Automatics Dice Pool, need advice on how best to improve my DP Options

[SleepMethod]

Hey guys, bit of a noob here believe it or not (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) What I would like to do is find a way of increasing my Automatics dice pool. I have agility 5, automatics 5 with a specialty in SMGs I have rating 1 wired relfexes to get an extra turn in per pass! I've got hopefully around 20 Karma coming my way and 50Kish newyen at the end of my current mission (its taken a few nights hence the high cash/karma).

Is there anything I can do to imcrease it,is there anything more you need to know?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Hida Tsuzua]

The best thing would be to get Muscle Toner 4. It's 32,000Y and will give you agility 5(9). That's Agility 9 + Automatics 5 + SMG 2 + Smartlink 2. With 18 dice, you really should be able to rock out in any combat. Depending on how rich you feel after that, grabbing Reflex Recorder (Automatics) is a decent buy for +1 die at 10,000Y. Since you're rocking Wired Reflexes 1, you should have the essence for it. You could spend 12 karma for Automatics 6, but I'll only do that if you have nowhere else to spend it.

Getting your hacker friend to run a rating 4 tacnet (from Unwired) and buying enough sensor channels for you and your 5 other friends is a nice way to get another +4 dice most of the time. You may need to make some drone friends and that can be annoying due to the drone sensor rules.

[SleepMethod]

That's pretty cool, but has pretty high availability rating, would love to stack it with muscle augmentation too but that might be another days work! lol Reflex recorder is a must at that price, money well spent.

Thanks for the advice mate

[Zaranthan]

Tacnet drones are actually pretty simple if that's all you want:

CODE

$1,000 Improved Sensor Array for Fly-Spies: 5 Capacity
$1,125 [1] R4 Camera with Low-Light, Thermo, Image Link, Smartlink
$1,700 [1] R3 Camera with Ultrasound, Magnification, R3 Enhancement
$1,150 [1] R3 Microphone with R3 Enhancement, R3 Select Sound Filter, Spatial Recognizer
  $100 [1] Laser Range Finder
   $50 [1] Motion Sensor
Total: $5,125 additional cost, 9 tacnet sensor channels per drone
Base Fly-Spy drone: $2,000
Total cost per drone: $7,125

I usually buy one or two of these for any runner who's working a high professional rating.

[Tanegar]

That's pretty cool, but has pretty high availability rating, would love to stack it with muscle augmentation too but that might be another days work! lol Reflex recorder is a must at that price, money well spent.

Thanks for the advice mate

Prioritize: Muscle Toner adds to all your Agility-linked pools, including all other combat skills (I assume you're not just rocking Automatics), half the Stealth group (including Infiltration, which no runner should be without), and Gymnastics, among others. All this for the low, low price of 8,000 nuyen per die. Reflex Recorder: Automatics costs 10,000 and adds one die to one skill. Leave the Reflex Recorder for another day.

[Hida Tsuzua]

It's not that it's hard to get a drone with the sensor channels. It's more figuring out how you're suppose to do it and realizing yes that's really how it works and then discussing it with your GM who will likely go "what the heck?".

You're suppose to just rip out the drone's sensors, replacing them with rating 6 & 5 cameras and the odd ratingless sensor and have a 6 sensor rating drone for just a few thousand nuyen.

You can get away with a tiny TacNet owl buddy for 1750Y using the Clockwork Owl from Attitude:

[ Spoiler ]

Clockwork Owl 400Y
-Camera 5 500Y [1]
-Low Light 100Y
-Thermo 100Y
-Vision Magification 100Y
-Radio Signal Scanner 6 150Y[1]
-Motion Sensor - 50Y [1]
-Microphone 5 250Y [1]
-Spatial Recognizer 100Y

Senses:
Sight
Hearing
Low Light
Thermo
Magification
Radio Signal Scanner
Spatial Recognizer
Motion Sensor

Buy Vision Enhancement 3 and Hearing Enhancement 3 along with a Clearsight 3 autosoft for 2100Y and you have a little drone with 16 total perception pool when it joins your rating 4 tacnet.

[Miri]

*sigh* there is so much wrong with those sensor suite writeups and how they will contribute to a tacnet that I really dknt want to getinto that argument again.

Suffice it to say that at best your drone will only be able to contribute to a rating 1 to 3 tacnet.

[Udoshi]

Not really.
Camera 5 + radio scanner 6 + microphone 6 = a sensor rating of 5.33 repeating, which rounds up to 6 (round up is not round half up, citizen).

That's 6 channels, per the rules for drone sensors.
add in 5 other enhanced senses, and that is 11 channels per the cybernetic senses rules for tacnet sensors.

11 channels runs a rating 4 tacnet just fine. You do, however, need a minimum of 6 members to make the tacnet operate.


However, I am running a bird-themed technomancer. Consider that owl stolen. I was originally going to use an entertainment systems falcon, but those are rather neat too.

[Draco18s]

Not really.
Camera 5 + radio scanner 6 + microphone 6 = a sensor rating of 5.33 repeating, which rounds up to 6 (round up is not round half up, citizen).

Math follows:

(5 + 6 + 6) / 3 = 5.66

[Yerameyahu]

It doesn't matter, you shouldn't be using those awful sensor-average rules anyway. If you have a camera and a mic, that's 2 channels. Radio scanner is not a channel. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Hida Tsuzua]

It doesn't matter, you shouldn't be using those awful sensor-average rules anyway. If you have a camera and a mic, that's 2 channels. Radio scanner is not a channel. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Why not? It's a sensor. Sensors are allowed, otherwise cameras wouldn't work.

But yeah, this is why making your drone friends join your TacNet is annoying. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Yerameyahu]

I meant that it's not reasonable, like many of the sensors. The tacnet rules are a mess, oh well. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[suoq]

Can someone show me where Sensory enhancements (which count on Cybernetic Senses (Pg 125, Unwired)) count on Drones (same page, next paragraph).
From what I see, drones get their Sensor rating, that's it.

The rule for drone sensors and tacnets, by itself, makes sense. The fact that Sensor rating on drones make no sense whatsoever, is it's own problem.

This mishmash that people are claiming are backed up by rules, I fail to see rules for. You can houserule Drone Sensor ratings if you want. But if you're doing that, PLEASE make it clear in your post that it's a houserule. Or help me by showing me the rules I'm missing.

______________

Note to OP: It is much easier under BP rules to specialize first and round out a character after. If you don't have the BP for that, it's often good to build out the "final version" (the dream) first and tehn remove the stuff that is easily added later on, either due to price, availability, or beneficial karma-BP conversion rates. (For example, low level skills (1 or 2) cost the same BP/Karma. High level skills (6) cost much more Karma than BP. Sadly enough, under BP, this means "specialize first" or "min/max first, then round out your character".

One thing worth doing for your character at this point is build a "finished" version of him so that you know what you intend to buy, what ware you can fit into the body, and then cost out and plan your upgrades.

[Yerameyahu]

There's a difference between 'makes sense' and 'is right/good', of course. While I *understand* the Sensor rating=channels rule, it's clearly wrong. Channels=channels, and drones have channels just like anyone else. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Udoshi does seem to be trying to have his cake and eat it, though. Either you use the (deeply flawed) Sensor=channels rule, or you *don't*, but you can't use it *plus* more channels.

[Zaranthan]

The wording in Unwired about drone sensors seems to be offering a default for unmodified drones, not a limitation. It seems reasonable that a drone with a customized sensor array would have its channels counted like anyone else's. Otherwise, a cyborg can't contribute more than six channels, and that's just silly.

[SleepMethod]

Prioritize: Muscle Toner adds to all your Agility-linked pools, including all other combat skills (I assume you're not just rocking Automatics), half the Stealth group (including Infiltration, which no runner should be without), and Gymnastics, among others. All this for the low, low price of 8,000 nuyen per die. Reflex Recorder: Automatics costs 10,000 and adds one die to one skill. Leave the Reflex Recorder for another day.

Yeah, I'll definitely be doing this alright, thanks for the clarification (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[suoq]

While I *understand* the Sensor rating=channels rule, it's clearly wrong.

I'm not so sure it is. It may be that there was an intent to have Sensor rating = channels at one point. What this would mean is that Pilot and Tacsoft basically use the same principle. The more channels going in, the better they can sort stuff out. The thought process seems to be "what matters is the quantity of the sensors, not the quality of the sensors" which I can kind of see. (We want an accurate big picture, not a couple highly detailed instances.)

I actually like the "Sensor rating = Number of channels" concept. I may steal it.

[Yerameyahu]

I don't think I understand you. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Sensor Rating is just average rating of the sensors. Rating is the quality of any given sensor: Camera 6 is a better camera than Camera 1. Tacnets (for good or ill) don't use the quality of sensors at all. They use the quantity of channels; each sensor/sense is a channel. So there's no connection between Tacnets and drone Sensor Rating… except the rules. It's the RAW, for whatever reason. You don't have to steal it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Hida Tsuzua]

I meant that it's not reasonable, like many of the sensors. The tacnet rules are a mess, oh well. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I most admit I've always viewed the Radio Signal Scanner to be one of the more legitimate channel choices. Since it can tap wireless communication with its sniffer program and pinpoint its location, that can be extremely handy and valuable knowledge in a world of ubiquitous wireless communication and everyone carrying some form of broadcaster.

You could always just get a laser range finder instead and those are explicitly allowed and upgrade the microphone to rating 6 for the same price.

As for drone sensors and tacnets, I've seen three readings and honestly, you can make a case for all of them.

1st: Only the drone's sensor rating counts.

2nd: Either the drone sensor rating counts or the channels counts.

3rd: Both the sensor ratings and channels count.

Personally I'm for either the 2nd or 3rd readings since it lets a drone join a rating 4 tacnet (unless the writers have written a rating 8 sensor somewhere).

[suoq]

I don't think I understand you. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Sensor Rating is just average rating of the sensors. Rating is the quality of any given sensor: Camera 6 is a better camera than Camera 1. Tacnets (for good or ill) don't use the quality of sensors at all. They use the quantity of channels; each sensor/sense is a channel. So there's no connection between Tacnets and drone Sensor Rating… except the rules. It's the RAW, for whatever reason. You don't have to steal it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I'm sorry. I was being unclear. I'm thinking about stealing the houserule where instead of "Sensor rating = average rating" (1 rating 6 camera rules them all), I would instead houserule "Sensor Rating = number of unenhanced channels" (i.e. rating 6 = radar, 4 cameras, and a mic, even if those cameras are tricked out or just simple cameras).

It seems nicely consistent, makes the improved sensor array make sense, and works for me from a programming standpoint.

[Draco18s]

I would instead houserule "Sensor Rating = number of unenhanced channels" (i.e. rating 6 = radar, 4 cameras, and a mic, even if those cameras are tricked out or just simple cameras).

It seems nicely consistent, makes the improved sensor array make sense, and works for me from a programming standpoint.

Hm. I could get behind that.

[Yerameyahu]

I dig you now, suoq. I can see issues with that, but at least it's much better than 'LOL, one Camera 6 = Sensor 6'. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Hida, I don't think I've ever seen anyone suggest #3 until today, and I can't imagine the RAW argument for it.

[Draco18s]

Hida, I don't think I've ever seen anyone suggest #3 until today, and I can't imagine the RAW argument for it.

I've seen it, but I haven't really understood the argument for it either.