[X] My Assistant

[Kagetenshi]

[Fortune]

Thanks Kagetenshi. :)

[Stahlseele]

[Telion]

I agree with stahlseele, drop the articulation or go VCR-2, the benefit of articulation is mostly for a more generalist character. Not sure I'd go with the synaptic accellerator either if your planning to stay mostly in the machine. Based on this build it looks like your going more generalist, where you can fight from the machine or in the fray.

I personally go with a VCR-3 since I tend to dedicate myself to the job. Typically I'll usually go alpha for that much needed meat space my future upgrades will include.

Some advice:

A problem I've found with my rigger characters is always running out of skill points. So in the end I've usually opted for taking no more than 1 vehicle repair skill and having a GM Mr. Fixit or 2 complete with autosofts for my basic vehicle repairs.

I'd suggest taking the SUT skill at some point, specialization in IVIS if your team won't gain much benefit from it.

Don't bother with Encryption for an initial character, the cost to implement it on each drone across the board and on the RC deck gets quite costly, I do quickly buy this upgrade as soon as I can. Remember they all have to be running at the same rating or it will fail.

Other upgrades can be skipped as well but I'd recommend anything that can go directly on the RC deck only be bought at a fairly high rating.

An edge I never pass up is connected (3 points) vehicles. so I have a contact I can buy vehicles from without street index.

I'd suggest a router of some sort so you can hook up external devices like offline storage to your deck. Lots of other uses as well and not too expensive.

sleep regulators and jolt alerts can be your friend.

3 drones to look into are the steel lynx if you want a mini tank, lone star strato for a rotor drone with good manueverability and an MMG, and the previously mentioned condors with some form of photogenic paint/camo/rheuthenium polymer to make a nice hidden eye in the sky.

[Kagetenshi]

I would actually advise against going alphaware on the VCR—it means you need a big wad of cash to upgrade later, but on the other hand it saves you about 30% of your budget to start (for the VCR-3). Plus, there's not that much 'ware you really need as a Rigger, and the stuff that would be most useful needs highly advanced 'ware to use.

*Mutters things about how they made the Tactical Computer useful primarily to Riggers and then made the Essence Cost so steep that you need either both to be betaware or one to be deltaware and the other alpha to get them into the same character*

Edit: I'd also advise away from Condors—wait, I'm smoking crack. Damn it, why do these things have to have another name? Yeah, I'm a big fan of the LDSDs. Mini-blimps for the win.

~J

[Kagetenshi]

Some vehicles made according to the vehicle design rules:

[wargear]

Get a small chunk of headware memory linked up to your VCR. Install your homebrew rank 9+ encryption algorithm in it. Add a chunk of memory to the Rigger interface of all your vehicles, with a nasty nasty Black IC installed.

Your encryption automatically allows you to access your vehicles. Anyone who lacks your gear gets smashed by the Black IC...and the VCR is not the usual direction for such attacks, so it will have little or no defence. Thief suffers horribly.

Just a neat little idea, that can work even from the beginning.

[Kagetenshi]

FYI, Black IC can't be active on Rigger networks, and broadcast encryption is fundamentally different from data encryption in SR (and can't be programmed by oneself).

~J

[Fix-it]

Kage, those drones are beautiful.

[Stahlseele]

yeah, pretty good . . even if i wuld a)include the translation of Schattenauge[Shadoweye{Eye of Shadow(s)}] and b)probably not give a drone IR-Sensorics if it's going to be armed with a Flamethrower *g*

[Kagetenshi]

Well, I didn't include the translation of lanceur, either :P ("launcher". I'm so imaginative.)

~J

[Stahlseele]

yeah, but that's french . .

[Pendaric]

link
Here's a list of micro UVA drones.

[tisoz]

My suggestion is to check R3, page 27 under Reflex Boosters.

[Kagetenshi]

There's no point to getting the Orientation System, though; each point of Sensor counts as an entire extra sense, and doesn't cost Essence.

That said,thanks for pointing that out—I always overlook cyberlimbs, probably because they're so bad the vast majority of the time.

~J

[Stahlseele]

so house-rule them O.o
style is important, nobody should get Problems because of style requirements!
use the 4th Rules for Limbs in 3rd for example ^^

[Kagetenshi]

[Stahlseele]

let me precicise(SP?)
use the augmentation rules, that's the first time i actually thought of limbs worthwhile . .
Use Prices of SR4, use Limb-Rules of SR4 converted to 3rd standard . . if needed be BRIBE your SL *g*

[Enigma]

All good points thus far. My two cents are as follows.

There is absolutely no substitute for solid surveillance capability, in fact this is the primary use for riggers in games I run and play. Putting a couple of very stealthy drones over a target for a few days prior to the main event means priceless intel. This has always meant having a sh*tload of memory on your RC deck, through external storage media or whatever, and generally mini-blimp drones made with a high signature stat and the suncell adaption (so they rarely run out of power). Remember surveillance can be vehicle sensors as well, not just drones - parking a car with decent sensors in the long-term parking lot over the road from the target is good cover too.

I agree with the step van. You really can't have a rigger without a decent van.

Generally I go for Connected 5 (vehicles, drones and accessories). The reason is that car theft and drone theft with the right gear is a fantastic side line for keeping up the cash flow on what is a very cash-hungry character type. Ensure the GM is OK with that first, however, because not everyone likes characters to have such side-lines for cash.

My personal preference with all drones is having onboard memory on the drone with at least a minimal pilot and autonav rating. If the carrier signal is lost (rigger gets knocked out, jamming, have to go offline for some reason etc) the onboard memory runs a pre-written program which basically says 'go to point X quietly and wait there for instructions'. This way your drones are much more recoverable in emergency situations. There are rules for writing such programs in SR3.

Electronics is a vital skill. Remember you can put an RF scanner (from SOTA2064) on drones, in vehicles and so on so you can triangulate enemy signals quickly and accurately. You can have a go at broadcast decryption to 'hack' enemy radio frequencies and stuff with them. Surveillance drones also benefit from the specialised Intelligence-type sensors (highly refined visual and audio at the cost of the other systems, especially good for surveillance).

I have always found Electronic Deception worth the huge cost. Being able to insert false readings on enemy sensor networks is pure gold. In the right circumstance it is just as good as a mage with an illusion spell for creating a distraction.

Combat drones need to be able to fly. It's as simple as that. The tactical versatility of a flying drone cannot be underestimated, and nothing sucks more than when your rigger has to leave behind their multi-thousand-nuyen drone to hold off the ravening hordes whilst the rest of the players escape. One flying combat drone is worth many wheeled combat bricks.

Sniper drones (mini-blimps or rotor drones) are beautiful if the GM will let them happen, but most GMs find these too annoying. Loading an 11S single silenced shot from 100m up into the heads of NPCs is a very fast way to win fights and annoy the GM.

Finally, chuck a few MGL-12s onto a few cheap-as-anything flying frisbee drones. Nothing puts up a smoke cover like two of these dumping IR smoke grenades, four per turn, anywhere and everywhere. For extra effect have one load smoke and one load pepper punch gas - this virtually guaruntees a successful getaway from pursuers on foot.

[Kagetenshi]

Sniper Drone Wars is one of our group's few mostly-unspoken taboos. It makes a huge amount of sense to use sniper blimpdrones, but that goes for NPCs as well, and while we generally dislike the solution of voluntarily ignoring things that make sense to do in-game, we've collectively decided that we have more fun in a game where characters who are visible from the sky don't have their heads explode in essentially unresistible ways.

So yeah, be very careful of what you may start there.

~J

[Stahlseele]

have Droner-bombers . . load them up with grenades of all kinds . . Thermo-smoke, Stun-Grenades, Gas-Grenades . . SLIP-SPRAY mwahahahaha! . .

[Fix-it]

[Kagetenshi]

[tisoz]

[Stahlseele]

basically you're installing sensors into your cyberarm with that thing *g*