A couple Rigging Qs Options

[Semicolon]

During a run last night my gaming group ran across a couple of stumbling blocks in regards to Drones and Rigging (and mounted weapons).

First: Drone Initiative.
Stated in the book, Drone initiative is a Pilot + Response roll. But Drones don't have a Response. Is this referring to the Response of the Commlink they are subscribed to? But then how do you handle a drone that is opporating autonomously?

Second: Mounted Weapons.
Vehicles and Drones have a number of weapon mounts equal to their Body/3 (round down). That's the easy part. Now defining those mounts is of course a little more difficult. The old Rigger 3 book had all the wonderful options, and I'm sure SR4 will eventually have the same. But in the meantime, the question we had was, do weapon mounts on Vehicles and Drones offer any sort of Recoil Comp? Seems logical that an LM mounted on a hardpoint would have at least some RC.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[DireRadiant]

For the drone mounted LMG, I'd allow someone to add Gyro Stabilization, but instead of upper torso, attach to drone/vehicle. However it would only fit on large drones or vehicles and consumes a lot space.

[James McMurray]

Weapon mounts do not have builtin recoil compensation, but they do negate the penalty for firing from a moving vehicle.

[James McMurray]

The best weapon I've found for a mount is the Ares Alpha. You get the same damage value and fire rates, plus can get the recoil modifier higher. The underbarrel grenade launcher is also very useful at times.

[Shrike30]

White Knights are more my speed... the higher damage code on an LMG, combined with the belt feed just works for me. The lack of a GL is sad, though.

[dcpirahna]

What effects if any DO drones have in terms of recoil?

My group has just begun digging in to the rigging rules (which are woefully inadequate) and the impression they had was that Drones firing weapons are like Vehicles firing mounted weapon. You just roll Gunnery+Targeting. Recoil is not a factor for a Vehicle/Drone firing a weapon.

While this seems wrong to me for drones (smaller ones anyway). I do not see anything in the book to really clarify either way however.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Normal Ranged Combat rules apply.

[Geekkake]

[ronin3338]

[mdynna]

Some drones have a Body < 3 but specifically state that they include a weapon mount. These are exceptions to the rule. If the book doesn't say that hey already have a weapon mount, and they have a Boyd < 3 then they can't have a weapon mount.

As an aside, I am beginning work on converting the Vehicle Modification rules from Rigger 3 to something that will work with SR4. I will post them when I have something of significance to show.

[ronin3338]

Crap. Once again we have vehicles that don't follow the stated rules. I think I'd rule that the mont will only fit a smaller weapon, like an SMG, and apply a point or 2 of "recomp" (cool points for geekake)

[Big D]

How do you handle reloading a drone, though?

Or do you have to make a few rolls to modify the weapon to feed off of a large magazine or hopper?

If you gave a drone one of the ARs with a built-in GL, is there any way that you could get more than the single shot out of the GL?

I'm thinking White Knight (see the suppression fire thread) or MGL-12 kludged with a large (belted?) ammo bin, a la a Mk19 or M-307.

[Lagomorph]

edit: These are basically both house rules

The response is supposed to be 3, but IIRC for hackers you can't have a system > response and since a Pilot is a System, you can't have a pilot more than 3 (since there aren't really rules for upgrading the device rating in a drone), which is illogical, so we just ruled that you roll PilotX2.

In our games, we treat mounts as tripods with -6 RC.

edit2:

I beleive that weapon mounts are listed as including a 200 round ammo bin

[James McMurray]

[Shrike30]

This is just me being amusing/stupid, but...

RE: 250 round ammo bin: does that include a 250 minigrenade capacity for the UBarrLauncher under the Alpha/XM-30, in addition to the 250 rounds for the rifle itself? Or does the UBarr not count as the primary weapon?

RE: recomp: If put a bipod on the LMG (or a tripod) and bolt it down onto the hull of the drone, does it provide compensation?

By the way, BigD: most underbarrel GLs in SR hold multiple rounds of ammunition.

[James McMurray]

It doesn't say if that applies to the GL or not. We opted to not have it count, but could have gone either way. It's way too expensive to fill a 250 capacity container full of grenades when you may see that drone a smoking wreck after 3 seconds of combat. And if you need more than 6 you're probably screwed anyway. Either that or the drone is immune to the weapons fire of the opposition and the grenades are actually just icing on the cake because the drone can handle them by itself.

[James McMurray]

We opted to not allow bipods and tripods mounted to drones, as they're supposed to be resting on a solid, steady object (generally the surface under you). Well, I shouldn't say we opted to not allow it, because I didn't bother asking about it.

It didn't make sense to me and sometimes my group can get sidetracked for 20 minutes or more on a rules question that was just asked out of curiosity. Like looking up the haggling / fencing rules in the middle of combat, which has happened before and caused a lot of "hey, it's your turn" moments.

[hobgoblin]

hmm, how many autosofts do a normal drone need to function effectivly?

i have a bad feel that as pilot stands in for system, and if one go down the route of more then system programs result in a drop of response, then the poor little dogbrain could be very confused very soon :wobble:

[James McMurray]

I don't have the sheet, but offhand I believe the loadout was:

Defense (never used, and new drones probably won't have it)
Gunnery (for the AK)
Heavy Weapons (for the GL)
Maneuver (for maneuvering)
Awareness (for noticing stuff)

Since that hit the limit for a system of 5 and dropped the response to 4 there was no reason not to slap 4 more programs on there, in this case the stun damage IC program.

[Big D]

[James McMurray]

I used them mostly for firing single long wide bursts at people. The AK can get exactly enough recoil comp to negate the long burst penalties, and the weapon mount negates movement penalties. 8 dice and -5 dodge pool hits most people at least a little bit. It also served to lower their dodge pools for future shots by the sammie and myself.

One thing every rigger should do is get as much electrical protection on your combat drones as possible. Electrical attacks have a chance of just flat out shutting you down for several turns. That's how we took out the opposing drones with stick and shock ammo.

I like the aerial suppression idea though, and will definitely swipe it. I didn't have any aerial drones with me on the run because we were flown to the run site and had limited cargo capacity. The dalmation couldn't keep up with the plane so I left it at home.

[Voran]

I was thinking along similar lines. Using drones not so much for the minigun goodness that the LS pictured ones do, but loading them up with combat modifier gear. Flashpaks, smoke grenades, tear gas, whatever.

I was wondering if you could also mix a drone's setting. I've see largely 'in air' type drones and 'on ground' type drones, but was thinking a drone that could fly, get itself a nice perch, land extend its legs like a tripod, engage a gyro sabilizer or something and become a miniturret might be useful too.

[James McMurray]

That sounds like a cool idea. Hopefully the SR4 drone creation rules will have something like that in it.

I had three drones with me, two of which had frag grenades and one had thermosmoke ones. Unfortunately for me when the firefight started the ones with the frag were where the ones with the smoke should have been. I also had failed to get an airlink for them, so the grenades never actually did much when coupled with our "dodges can negate grenades easily" ruling.

[Big D]

That's where I'm really liking your Alpha idea...

One drone suppresses, the other drops a couple grenades on the folks who hit the dirt. The survivors are obliged to relocate through the suppressing fire.

The combination can't be good for morale.

Switch out when one drone runs out of grenades.

I'm liking the emplaced aerial drone, too.