Vehicle sensor loadout Options

[Xeros]

Tell me if this makes sense.

A care, say a basic Honda spirit, has a sensor capacity of 12, and a sensor rating of 1. The sensor rating doesn't mean squat, until you actually put some sensors on it. So you load it out. A camera lets it "see", at least in the direction you mount it. A camera has a capacity load of 1, so you put, let's say 5, one in each direction, 1 pointing up. I am assuming cameras have a measure of peripheral vision, so that covers all directions but down (which is road). You add a microphone. 1 will probably do, more if you are going to start indulging in directional microphones.

and so on and so forth. Basically, a vehicle is blind until you add those sensors. At this point, they all feed through the basic sensor network, which is the sensor rating of 1....pretty pathetic, but at least it can see and hear, which allows the rigger to see and hear when jumped in. Basically, can a jumped in rigger see at all, without those cameras? Clearsight autosofts seem mandatory in this situation.

[Veggiesama]

I don't think you'd need 5 different cameras for a vehicle. That just sounds a little silly to me. As a DM, I'd figure it's either on a mount or it simply has 360 degree vision naturally. Of course, how well it's able to identify objects has to do with its Signal, Sensor, and Clearsight programming, which is another issue altogether...

[Demon_Bob]

Was kinda wondering about that myself.

Due to POV oddities with a turreted top mounted camera, I would say that it would be better to have 4+ cameras (Front , Back, and both sides)

However, because of the sizes of camera's today I would say that you could have multiple cameras on your vehicle/drone without taking up any more sensor capacity space unless you actually wanted to be able to look through more than one camera. (I have a basic camera on my cell phone. The cell phone is smaller than my wallet empty.)

So if you only cared about being able to look in one direction you only need one camera sensor system. However, if you think it would be nice to be able to keep an eye on or fire at that annoying road gang behind/beside you while driving it might be a good idea to have another camera feed for it.

I know in SW3 that a Sensor rating 1 came with 360 cameras, without looking at the rules do not not if that is still true, but do not see why not.

[TonkaTuff]

All new and late-model vehicles produced after the Crash come with fully-functional sensor systems. Vehicle sensors themselves are self-contained arrays designed to detect other vehicles' signatures (the heat, sound, and/or gasses that they put out) and/or interact with the Gridguide or other traffic-control systems (SR4 pp 159 & 162) - which is why you take penalties for trying to detect and lock-on to metahumans and other things with emissions profiles significantly different from a car or bike (and get a bonus for picking up something as obvious as a jet liner or semi).

So, likely as not, the results present as a radar-like image on whatever displays your vehicle or drone has. Which is why you have to switch the vehicle's Sensor attribute for your Intuition in perception tests - if it were your standard audio-visual sensorium, you could probably just use a standard Int+Percp test to look out through a drone (cameras and mics are, apparently, considered to have perfect vision and hearing within the metahuman norms).

To add visual or audio capabilities (or smell/chemical analysis, cyberware detection, ect.) on top of that, you probably have to attach extra sensory devices to the vehicle or drone - within the capacity limits of the sensor package. With a car or whatever, that 12 capacity means you can pretty much load it down with all but one of the extra sensors listed, since add-ons to an individual camera or mic (thermo, spatial recognizers, etc) only eat up capacity units on the camera or mic w/o making them take up more room themselves.

Though the real question would be whether or not the listed package capacities on p. 325 mean that's how much extra space is left to cram things into, or that's the max amount that can be put into one. And, if the latter - they really need to clarify what makes up a vehicle sensor array, and how much of that 12-unit block it takes up.

Of course, most of this is opinion extrapolated from what few rules are actually presented. Your mileage may vary.

[ogbendog]

I assumed that all drones would have the camera, because otherwise it would run into walls.

Reading this made me think, if you add the rigger mod to a vehicle, shouldn't that include a camera for the same reason?

[Xeros]

That's part of what got me into this. If I am going to inhabit my car, I don't want to be bound to the dim awareness that connecting to the traffic net, and a generic proximity sensor would give me.

[BlackHat]

I assumed the opposite. I assumed that 1 capacity of your drone/vehicles sensor was almost always spent on a camera, to avoid walls, and facilitate easy rigging... but that you didn't have to.

If you chose not to put a camera on your high-end sensor array, you might get all sorts of other information, but be visually blind, and still function just fine. Since your vehicle should stay on roads, it could use grid-guide to get around without "eyes" jsut fine... and using radars or lasers to detect obstacles on the road. When you rig such a vehicle, those senses become your "eyes".. .but you might not be aware of the color of paint on the car in front of you.

This makes me sad, of course, because all of my little drones can pretty much just support a camera. Doesnt' make for a very effective spydrone if they can't hear too...

[blakkie]

[blakkie]

[BlackHat]

Yay! they can hear! *cheers from the crowd*

Still, I consider that thing the standard mini-drone sensor package. :-) I would probably include it on anything I intended to ever rig - but I doubt it would ever come standard... since commercial vehicles (and even drones) don't really need cameras and microphones to function.

[Feshy]

[BlackHat]