How big are drones? Options

[redwulf25_ci]

Some of the smaller drones are given very good descriptions in the core book but until I got a copy of Augmentation and saw a detachable cyberhand described as a "small" drone I had no idea how big drones listed as "small" in the core book should be. I still have no clue how big a "medium" or "large" drone is, except that both have to be large enough to use a light machine gun. A search of the message board turned up no prior discussion of this so I hope someone can help.

[Mercer]

Small drones are the size of halflings, medium drones are human sized, large drones are the size of ogres.

Ok, not really. I don't really know how big they are either. I imagine large drones are vehicle-sized (that is to say, about as big as a car, although I guess they can be bigger if they need to be), small drones are small enough to be picked up and carried around (like the hand drone, or the frisbee sized drones), and the medium drones are somewhere in the middle, dog-sized to big-person-sized. Its a little murky (the biggest medium drone is slightly smaller than the littlest large drone), but that's how I'd interpret it.

[Jaid]

try removing the time restriction on your search. this has, in fact, come up before.

personally, i consider large drones to be about the size of a motorcycle (based on the fact that a motorcycle is a vehicle with similar body scores to most of the large drones, iirc).

medium drones i would say are probably more around the size of a garbage can (one of those metal ones, about 3 feet tall i guess?)

small drones i would guess around the size of a basketball? minidrones about baseball size, and micro is maybe 2-3 inches in the largest dimension.

that said, the size ranges are not set in stone, and there will be some degree of variation between the sizes.

[redwulf25_ci]

[TonkaTuff]

Actually, Jaid's estimates are pretty close to the way they've been presented throughout the system's history.

There was a break-down of the size ranges in the building section of Rigger 3 (and probably 2, as well). And the drone categories seem to be based more on Body rating than sheer size (despite the fact that they use size adjectives for the category names). The actual sizes could range pretty widely within a given category, and even across drone types. For example, the 'small chassis (bod 2)' category covered devices ranging from the size of a toaster up to a large (if, presumably spindly, dog). And ground-based drones were, on the average, physically smaller than flying drones of the same category.

Anyway, the value of a given point of Body has dropped a bit in SR4 (apparently necessitating the creation of the 'mini' category to fill in the gap), and the technology has improved quite a bit, so the chart would look a little different now.

Ground-based (crawlers, walkers, skimmers, anthros)
=========
Micro (bod 0): less than 10 cm (~4 inches). very small and/or very lightweight
Mini (bod 1): 10-20cm (4-8 inches), can be carried in the hand
Small (bod 2): Range in size from a toaster to a medium-sized dog
Medium (bod 3): large dog, dwarf, go-kart
Large (bod 4+): virtually anything larger

UAVs (rotocraft, fixed-wing, vector-thrust, blimps)
=========
Micro (bod 0): less than 20 cm (~8 inches). very small and/or very lightweight (indoor helicopters, or otherwise extensively made of foam)
Mini (bod 1): 20-40cm (8-16 inches) - Air Hogs or those RC dragonflies
Small (bod 2): About the size of a contemporary model plane or chopper (the expensive ones)
Medium (bod 3): large model aircraft, contemporary small UAVs
Large (bod 4+): virtually anything larger

Of course, this is just my rough estimate. And the drone hand still defies the category it's been put in (size-wise, hands are usually smaller than toasters), but it can probably be explained that, being primarily a cyberlimb, it's likely just more structurally or materially sound than a normal drone of it's general size (and, thus, has a higher Body).

[kzt]

I've worked on the theory that a lynx was the size of a 4 wheel ATV. Which is pretty darn big.

[X-Kalibur]

Did someone say Steel Lynx?