 years in the future (not to mention in a timeline radically different than our own)...especially in a game that had to radically change the way that technology worked in the most recent edition because the predictions they made *15* years earlier were woefully incorrect.

If "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." (Arthur C. Clarke) then "runs on magic" is a reasonably clear way to say that the device doesn't work in the manner current similar devices work. It makes it clear that while it appears on the surface to be similar to the item we know by that name, it isn't. It's different in very important ways.

Exactly.

I don't disagree with the sentiment; I just don't think that the description of SR4 jammers as "running on magic" was intended to reflect that stance.

:shrug:

EDIT: I stand corrected, based on the response directly above this one.

Since when can jammers do that though?
There's AREA jammer,s that hit everything
and there's directional ones, that hit everyting in a narrow cone.

It's not possible to jam just 1 drone.

Sure, you hit it with a Paintball Gun that has Singal 0 Nanojammers.

One drone jammed. Rather expensively. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

I remember once having some fun with a Rigger PC that liked to stay safely inside his van while sending out his little drones to do all the dirty work. I simply had an NPC sneak up to the van and conceal an area jammer on the undercarriage. The poor Rigger drove all over the place trying to get out of the jammers range; to no avail.

Which may or may not work to take out just a drone and nothing else, but...

A smart jammer can certainly manage it.

Edit: I thought there was something else about being able to not jam particular nods, but I can't find it. It might be an update in 4a, which I don't have.

"You start a jamming device. You may choose any number of known devices to be excluded from the jamming when you initiate the jamming, and may change the list with another Jam Signals action." (SR4A, p.231; emphasis mine)

This was a change in SR4A that I wasn't very pleased with (mostly because my character had forked out for a Smart Area Jammer, of course). I'd like to point out that you can only exclude devices that you *know* about, so there might be interesting interactions with hidden nodes that you don't know about. (It might be an interesting security setup to have a series of hidden nodes that trigger an alarm if any of them "disappear" from the network because of someone using a jammer in the area, for example).

But do jammers really have the range required to be effective? I thought they lost about a point of effective Rating every 5m?

Also, jammers tend to be illegal, and their use is obvious by nature. So a bit tricky to use on the streets..

I wonder if you couldn't just file harassment charges against drones following you or something?

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)
So every single of those dog brain drones got 3 nethits on their attack tests, that seems highly unlikely.

My 2 cents to conversation about jammers. 4G mobile networks are if i recall correctly implemented in software. So that when phone send data, it's signal isn't in band it just sends data in many channels and base station knows formula what to listen. Thats why 4G networks have soft degenaration in quality, instead of hard limit like GSM systems have (which have something like 10 or so channels per cell). Magical Jammer could be explained that it just scrambles one "formula" channel.

Pilot: 3
Targeting: 6 (Optimization +3)
Smartgun: 2

Dicepool: 11D6

Should be able to manage 3 Hits average.

Regardless they might have managed only 1 hit and still zapped him good.

Okay Smart Jammers are magic..
Got it.

Good thing autosofts only go up to rating 4 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Still, 11 drones are going to take out a guard no problem.
Edit: I mean, it's like telling a story about how you took out an ant with a tactical nuke or something. Of course you killed it.

Camera Neutralizer would be fairly common.

I'm sure you could this them up to only target sensors in certain areas (say ignoring cars on a street or the site's own sensors)

Camera Neutralizer: This system uses infrared lasers and photo-detecting transistors to scan an area for the reflectivity and shape of the image-producing sensors used in digital cameras. Once a camera is located, the system points a laser directly into the camera, overloading it with white light and rendering images, video, and trideo useless. Celebrities often use this system to defeat paparazzi, as do some secure installations that hope to defeat surveillance measures.

Not neccessarily. Smart Jammers are informed of what, well I'm going to use the term "Frequency" for lack of a better term, are being used by the known devices you don't want jammed, and then doesn't slam static into that particular "Frequency".

Anyhow, "Any sufficiently advanced technology..." and all that.

To save time I had him roll once for all drones. Plus I think there was a TacNet setup too. 3 hits is average for 9 dice or so, although not guarenteed.