Salvaging from enemy drones Options

[Justin]

Lets say you are on a run, and for some reason you've fought some enemy drones-- but are not on any sort of time constraint (unlikely, I know). If they are simply disabled and not outright blown up, would a person skilled in mechanics and electronics be able to salvage some of the more expensive components to sell later? Are there any rules for this, or has anyone come across it in their game?

Also, say you are a rigger who is in combat versus some security drones on a run. If you manage to hack access to the drone.. can you just keep it? Even after the run? Assuming you do more than just spoof a command. Is this unlikely to happen?

[etherial]

Sure. Take their carcass with you, just like the bodies of all the cybers you've killed.

As for taking over the drone, remember to send it a deactivate command before jumping out and wipe its memory systems before taking it home. And pray it doesn't have a homing beacon on its own system.

[Justin]

Haha, awesome!

[Neraph]

Enjoy your Stealth and Security RFID-tag ridden drones while you have them though.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Or Security RFID's which problably has. Most of the time, a drone carcass is just worth if it is the objective of the run, most of the time, taking it is just asking for problems.
Edit: Hah, neraph posted while I was reading another thread.

[Justin]

Is there a decent way to take care of the Stealth and Security RFID tags and such? I remember reading about an RFID Tag Eraser. Couldn't I bring one of those with me?

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Is there a decent way to take care of the Stealth and Security RFID tags and such? I remember reading about an RFID Tag Eraser. Couldn't I bring one of those with me?

RFID Tag Erasers do not work on Security Tags, but you could look for them and remove them... functionally, they are -6 to the perception roll to locate... and using a Radio Scanner, you should be able to locate them anyway... Stealth tags are harder to locate (You need exact frequencies to locate), but are susceptible to erasure, as they are not security tags...

Surround them with a jamming signal until you have them where you want them (in a place with WI-FI inhibition preferrably), and then erase/remove the RFID's, change the Acess ID, and you have yourself a functional drone

Keep the Faith

[Ascalaphus]

RFIDs have a standard Signal rating of 0; that's a piece of cake to jam. A jammer set to rating 1 should cover it most of the time and not cause enough disruption to local data traffic to draw major attention. When you've got the carcass back at your workshop, you just spend plenty of time making sure you found them all.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

RFIDs have a standard Signal rating of 0; that's a piece of cake to jam. A jammer set to rating 1 should cover it most of the time and not cause enough disruption to local data traffic to draw major attention. When you've got the carcass back at your workshop, you just spend plenty of time making sure you found them all.

Exactly...

Keep the Faith

[kzt]

Of course, this assumes that they don't have anti-handling charges set. It doesn't take a lot of explosives to ruin your weekend when your head is 6 inches from the charge.

[Jack Kain]

RFID Tag Erasers do not work on Security Tags, but you could look for them and remove them... functionally, they are -6 to the perception roll to locate... and using a Radio Scanner, you should be able to locate them anyway... Stealth tags are harder to locate (You need exact frequencies to locate), but are susceptible to erasure, as they are not security tags...

Surround them with a jamming signal until you have them where you want them (in a place with WI-FI inhibition preferrably), and then erase/remove the RFID's, change the Access ID, and you have yourself a functional drone

Keep the Faith

My team is putting in rating seven WI-fi inhibiting paint around the inside of the back end of our truck. (the hacker and technomancer will have to ride up front or in another vehicle) So we can just throw stuff right in the back and drive off. The garage where we store the vehicle is also getting the same treatment.However going though going over every centimeter of a large size drone with a tag eraser would take many many hours, even if you programed a microdrone to carry the eraser and do the job. You'd probably have to strip a large drone down to the basic components to be sure you got to the stealth tag.

The pulse spell could easily burn out any RFID tags in the area but may damage the goods your trying to rip off.
Of course that may depend on where the GM puts a Stealth Tag on the object resistance test. If its below that of a drone the mage could burn out the chip and leave the drone unharmed.

[Sixgun_Sage]

My team is putting in rating seven WI-fi inhibiting paint around the inside of the back end of our truck. (the hacker and technomancer will have to ride up front or in another vehicle) So we can just throw stuff right in the back and drive off. The garage where we store the vehicle is also getting the same treatment.However going though going over every centimeter of a large size drone with a tag eraser would take many many hours, even if you programed a microdrone to carry the eraser and do the job. You'd probably have to strip a large drone down to the basic components to be sure you got to the stealth tag.

The pulse spell could easily burn out any RFID tags in the area but may damage the goods your trying to rip off.
Of course that may depend on where the GM puts a Stealth Tag on the object resistance test. If its below that of a drone the mage could burn out the chip and leave the drone unharmed.

Ah, the glories of the chop shop!

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

My team is putting in rating seven WI-fi inhibiting paint around the inside of the back end of our truck. (the hacker and technomancer will have to ride up front or in another vehicle) So we can just throw stuff right in the back and drive off. The garage where we store the vehicle is also getting the same treatment.However going though going over every centimeter of a large size drone with a tag eraser would take many many hours, even if you programed a microdrone to carry the eraser and do the job. You'd probably have to strip a large drone down to the basic components to be sure you got to the stealth tag.

The pulse spell could easily burn out any RFID tags in the area but may damage the goods your trying to rip off.
Of course that may depend on where the GM puts a Stealth Tag on the object resistance test. If its below that of a drone the mage could burn out the chip and leave the drone unharmed.

You could always just purchase a vehicle tag eraser that is immobile and part of your chop shop... hook it up and walla, tags (except security) are now gone...

Keep the Faith

[WyldKnight]

The easiest way to deal with tags will always be magic. Its basically one giant easy button. Captured drones are also good if you have extra time for recon. As an example we had a week to scout a facility before hitting it so we downed a drone with some quick hacking, i put a sprite in it, and for a few days we enjoyed the fruits of our labor. We had so much info that we were able to do the run in record time and had enough extra time to get a load of pay data. I freaking love my sprites.

[etherial]

My team is putting in rating seven WI-fi inhibiting paint around the inside of the back end of our truck. (the hacker and technomancer will have to ride up front or in another vehicle) So we can just throw stuff right in the back and drive off.

Better hope the enemy Rigger doesn't use Dead Man's Switches.

[Jack Kain]

Better hope the enemy Rigger doesn't use Dead Man's Switches.

And how would those possibly do anything. First of all a deadman switch traditionally turns the device off once the human operator in this case the rigger is no longer in control. Like how on a boat the key is attached to the driver by a leash. If the drone shuts off when the rigger is knocked out that just makes stealing it easier if the rigger isn't around when the hacker or technomancer spoofs it ID. If its the kind that blows the drone up, well then it would blow up before we even got the chance to steel it, OR we'd have already spoofed the drone so now its under our control and the deadman switch is useless because the switch believes one of us is the owner. We'd have to steal the drone without spoofing the access ID, destroying it through combat damage while the Rigger is still conscious to do something about it. In which case I'd have to ask how we managed to steel it to begin with.

[etherial]

And how would those possibly do anything. First of all a deadman switch traditionally turns the device off once the human operator in this case the rigger is no longer in control. Like how on a boat the key is attached to the driver by a leash. If the drone shuts off when the rigger is knocked out that just makes stealing it easier if the rigger isn't around when the hacker or technomancer spoofs it ID. If its the kind that blows the drone up, well then it would blow up before we even got the chance to steel it, OR we'd have already spoofed the drone so now its under our control and the deadman switch is useless because the switch believes one of us is the owner. We'd have to steal the drone without spoofing the access ID, destroying it through combat damage while the Rigger is still conscious to do something about it. In which case I'd have to ask how we managed to steel it to begin with.

OK, Dead Man's Switches IRL tend to deactivate things. In Fiction, where Riggers live, they tend to blow things up. One way to implement that is to install a button on your account that says "Don't blow up for X hours". Another is "Don't blow up as long as you're connected to the Matrix", which would activate when you took it into the shielded van or garage.

[Jack Kain]

I covered exploding deadman switches in my post, I just wanted to cover all my bases.

If you've spoofed ownership of the drone you'd have free access to its capabilities and could find and deactivate any deadman switch with ease. Such a task would be necessary for stealing any drone if you plan on keeping or selling it unless you plan to strip it for parts your going to have to spoof ownership wipe its memory and all that so it doesn't call up its original owner or execute an automated return command.

What you really meant was overly complicated trap designed to screw the players but realistically should have blown up in the riggers face a dozen times over before he even met the group. Which is basically the trap your describing. Most of the barrens are dead zones and jammers are cheap effective anti-rigger equipment. That kind of trap is almost as bad as the super villain who has the red self-destruction button in his lair. Any kind of automated self-destruct on a drone is asking for trouble. If a PC had such a deadman switch on his own drone he'd be very likely to blow his own drone up on accident and possibly himself along with it.

The best way is to have 20 or so stealth and security tags shoved all over your drone, the tags could be buried deep in the drone where tag scanner can't reach without taking it apart, the things have be brought with in a centimeter of the tag in order to burn it out. The larger the drone the more places to hide the tags and the more difficult to find them all. You could also program the security tags to say only be active a couple hours a day. Otherwise they wouldn't transmit. That mean the thief would have to be looking with his radio signal scanner at the right time to find it.

My group we really don't bother stealing large non-run devices like a drone it just take to much work to search every square centimeter to find all the tags. However guns, armor, clips of ammunition and other such goods are much easier to search thorough for tags and we could fence them in small batches.

[Jaid]

The easiest way to deal with tags will always be magic. Its basically one giant easy button. Captured drones are also good if you have extra time for recon. As an example we had a week to scout a facility before hitting it so we downed a drone with some quick hacking, i put a sprite in it, and for a few days we enjoyed the fruits of our labor. We had so much info that we were able to do the run in record time and had enough extra time to get a load of pay data. I freaking love my sprites.

well, that depends. the popular favorite is the direct AOE spell to destroy RFIDs, but this only works on RFIDS that you have LOS to.

now, *technically* it is entirely possible to have an indirect AOE spell with no element attached that targets only RFIDs (by which i mean, the rules don't specifically disallow it). however, the concept is so absurd that if your GM thinks about it at all i don't think it's likely to get past your GM at all... (and if you don't think it's absurd, what non-elemental damaging force are you conjuring that will target only RFIDs and nothing else? oh, and it also has to pass through the rest of the drone body if you're not going to take the entire thing apart, forgot that bit).

so, overall... i'm not particularly convinced direct combat spells (or indirect combat spells, for that matter) are the appropriate weapon... what you want is the *detection* spells, if you're going magic, (which will at least let you know if there's an RFID to be found, and possibly where, what it looks like, etc) otherwise, you want e-sensing as a technomancer or changeling (if you can reliably get 5 hits, that is). overall, it's not an easy thing to track down stealth RFIDs. security RFIDs should be easy to find, they just need a little extra work to destroy is all (you have to physically destroy them, can't use a tag eraser)

[MikeKozar]

I dunno, wiring it to explode seems crude. Adding a line to the basic scripts to the effect of '...and if you ever lose signal from the Renraku wireless grid, reset Administrator access to the alternate ID only; return to base; consider anyone preventing you from accomplishing directives #1 and #2 to be hostile.'

It seems like having the drone take action if being jammed is pretty reasonable; drone-jacking has got to be pretty lucrative, and so I would expect some countermeasures. At the very least, I make sure everything I put into play has the Safe Fire system, for instance.

Heh...of course, you could just spoof a command to empty it's weapons into a fire hydrant and then wrassle it into your trunk once it's harmless. "What's it doing?" "...maybe the hydrant is possessed?"

[The Jake]

RFID Tag Erasers do not work on Security Tags, but you could look for them and remove them... functionally, they are -6 to the perception roll to locate... and using a Radio Scanner, you should be able to locate them anyway... Stealth tags are harder to locate (You need exact frequencies to locate), but are susceptible to erasure, as they are not security tags...

Surround them with a jamming signal until you have them where you want them (in a place with WI-FI inhibition preferrably), and then erase/remove the RFID's, change the Acess ID, and you have yourself a functional drone

Keep the Faith

Faraday Cage. Much cheaper (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

- J.

[Jack Kain]

Not to mention if the GM says a RFID tag counts as a highly processed object like a drone your pulse spell could fry the drone to.

Pulse is a environmental Manipulation spell. The target is the environment like the spell ice sheet or mist. Anything in that changed environment is affected. So if you pulse the area a drone is in. Any tags it carries may be affected based on the object resistance test. It is not listed as a direct or indirect spell so it is neither. For example pulse effects radio and matrix connections despite those being invisible to the magician.

A range of LOS simply means you must be able to see the area the spell will be centered on, direct, indirect and environmental, tags determine if sight is required on those it effects

[kzt]

It's perfectly possible to build a system designed to keep someone from stealing a drone, perhaps a system to find out who is stealing your drones.

For example, a multi-system arming. One fairly obvious idea is the drone being moved by an outside force. This is pretty common for anti-theft systems. If it also can't get contact it starts some sort of timer and then at the end of this it does something.

[Marwynn]

Don't we have Wifi inhibiting paint in SR? Should be fairly easy to I don't know paint a tarp and wrap a drone with it. Or yes, use a low rating jammer.

If there are any protocols that would be triggered if the Drone lost connection to the matrix and so on, then take it as a GM plot device and roll with it. Unless the game's trying to be Grand Theft Drono does this really pop up that often?

[Dakka Dakka]

A range of LOS simply means you must be able to see the area the spell will be centered on, direct, indirect and environmental, tags determine if sight is required on those it effects

Correct. The problem is that the only spells which require LOS solely at the center of the area are Indirect Combat Spells. By RAW all other spells will only affect those valid targets in LOS. This makes the Sterilize Spell pretty useless.

A tag zapper indirect spell would be a much better alternative. I don't see why you shouldn't allow that spell.