rigger and counter rigger for 4th ed Options

[pendothrax]

i remember the meconning and other rules for how secure or not a rigger's link with thier drone or drones was for 3rd ed. since I do not have much practical experience with applying the fourth ed rules to in game situations, could someone please break down how a rigger would protect the integrity of their drone control vs someone else taking over their drones? thx

[The Jopp]

The best thing would be to increase it's response to 5. Add an agent with Analyze, Attack, Armour and something else. This means that you could load the drone with up to 4 other programs and have a response of 4 and still be able to use a pilot rating of 4.

Encrypt the signal, Encrypt your Commlink (encrypt device) and unless you need to run 4 programs encrypt the drone (encrypt device)

This will at most buy you time since there is no 100% defense against a hacker. Any hacker can intercept the signal of a drone (after finding it, decrypting it and tapping it) and then Spoof the signal if they have an image of your persona.

According to the RAW you could also intercept signal and edit the signal between Rigger-->Drone and insert preprogrammed commands (i doubt that you would be able to insert info on the fly, sending a file on the otehr hand). If they send a data package with a new subscription list they could potentially divert the control to their own commlink.

[Jaid]

step 1) be a technomancer with reasonable response and high charisma.

step 2) machine sprites. lots and lots of machine sprites.

If, however, you mean something that non-technomancers can do, well... in no particular order:

- stealth programs. have these running on your drones. If they can't find your drone's node, they can't hack it.
- encrypt. it won't hold long, but it's something at least.
- data bombs/IC.
- high firewall and analyse
- have your drones connected by wires instead of wireless (obviously not always an option, but i think you get the idea... for example, having a van with a bunch of smart firing platforms built into it, you could most certainly hardwire the platforms to the van, and be inside the van controlling it via wired control.
- requiring biometric scans, passkey, etc before they allow control. (not really clear on how this would work, to be honest)

other than that, you're into house rule territory. just as some thoughts:

- you could create your own computer language, network protocol, etc from scratch. reallistically, this would make your drones a lot harder to steal. also reallistically, this would take a really, really, really, really long time.
- if your drones relied on laser for communication, you could presumably make it a lot harder to hack your drones. i, for one, am not going to try to figure out how this would work though lol.
- you could just give your drones orders, remove wireless access from them, and turn them loose. naturally, this means you won't know what happens with them until they rendezvous. hopefully, they won't bring half a dozen citymasters behind them ;)

[bustedkarma]

Those are some really good ideas.

I like pre-set operating instructions.

I'd suppose you could set the drone to open a wireless connection to you every X mins, to check for updates, then close the channel, and continue what it was doing.

I'd think you could also define parameters to open a wireless channel when ceartin things happen. Takes damage, spots someone or a ceartin someone, etc, etc.

It would need a really decent pilot program to work.

I like the idea behind biometrics too.
Any drone big enough to serve as a weapons platform is big enough to slap a fingerprint scanner on.

[Nikoli]

Just had a thought.
If you want to prepare a nasty little surprise for anyone that steals your drones, place an innocously named file on your control link, something nobody would suspect. Then have preprogrammed instructions, build it into the pilot if necessary, that when ever orders are changed, check the issuing commlink for the file and checksum, if it is missing, target the commlink and open fire.

[SpasticTeapot]

[Kanada Ten]

[CrimsonHawk]

I have a question I have looked in both rigger 2 and 3 books as well as the revised and I cant seem to figure out weight for some of these drones for instance the lynx does it weigh around 1200 so only a bulldog van with nothing else in it can barely carry one?

[Aaron]