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> How stealthy/loud are drones?
Tsuul
post Apr 27 2007, 05:54 PM
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How loud are drones?
The Doberman(crawler), various roto-drones, and Dalmatian(VTOL) for example.
Will they negate a stealthy party approach in, say, a hallway?
The Dalmatian is probably too large for a hallway, but you get the point.
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knasser
post Apr 27 2007, 06:13 PM
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Crawlers probably have rubber-tipped feet for grip, so I don't think that they'd be inherently loud in that regard. I doubt they're great clunking piston-powered things by 2070, so their movement is probably about as loud as a the whir of an mid-sized electric motor, like a quiet exercise bike, perhaps. But they don't (normally) have any Infiltration skill so be prepared for it to scrape walls, clunk up wooden stair cases or completely fail to crouch behind something when it spots a security camera. Instant cover-blower, I'd say no. But a risk, I'd say definitely.

Flying drones... could go either way. There are gas-filled blimp type drones that are probably not to noisy. And there are proper-rotor craft that probably sound like a vacuum cleaner on steroids. Probably okay in the thick of the city where they can operate thirty feet up, but would be a major liability floating around an office at night.

Initial thoughts, anyway. I'd probably allow some stealth mods for a cost.

-K.
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hobgoblin
post Apr 27 2007, 06:13 PM
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like some modern helicopters can prove, those roto-drones can be damn stealthy. its all a matter of the right rotor design. that and taking care of the engine noise.

its hard to judge really, as i dont think the book have much info on what engines are used...
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MadHamish
post Apr 27 2007, 06:36 PM
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They pretty much did away with the signature stat in 4th ed.
The profile of a drone is going to be largely dependent on size, powerplant, and motive force. A frisbee-sized, fan-powered, zepplin-based surveilance drone running on a battery would be stealthy indeed. Haven't you seen those little RC "UFO" toys: One could be behind you right now and you wouldn't know it. On the other hand, if you've got a chair-sized, crawler-based patrol robot running on a 4 stroke gasoline engine, you'd hear it coming. If you've ever been in a park when someone was flying a model plane/heli, you know it's there.

QUOTE
The Doberman(crawler), various roto-drones, and Dalmatian(VTOL) for example.


If a doberman is like the name suggests, and is about the size of a dog, it probably makes about as much noise as one of those Power Wheels cars that little kids have. A Dalmation, being a (again assuming dog-sized) hovering drone, probably is about as noisy as a running air conditioner. If there's a Lone Star iBall rolling down the hall, it might as well be a beer can rolling across the kitchen floor, and an MCT Fly-Spy would be indistinguishable from rats in the walls. If you've not seen the movie Minority Report, there's a great scene where the cops let loose all these little rat sized drones loose in a building looking for a suspect: Perfect feeling for drones.
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kigmatzomat
post Apr 27 2007, 07:23 PM
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I would assume that all drones are electric motored, except for the fastest aircraft. Fuel-cells or microturbines can provide plenty of power and electrics have good torque and few mechanical losses.

From that basic assumption, you can say that any non-stealth drone will sound like an equivalently sized motorized electrical device. Micro and minidrones will sound like electric toothbrushes, small drones like cordless screwdrivers, and the bigger ones like drills. Wheeled vehicles will be quieter at low speeds and blimps will be quietest of all.

Stealth vehicles will be an order of magintude quieter, with legged, wheeled, and tracked vehicles almost completely inaudible at "cruise" speed even a foot away. Airborne stealth vehicles will have a sound profile less than an equivalent wheeled vehicle but still louder than a stealthed wheeled vehicle. The counter to that is that airborne vehicles will likely be at greater distance so they can get away with it.
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YQM
post Apr 27 2007, 07:23 PM
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I've tended to believe that anything small enough to move within a facility with you shouldn't be to much of a problem.

I would have players -2 dice for flyers but thats about it. I'd also make a stealth kit for the flyers to remove the -2 at a cost of 25% of the drones original cost.
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DireRadiant
post Apr 27 2007, 08:32 PM
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I'd just look at the table on P 117, decide whether or not the drone was

Obvious/Large/Loud - 1 - Neon sign, running crowd, yelling, gunfi re
Normal - 2 - Street sign, average pedestrian, conversation, silenced
gunfi re
Obscured/Small/Muffled - 3 - Item dropped under table, contact lens, whispering
Hidden/Micro/Silent - 4 - Secret door, needle in haystack, subvocal speech

apply the modifiers as appropriate in the chart just below that one on page 117, and go from there.
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Jaid
post Apr 27 2007, 08:56 PM
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i would tend to think the dalmation would be quite loud, personally, and probably the lockheed optix-x would be loud personally (though that last one is somewhat iffy, since i'm mostly just guessing the optic-x is a jet as opposed to an airplane).

essentially, some types of transportation don't lend themselves well to being quiet. vectored thrust is, imo, one of those, and jet engines would be another...
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Jack Kain
post Apr 27 2007, 09:51 PM
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QUOTE (Jaid @ Apr 27 2007, 02:56 PM)
i would tend to think the dalmation would be quite loud, personally, and probably the lockheed optix-x would be loud personally (though that last one is somewhat iffy, since i'm mostly just guessing the optic-x is a jet as opposed to an airplane).

essentially, some types of transportation don't lend themselves well to being quiet. vectored thrust is, imo, one of those, and jet engines would be another...


Yeah I can't see vector thrust being quite on the Dalmation. But as it can fly fairly high up it could follow a car with out problems.
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kigmatzomat
post Apr 28 2007, 01:17 PM
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But is vectored thrust jet thrust or ducted fan? There are ducted fan electric RC planes now and while battery life is low right now, fuel cells or nanoturbines could provide plenty of electric power 2060. The noise differential between four high power electric fans and a jet engine is pretty significant.
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Jaid
post Apr 28 2007, 01:46 PM
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i tend to assume it's basically a miniature T-bird, personally, but i suppose it could be fan powered...

feels a little weird to me though, considering T-birds are basically a bunker with jump jets strapped on to it... and T-birds are kinda the classic (indeed, the only canon, to my knowledge) vectored thrust vehicle.
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hobgoblin
post Apr 28 2007, 03:35 PM
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it depends on the weights one wants to move around i guess.

also, look at the speed. the dalmation is only slightly faster then the roto-drone, and comparable to the vtol commuter. to me that talks about fan based. for if you look at the t-bird, it got a speed close to 10 times the commuter.
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Wasabi
post Apr 28 2007, 05:34 PM
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In my mind armor == heavier than average == more enginer than average == louder than average

Sure, some space age stuff could fix that but we're talking regular drones here not upper end Fields of Fire-esque stuff. :-)

Just have your mage cast Vehicle Masking to reduce the sig. :-)
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Demon_Bob
post Apr 29 2007, 09:17 PM
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Stealth of drones, is dependant on several factors. Noise, size & EM signature are of course important.

The most, however, is how well does it blend in to the enviroment.
A housekeeping drone after normal business hours in a large office building, regardless of its size and how loud it is, is more likely to be overlooked than a silenced rotodrone with a gun hovering in the middle of the room.
A winged spyplane in the airspace with nothing else but blimp drones will be noticed.
An eyeball drone will standout more in an residental enviroment than one shaped to look like a dog or cat. (Providing the area is not so poor that they appear on the menu.)
A loud fluorescent Pink rotodrone hovering 1m from the door to your house, will always be less stealthy than the silent camoflagued drone in the bushes.
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