If I am rigging a drone hotsim (jumped in) and move it beyond it's signal strength, do I lose contract to the drone (and the ability to control it) if there is no wireless network in the area the drone is going? Or am I in the drone and therefore distance doesn't matter?

The Rigger is still relying on the transmission of information, regardless of if you are in hot sim mode, cold mode, or AR. The fact you just drove out of range riding the drone means the drone is probably a write off unless you have a good backup Pilot ready to take over when you suddenly disappear from the system.

However, I'm not sure if the signal degrades before failure first, since I do not have my book right here at the moment.

Edit: Minor semantic changes.

So, if there is a wireless network net in range of the drone the signal strength doesn't matter as I can control it over the matrix?

i would allow it yes.

i dont belive in a true peer to peer wireless networking system work.
i expect that the old matrix is still there in the background, and you use wimax/mobile phone towers to connect to it.

so i would say that as long as both the drone and the user have a matrix connection it can be used to carry the signals.

rember tho that this opens the drone and the user up for attacks from anywhere. including a decker/hacker running full vr from the other side of the globe.

only time signal strength can be a problem would be in areas where matrix access is a no go without sat access, like say deep in some jungle or out at sea.

There is a danger in the world away rigging. Now you're on the grid and can be traced like a standard hacker. So I'd call it balanced, close range has more security, long range has that partial anonymity but also that inherent risk because it's more like a standard hack.

You could always equip your drones and commlink with satellite links and be done with it.

i can't imagine it mattering, as long as both you and the drone are within range of another wirless transciever. it's not like being able to connect directly to your drone somehow makes you immune to being hacked, and it's not like routing your signal over other networks makes it any more vulnerable to hacking, or you any more vulnerable to being located. the whole point of the wireless Matrix is that direct connection is no longer necessary, or even desirable. after all, one signal can concievably be jammed without seriously disrupting other communications (assuming you've decrypted their hopset, which isn't unreasonable in SR4). if you're communicating over mesh network, no one can jam you unless they're jamming all radio traffic, and possibly several other communication methods as well.

that's one of my [relatively (few)] complaints about Matrix 2.0. had i designed it, i probably wouldn't have included a Signal stat at all--the entire design concept of Matrix 2.0 is intended to limit the need for powerful personal signal output; a high personal Signal rating should be as useful as tits on a boar except in certain extreme circumstances (eg, leaving the city).

err, female boars have tits. rows of them. they are nothing like human female ones tho

anyways. yes, in an urban enviroment the range issue is more or less gone as riggers use the same matrix protocols as the rest of the world now.

still, im guessing that one could tell a drone to only accept signals thats never been routed. as in, are only coming directly from the riggers comlink.

this is assuming that routing in sr matrix works somewhat like routing today. one logical address and one hardware address. the hardware address only lasts as long as the next router. the logical address lasts all the way.

still, i dont think that ad-hoc routing over comlinks would be effective beying 2-3 comlinks. but if they have ranges in the km area or more, that can still cover a lot of ground.

im thinking that comlinks are kinda like a merge between a two-way radio and a mobile phone. close range and they can exchange data directly. long range and they jump onto the nearest matrix uplink to ensure reliable transfer. only as a last resort i would use comlink to comlink routing.

hmm, 4km may not sound as much but in open terrain that can cover a lot. get two within range doing mesh networking and you can cover a area about 4kmX8km square. 4-5 of these and i could cover most of the valley i live in and then some.

by definition, there is no such thing as a female boar.

female pigs would be sows. thus, since a boar (male pig) has no use for nipples, the expression "useless as tits on a boar" is entirely accurate to indicate that it isn't useful.

[edit] oh, and i would go with paying 500 per item if you really want to have long range contact without going through other stuff. i mean, it's at least cheaper than buying 5 commlinks with somewhat decent signal (not to mention having to protect those commlinks with software, and therefore needing good firewall/system/response too). of course, on the other hand, you may end up 'acquiring' commlinks from people you capture for interrogation and such, so you never know... [/edit]

i figured that a boar was basicly a wild pig, no matter the sex...

Wild boar, yes. Just plain boar, not nessarily.

EDIT: Note that "boar" when refering to males only can also be refering to mammals that are not pigs. One of them that isn't on that list provided are male bears, and female bears are refered to as sows.

call me silly but to a a pig is a pig and boar is a boar
but this is going into the area of
lets get back on track people

all i care about is which one gives me bacon.

both as bacon is just salted fat...
heh, if you want to be nasty you can even make bacon based on humans...

Could you access the bacon through a sat uplink?

only if they have masterd transporter style technology in SR...
and last time i checked, not even magic can do that...

last i checked, PCs couldn't do that with their magic abilities.

certain NPCs apparently possess the ability to teleport, from what i have seen in certain published adventures.

of course, that's magic, not technology, so you can't access it by sattellite uplink... so the answer is still no.

well the npcs have a bad habbit of walking all over the rules...

you could in theory say that a free spirit can teleport by going into the astral and use fast movement to travel to that other location. unless its to far away it should happen so fast that for people it would be just a blink.

you could also say that Ehran the Scribe and Harlequin can teleport.

I'm assuming you are talking Harley? Apparently there is an ED magic technique called Netherwalk or something like that (ED people please help me out here with the exact name). It isn't teleporting. The magician gates himself into Astral, and then moves at Astral rates to where they want to be and gates back out to the meat world.

In fact PCs can do this with the help of a Free Spirit with the Gate power, or could in SR3 and likely will still be able to in SR4 once Street Magic comes out.

so far as i have seen, there are spells in ED that basically just let you teleport. most require some limited preparation though, so i guess probably the netherwalk thing is it...

however, according to the adventure, they are just gone. not in the astral plane and leaving fast (which an astrally perceiving character should be able to see, unless they can also make themselves invisible in the astral), but just plain old gone.

of course, that may have just been out of a desire not to make it too too obvious that ED and SR were linked...

well i tryed my hand at searching but all i could find was something about the astral gateway power. so unless you can find me the actual post he made im going to file it under bad memory