SR4 - Drones on Autopilot and Controlling Drones Options

[dapperFedora]

First time posting on these boards, I hope I am putting this in the right place.

Anywho, my whole group is going to be running out first game soon. I am the only one interested in doing anything with drones and will also be the only Technomancer. I have been cycling through the core book and Unwired looking through the drone control rules and I have come across something I having trouble figuring out.

With Control a Device you are forced to use a Complex Action for any tiny thing you do: aiming, moving, shooting, etc. It also states that the drone will sit there, doing nothing until it receives the next Control a Device action you take. This means that unless you use your own action to use Full Defense, it will not protect itself in any way, shape or form.

So when does the Drone stop listening to you and start acting on it's own again? Will it sit there doing nothing for as long as you are subscribed to it? For as long as you keep your focus on it? Or would you have to Issue a Command for it to operate as normal, probably telling it to attack a target or just to defend itself. And what if you mix actions together? You issue it a Command to move, then Control it to shoot, then issue it another so it can defend itself, just how would that affect the Drone's Initiative/Actions available to it per pass?

Thanks in advance for the help.

[Mantis]

My reply from SR4 Forums.
We generally run it that unless you are actively issuing commands to a drone, it runs autonomously. The command option is there for when you need to tell it to do something now dammit, now rather than just let it go on with its interpretation of the orders you initially gave. If you look at the sidebar on pg 234 of SR4A, you can see how generally competent an Agent or Pilot is.
Of course, as a technomancer, you are far better off just dumping a sprite into you drone and issue it orders (simple actions) to carry out for you via the drone. Machine sprites are a good choice for this with their optional CFs taken as autosofts specific to the drone you dump them into.