OK, I have a few ideas in my head, but I want to hear about some tricks groups and GMs have used Drones for.

I like using Renraku Manservants with high pilot, Adaptability R3, Fuzzy Logic, and a lot of autosofts stored in them. They can repair your vehicles and gear, they can drive you around, they can hack for you, and they can shoot trespassers for you. It's literally like adding another teammate, but one that never argues with you.

Until the Hacker you pissed off does some 'reprogramming' to give it an attitude.

Then it acts just like any other PC (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

1) Disable the wireless. He can't hack it unless he wants to jack in directly.

2) Have it set to automatically fend off people attempting #1.

3) I was trying to get the thread moving.

One of my characters once made a two drone infiltration team for air ducts.

Both were modified Kanmushies (sp), of which the first had a robotic arm, a mini welding laser and a electronics toolkit, while the other had a canister of nerve gas and a improved sensor package. Pretty good for getting past pesky air duct security systems and ventilation fans. Though they did up costing more then 50K combined.

Roto Doc - Rotodrone with cyberarm and embedded med kit and appropriate autosofts.

You know about dikoted ally spirits? You realize drones are easier to dikote? And they come with all those attachments and it doesn't take all that karma to upgrade adrone.

I'm unsure whether the phrase "dikote" has moved from the 3rd edition rule to a catchphrase for "awsome" now. I think it has.

Also, I have a thread somewhere about Vehicles, Drones, and Agents. Glitch is on there.

Someone explain dikote to a pre-Sr4 virgin?

You coat something with molten dimonds to make it even more awesome.

(Srsly, it made almost anything better to be Dikoted, and was cheap enough that almost everything was.)

Yeah, it was based off a real-world application.

The SR version could be applied to any object that could survive the furnace required for the diamond deposition process. It mysteriously made everything stronger, harder, sharper, etc.

It was also fairly cheap. So pretty much every armor you saw a shadowrunner wearing had Dikoted plates, all swords and knives were Dikoted, etc.

Someone eventually noted that many Spirits could easily survive the Dikoting furnace.

So, here we are now, years later, still pushing the running joke about Dikoted Ally Spirits.



-karma

Well, at least you can say that DiKoting was a market for diamonds that put them to some use other than DeBeers DeCeiving women everywhere into thinking they are more valuable as a "rare" precious stone than they actually are by artificially manipulating the supply. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

That's one part of the future that isn't so dystopic, heh.

Well, that technically wouldn't work.

Diamond deposition gets it's diamonds from spraying carbon-laced gasses into a chamber with an high energy source, forming a plasma. The object to be coated is passed through the plasma encouraging diamond formation on the surface.

No actual pre-existing diamonds are used in the process.



-karma

I know. You're ruining my fun though. What's been interesting is the amount of propaganda that the diamond industry has been spreading over the last decade or so disparaging the "artificial" diamond market as not being legitimate, even though the only "easy" way to tell the difference between a real diamond and a manufactured one is that the fake ones have no flaws. Well, and no blood stains.

Does it broadcast with Radar o'Reilly's voice when it's called in?

"Incoming, wounded!"

I'm thinking about buying a suite of Autosofts/Pilot programs and such, all Rating 3, for the Bust a Move. With copy protections stripped, they make it a pretty expendable but versatile drone. Maybe they could use holdout pistols? Their fluff describes them being able to open up a store from the inside, which suggests effective paws. (Although they don't explicitly have those in the rules.)

Using a chameleon coated Dragonfly (the close combat variant) and a really high dice pool with 5 passes and called shots to papercut enemies to death.
Since its small and chameleon coated it was damn hard to spot!

How about the other route - turning vehicles into drones?

A D-C Horseman with advanced cargo drone has handy arms and cargo space, and wouldn't raise suspicion wandering around in the non-slummy area of town. Throw in some advanced image screens and it can even appear to have a smiling, waving little old lady sat inside it. Quite speedy for a drone that can emulate a human, too.

And an ES Cyclops might make for a fun pursuit drone, with some engine mods. Not as fast as the P4, obviously, but can carry a larger weapon-load.

In an earlier edition my rigger had a solar-recharging blimp cruising around the city on an autonomous holding pattern, on which he sold cheap advertising. Whilst on a run with the rival team in hot pursuit, I let somebody else take over driving the van so I could jump into the Blimp (previously moved to ensure it was in the right area) pop out the concealed twin linked machine and begin a strafing run...

Alternatively they can use electricity to cause the diamond to form on objects - I saw an article a year+ ago about (I'm not kidding about this) Mexican scientists turning tequila into diamonds for computer parts.

Well, we've already had "Fuzzy Logic"... Now we know how to get that fuzziness into the computer.

I know my biological computer gets fuzzy after a few tequila.

Now we know why SnS is broken: it is Dikote's father.

Who's the mother? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

Tila Tequila, of course. Yes, the conception has been videotaped and can be found online.

Hmm, stupid drone tricks? A group of 10 bust-a-moves with the [Profession (cheerleader)] autosoft along with a Maneuver(bust-a-move) autosoft. Even well trained guards will get distracted by the enormous WTF of a bust-a-move pyramid chanting company loyalty songs. They usually call the bomb squad, which means you can get the same distraction as calling in a bomb threat, but are more likely to make the evening news.

An MCT Fly-spy with Improved Sensor package. Add a small tweeter speaker system into the extra room and chameleon coat the whole thing, and give it 2 levels of signature masking. Have it land on the shoulder of the target and pipe the high frequency noise directly into the target's ear. Great practical joke, if you do it to a friend you should give them a cyberear afterword to replace their exploded eardrums.

Depending on your GM, you can take the Daihatsu-Caterpillar Horseman and keep adding modules until you have a Caterpillar instead of a Horseman. You could then refit any of the cargo modules to remove the wheeled mode and replace the legs with arms. Add gecko tips to each modules hands, and a winch to the rear-most module. Get a smoke projector for the front-most compartment and add chameleon coating stripes as a custom look (no bonus to hiding, but makes a cool display screen). Hang out on street corners and sell mushrooms to British school girls. Avoid chameleon coated cats who didn't shell out to get their teeth covered.

If your GM won't allow the Caterpillar as a vehicle to have more than one module, use the Centipedes to do the same thing, but smaller.

Amazingly funny.