Anthromorphic Robots / Drones, We need some. Options

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Nikoli]

It was a joke, AE, just pointing out that shadowrunners often seem to be carrying around more ordinance than your average Seal Team when they go on a run.

[Austere Emancipa...]

OK. It's just that there's some much bullshit going around about the Geneva Conventions, I just have to jump at everything.

[Nikoli]

:-D

[Neon Tiger]

Great, so now we got Robocops running around the sprawl. :D Not that I mind...

About armoring the drones. You should put 7 points of normal vehicular armor on it, that will make pretty much invincible against anything that is not antivehicular. Only non-antivehicular weapons that might hurt/destroy it are assault cannons and some rocket launchers. Even so, those units would probably give a real Hell to anyone facing them in direct combat.

By the way, even if the drone has mechanical arms, you're still somewhat limited in using weapons in them. R3, page 67, second paragraph:

[Austere Emancipa...]

With a Handling of 2 or below, that's not going to being a serious problem. How many dice will the drone/robot be rolling to fire weapons, and how many for the Pilot Test?

[Nikoli]

That mechanical arms test stuff only applies tot eh rigger controlling the device, the 'brain' just rolls it's pilot rating.

[hobgoblin]

[A Clockwork Lime]

As previously mentioned, vehiclular armor is right out not because it can't be done, but because it ruins the concept of the drone in the first place. I realize you may not be talking about the MiB I built, but still. :)

Also, Personal Armor sucks for a drone. They still only have (Body) dice to throw to resist an attack, and even 100 points of Personal Armor will only reduce your TN to a minimum of 2. So it would need 6 successes using Body 2 dice to completely resist a piddly 2D attack (staged down to 2S). Basically, two taps from anyone with a mild competence in Pistols is enough to take down a non-vehicular armored Body 2 drone -- 100 points of Personal Armor or not.

Dodging isn't augmented by armor at all, so it's a moot point. I only added personal Body Armor for completeness. Gel-packed Body Armor has a lot of potential, though, thanks to the vehicular reduction to Damage Codes.

[Lilt]

The problem with gel-packed armor is that in theory it hits the gel packs first. If they can't stop it then it gets through to the robot underneath.

That's why Dikoting the drone is such a good idea: it adds hardened armor under all others at virtually no encumberance *and* it adds 1 body.

[A Clockwork Lime]

There's no rules for that in the game. Vehicles and drones don't stage an attack down, the attack simply has a reduced Damage Code, period.

As it stands, a 9M gunshot is only 4L against a drone or vehicle. If that drone were capable of wearing a gel-packed armored jacket, he'd have hardened armor 5, allowing him to ignore the shot completely. By your logic, any external armor (like, you know, all armor) would never get the benefits of a reduced Damage Code.

[hobgoblin]

the question is, does the vehicle effects of damage change happen before or after the stageing rules for attack? from what i understnad i must happen before as burst and full auto is allso handled after the vehicle changes have been applyed. that means that a holdout or light pistol is useless againt this drone, heavy pistols starts out on L and so on. this gives the drone a edge as a beatcop atleast as running into stuff like heavy smgs to assault rifles in a urban job outside of Z zones are unlikely.

and if that happens send in an entire squad of these to give the enemy more then one target to worry about and use ammo on. and rember that even if they are taken to D they can still be recoverd and repaired for future use, unlike swat teams that have a limited existance after hitting the D mark.

basicly a realynicely equiped runner team need miltary hardware to be taken down, but this unit is for going after punks and gangmembers or similary lightly armed...

never forget that even robocop and ed-209 had problems when it came to military level hardware...

[Nikoli]

That or give it one hell of a failsafe device.

Goon 1:Shoot that hunk of junk!
Goon 2:No way man, that's one of those, you know, Star FRT assault chargers. They take out a quarter city block when incapacitated.
Goon 1:Drek, let's bug!

[Jason Farlander]

[Nikoli]

:grinbig:

I never found his designs to be ground-breaking, just fun.

[Phaeton]

[Person 404]

[A Clockwork Lime]

Just over 250,000 nuyen retail (note the last word) is hardly expensive to a megacorporation, especially the one popping them out. Even more so when you consider that they're 100% loyal and can be pretty much superior to any group of runners when working in tandem as a group.

Pilot (effectively their Intelligence and all Combat Skill ratings) of 5, Adaptation Pool of 10, IVIS Pool +5 each, Initiative 13+4D6, 15 dice for all Comprehension (Perception) Tests, Strength 9, Signature 8, can be nearly invulnerable to standard weapons, has the equivalence of Damage Compensators 9, capable of running at 33mph, smartlink-2 bonuses, and if a rigger jumps directly into it, he gets all of his standard abilities and +3 to his Control Pool. And that's just off the top of my head.

If one is damaged or lost, you simply replace it with another. IF a SWAT member goes down, you have to spend time and nuyen training, implanting, and equipping a new one, pay compensation costs to the last one's family, and all sorts of other bric-a-brac.

[BitBasher]

All that pilot rating only workd as a pseudo AI when it's on it's primary mission as defined in it's programming though.

[A Clockwork Lime]

No, that's just the Adaptation Pool. Without it, they still have an IVIS Pool which will often be as good, if not better, than many character's Combat Pool.

This post has been edited by A Clockwork Lime: May 10 2004, 11:00 PM

[BitBasher]

Ahhh, that's right.

[Nikoli]

Not to mention while SWAT are inherently professional, they do have a high percentage of 'Alpha' types. This can make replacement members tough on the team with humans. machines don't care about how many years you pulled in Downtown, or if you walked a beat in Touristville.

[Lilt]

Autosoft: Giving a dammn (5).

[Cray74]

[TinkerGnome]

Take a look at surgery costs, as well. It'll cost you almost half the cheap drone's 70k just to implant an officer with his basic cyber.