Humanoid Combat Drones, Definitely better for defense than offense Options

[JanessaVR]

Something I’ve considered for some time is the possible combat potential for drones such as the Renraku Manservant-3 (SR4 Arsenal, pp. 120-121). They are “capable of working around the clock doing domestic tasks, such as laundry, cleaning, food prep, and so on, without ever getting tired or worked up.” And they’re only 2,500¥ a pop, too. Well then, it sounds like they can operate firearms while they’re at it. This might be disallowed by the manufacturer, but I rather imagine you can bypass those restrictions without too much trouble and load some basic combat software into them to turn them into grunts you could use in the field.

Now, they’d be terrible in melee combat. It’s not what they’re made for and Bog the Trog™ would quickly smash them into scrap if he got within arm’s reach of them. But if you got them behind cover and told them to shoot anyone or anything that didn’t have one of your team’s IFF transponders, they could be useful. The biggest danger would be hacking, so you’d be crazy if you didn’t disconnect their wireless ability entirely and run fiber optic cables into a port on their back to your central control console for the team rigger to manage.

So, you could get “a dozen guys” to watch over your hideout / command post in the field who don’t talk back and aren’t demanding a share of the payout. Something to consider.