Drones & Tacnet, Why are drone's gimped on Tactical Networks? Options

[augmentin]

"Drones sensor systems also count; each drone can supply a number of sensor channels equal to its Sensor rating." - Unwired, p. 125.

A human with a simsense (3 channels), Cybereyes (presumably another three channels), and cyberears (again, presumably another three channels) can max out a rating 4 Tacnet.

A drone needs Sensor 8. What gives? Is this even possible?

[Draco18s]

A human with a simsense (3 channels), Cybereyes (presumably another three channels), and cyberears (again, presumably another three channels) can max out a rating 4 Tacnet.

An augmented human can feasibly supply 10 channels.

The worst part is if you add a drone (sensor 6) to your Rating 4 tacnet somehow everyone loses their entire bonus.

[Ascalaphus]

Let's face it: both TacNets and Drone Sensors are bad rules.

[LurkerOutThere]

It's not, but honestly I'm ok with this as it gives the human element a bit of an edge. Besides to be one hundred percent honest from a Shadowrunners perspective do you really want to see 100 strong corporate drone fleets all sporting level three tacnets?

[Yerameyahu]

I know there was already a thread on this but: three channels of audio? Three channels of simsense?

I'm not really a fan of tacnets in the first place; seems like another cheesy bonus. Still, in the case of drones, maybe you should deal with the actual sensors in the system, not their rating—which highlights the same *old* problem of quality vs. quantity of tacnet sensors.

[jimbo]

I know there was already a thread on this but: three channels of audio? Three channels of simsense?

Audio: Audio Enhancement, Select Sound Filter, Spatial whatever

Simsense: Use a simrig so that natural eyes, ears, and smell count as a channel.

That being said, I can see Select Sound Filter helping with infiltration, but how olfactory counts as a channel *all* the time instead of for a few very, very limited applications of TacNet is beyond me. But I gess it's just easier to set simple requirements for the sensor channels and run with it.

[Udoshi]

Uh. Drones are great on the tacnet. Nothing stops them from claiming the other Extra senses.

Give the drone's camera a Smartlink, and bam, extra channel. Drone cams/mics/sensors are still able to take other sensory enhancements such as low-light, thermographic, smartlink, ultrasound, radar, spatial recognizers, and so on each count as a seperate sensor channel.

Yeah. Drones are hardly tacnet gimped; with the right sensor package configuration, you can even double dip with it.

[augmentin]

Uh. Drones are great on the tacnet. Nothing stops them from claiming the other Extra senses.

Give the drone's camera a Smartlink, and bam, extra channel. Drone cams/mics/sensors are still able to take other sensory enhancements such as low-light, thermographic, smartlink, ultrasound, radar, spatial recognizers, and so on each count as a seperate sensor channel.

Yeah. Drones are hardly tacnet gimped; with the right sensor package configuration, you can even double dip with it.

So, can we get a ruling on this? Lurker says they can't. Udoshi says they can. What's the general consensus? Thanks!

[Udoshi]

Welp. I tend to look at the rules very plainly, and leave my opinion entirely out of it.

When you read the drone section, nowhere in it does it say 'oh god! the entire other section magically doesn't apply! Drones -clearly- can't benefit from a thermographic sight if they happen to have one!'

.... to be fair, I wouldn't be surprised if it was written before the custom sensor loadout rules in arsenal came to be. As I recall, it took till a few errata versions to clarify that you recalculated the Sensor rating if you changed stuff. Before, it was simply 'oh, hey, sensor 3, 3 free channels. Great, now I still need to put some more on' instead of 'haha, all i need is a bit of cash and all my drones have sensor 6.'

[Karoline]

Maximum number of sensor channels for a human is way above 10.

Sight, Sound, Touch, Taste, Smell from simsense (Yes, taste totally counts just like smell does)
5
Low Light, Thermographic, Ultrasound, Radar, Sonar, UWBR, Smartgun, Vision Enhancement from cybereyes/headware/goggles or wherever you want to get all those from.
13
Audio Enhancement, Select Sound Filter, Spacial Recognizer
16
That smell enhancement cyberware
17
Tactile Sensitivity
18
And the person hasn't even bought a sensor package with atmospheric analyzers in it yet.

[augmentin]

Maximum number of sensor channels for a human is way above 10.

If I'm not mistaken, (and I very well may be) 4th ed caps the bonus at +3 so any # of channels over 8 is irrelevant. My concern is what Draco pointed out: adding drones to the Tacnets hurts your bonus, not helps. Unless Udoshi's right about the sensor rules. I'm hoping this thread will produce some sort of a consensus. (Yeah, I know this is dumpshock, but, hey, we live in hope...)

[Sengir]

"Drones sensor systems also count; each drone can supply a number of sensor channels equal to its Sensor rating."

And right above that: "Sensory enhancements such as low-light, thermographic, smartlink, ultrasound, radar, spatial recognizers, and so on each count as a separate sensor channel.". I don't see why this should not apply to drones just because the basic number of cannels a drone provides is determined by its sensor rating instead of the number of "senses" it has.

[Banaticus]

That being said, I can see Select Sound Filter helping with infiltration, but how olfactory counts as a channel *all* the time instead of for a few very, very limited applications of TacNet is beyond me. But I gess it's just easier to set simple requirements for the sensor channels and run with it.

"Excellent," Kevin thought to himself, the run was going perfectly. Suddenly a strong smell of blueberries hit him. Lemon! Lemon! He sneezed and responded with potatoes. "Good ol' potatoes, get's 'em every time." Then wet grass, oh no, not wet grass... dirt. Fresh fish and hot pumpernickel bread with a dollop of butter melting in. Only one thing could save him now. Pine! Buckets of pine sap surrounded by mounds of pine leaves, covering up the dirt, turning into mulch, heady strong smelling pine. Finally. He collapsed back into his chair, emotionally and physically drained. The fight hadn't all been conducted literally nasally, there had been minor visual, tactile, auditory, and gustatory battles had been fought as well. There had been violins, needles, oboes, green lights, cellos, dripping water, tambourines, oil, denim, shag carpeting and bonsai trees. If he hadn't had those spirits, he never would have survived. He leaned forward and stretched, a feeling of discontent settling over him. Although he was happy to be alive, although he was somewhat astonished and grateful that he'd managed to respond and reciprocate on all those channels at once, the normal world just seemed so... bland.

[Karoline]

although he was somewhat astonished and grateful that he'd managed to respond and reciprocate on all those channels at once, the normal world just seemed so... bland.

That's one thing I often think about people that have a dozen different visual/auditory enhancements, and how difficult it must be to keep everything separate. Same goes for TacNet. For the most part I'd think joining one would just overload you entirely. I mean most people have difficulty walking and talking at the same time (No really, most people slow down significantly when they have to do both at the same time, you notice it all the time on school campuses.)

"John didn't know why exactly the knowledge that there was a 75% chance of rain tomorrow afternoon made him such a damn good shot, but he wasn't going to argue with the results."

Hmm, sounds like a Farside comic.

[Yerameyahu]

Yeah, there's no way that taste, touch, and smell count (99.9% of the time), nor Select Sound Filters, usually not Atmospheric, etc., etc. I'm barely convinced that Audio/Vision Enhancement counts as a 'sense channel', even.

I assume the drone Sensor rating is that same for tacnets as it is for sensors: an abstraction, just like Professional Rating. It's to save you time if you're *not* using custom sensors. If you are, you use them as normal (I think this is what Udoshi said?).

[Falconer]

No Udoshi is intentionally misreading... the CLEAR TEXT of the rules are VERY explicit. A drone can contribute a number of channels of sensory data equal to it's sensor rating. He then *REDEFINES* it as the base... then adds more channels as he sees fit. Drones are given their very own section in the rules in question and I'd suggest not changing it.

The rules say *can*... not this is the base and now start adding more. "equal to it's sensor rating" indicates an upper limit.

This is little different than his ignoring "drones always use sensor + perception" to try and substitute intuition + perception like a normal driver can (the rules say a driver *may* use sensors in place of his normal senses... not that he can substitute his normal senses for sensors when rigging.... note the direction of the allowance... it allows substituting sensors for intuition, not substituting intuition for sensors).



Also, I don't see a problem... it's only *1* die from a poorly done network bonus. Generally drones are going to have a hard time w/ a rating 2 tacnet w/ modest sensor upgrades. Stop and think how much it costs to outfit drones. Also think about the unaugmented people who walk around w/ an iBall just to get the channels necessary for the tacnet.


Think through the hypothetical implications of this on a one man army (rigger). He can field a tacnet all on his lonesome w/o even involving other players. So now you have a drone tacnet... adding +4 dice to practically everything it does, defense, attack, info-guided attacks, active targetting sensor tests... (why I feel the bonus is rather cheesy and poorly done). That's FAR superior than actually spending the dosh to upgrade the drones pilots and response when he can instead just run a cracked high rating tacnet software.

[Ryu]

If you have a generic drone, the generic sensor systems count as (sensor rating) channels.

Should you have a more detailed drone build, you can achieve more channels by choosing lots of different small sensors with upgrades - "mounted sensor types". Compare the cost of such a setup to the price of an unmodded drone and decide if you have a problem with that.

[Yerameyahu]

Indeed, Ryu. There's no good reason for Sensor to be the limit, because Sensor actually means nothing. It's just a shorthand for a generic sensor package, one which contains actual discrete sensors.

Udoshi was clearly talking about an errata'd glitch in the rules, not suggesting that you start with (Sensor) base channels and add. You get channels based on the number of individual relevant *senses*, period. This is the far superior method. The 'channels = Sensor' is, again, a mere shorthand.

If you feel game balance is the problem, address it with limits that make sense. Perhaps channels could be limited by Pilot, or Response, or some other logical quantity. There's nothing wrong with a one man army; it's the whole point of drones, and they're very expensive.

[Jaid]

Yeah, there's no way that taste, touch, and smell count (99.9% of the time), nor Select Sound Filters, usually not Atmospheric, etc., etc. I'm barely convinced that Audio/Vision Enhancement counts as a 'sense channel', even.

I assume the drone Sensor rating is that same for tacnets as it is for sensors: an abstraction, just like Professional Rating. It's to save you time if you're *not* using custom sensors. If you are, you use them as normal (I think this is what Udoshi said?).

sensors and senses only count towards a tacnet *if* they can be applied to the situation at hand, so that rule is already built in (although actually, i suspect knowing what the ambient temperature, wind speed, etc is would make at least *some* difference in your ability to shoot accurately, if only over long distances...)

[Yerameyahu]

Yes, the rules are already there, but people always start talking about these silly sense channels in these threads. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) It's good to remind.

Honestly, the tacnet bonus should be calculated per-user, per-action, every time. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif) Yuck.

[Mantis]

I can't believe how often people will argue over what amounts to 1 die either way. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

If your success is really that iffy that it hinges on getting just 1 more die maybe you need to spend some time upgrading your skills and attributes or come up with better tactics. Or both. I went through this same thing with my players and ultimately they realized its silly to be fighting so hard to get 1 more die. It works out that when a Tacnet is active it provides a nice 2 or 3 dice bonus to give you an edge. But they are still capable without it.

[KCKitsune]

Smell is too a good sense in a tacnet. You can smell the opponent if he is human or critter (and maybe what kind of critter based on scent). If the human is carrying explosives you can smell them. You can smell the ozone in the air from active electronics.

Also the sense of smell is 3d if I'm not mistaken. If that is true then you can use smell to get a directional fix of the target.

[Sengir]

That's one thing I often think about people that have a dozen different visual/auditory enhancements, and how difficult it must be to keep everything separate. Same goes for TacNet. For the most part I'd think joining one would just overload you entirely.

The whole point of tacnet software, as opposed to just looking at your team's sensor feeds, is that the software analyses and correlates all the data it gets and then presents the user a condensed version of all that stuff as an AR overlay.

[Karoline]

Smell is too a good sense in a tacnet. You can smell the opponent if he is human or critter (and maybe what kind of critter based on scent). If the human is carrying explosives you can smell them. You can smell the ozone in the air from active electronics.

Also the sense of smell is 3d if I'm not mistaken. If that is true then you can use smell to get a directional fix of the target.

Some of that might be true if playing say perhaps, a dog, as opposed to a metahuman. Metahumans don't have a good enough sense of smell to do any of that, and even the scent analyzer cyberware doesn't provide all of this. It can analyze a scent to tell you human or critter, but it doesn't work in a way to allow you to locate people with it.

The point is that yeah, it can be helpful in very specific situations, but it doesn't really make any sense that knowing your opponent just wet himself will make you accurate.

sensors and senses only count towards a tacnet *if* they can be applied to the situation at hand, so that rule is already built in (although actually, i suspect knowing what the ambient temperature, wind speed, etc is would make at least *some* difference in your ability to shoot accurately, if only over long distances...)

Tacnet bonuses apply to any test a team member makes
that might conceivably benefit from the tactical soft’s analysis,
data-sharing, and suggestions.

There isn't actually any mention in any of the sections about the sensor channels having to be in any way useful to the situation at hand.

The requirements are:
1. Sensor Channels equal to 2x rating
2. Action must be able to benefit from the tacnet's data-sharing, suggestions, and/or analysis abilities
3. Must be in range of at least 1 other person from the tacnet
4. Test must be something that tactical data and suggestion from a network could conceivably benefit from (which lets face it, is basically anything at all that isn't magical/technical)

No where in there is the requirement that all sensor channels provided by each team member must be relevant to the test at hand. And indeed, the fact that only one of the other members of the tacnet needs to be nearby seems to indicate that it doesn't necessarily use all 40 channels to assist with every single test.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Actually, there is – on Unwired, p. 126… just after the sentence you quoted.