Okay, so if someone had a simrig on them, with the correct attachments (subscribing the simrig to a commlink with a signal rating) could a rigger, in theory, connect to that device like a drone (more likely, if hte commlink's OS is switched out with a Pilot OS)?

I imagine this would allow him to recieve the simsense signals from the person, as if they were his own... yada yada yada...

Now, if that same person had skillwires, and those were subscribed as well, could the rigger use them to move the poor person around the room (using pilot, anthroform)?

It seems to make sense to me, since the rigger could move the person's muscles any way he wanted - what I am not clear on is if there would be a direct translation between how the rigger's brain sends out the signal to "lift up left leg" and that being recieved and translated into the correct firings on the skillwires.

Thirdly, if this IS possible, would the rigger use his matrix initiative while in this person's body (as when rigging any other dron)? or the person's normal initiative (since it'd be based on his body's reflexes)? Could he use the command program to command him to do things, and replace the poor lad's attributes with his beefy command rating for some tasks? Could he do this to himself - and if so, would he notice anything different? (he would recieve his own senses, and send commands to his own body)...

I don't think the skillwires were intended to be used in this way... but since they allow you to move muscles around... and a computer can do it gracefully enough to make you do acrobattic flips... it seems reasonable.

And here I was struggling for a theme for my rigger. THANK YOU!

Also, to remotely control them you could give them persona fix BTL's of fanatically devoted people who obey your every command. Although that'd use their own abilities and prevent "jumping into" the drone.

Everything you posted sounds good, probaby not 100% legit according to the rules but perfectly workable as a DM using houserules.

Now I know what to do with that Johnson who screwed us for 200k that I've been meaning to kidnap....

Snake eyes system Rigger 3 revised. One of my PC's took the mysterious cyberware flaw and ended up with one of these babies. (along with some headwear memory with uploaded personafix chips too!)

I was thinking about doing that under SR3 once. It was no more legal then that it is now, but at-least with the advance of computer technology it becomes more likely to be possible.

The core concept was a decker setting-up his own body to be riggable so that he could both deck and have the body perform other tasks simultaneously. That way he'd be another bod on the ground, helping the runners as his pilot (possibly a robotic pilot or rigger) squeezing off the odd shot now and then.

@Rotbart van Dainig: Whilst that could arguably be possible, the question arises of wether or not the SR world is actually technologically advanced enough for that to happen. Senses still need to be gathered individually, for example, rather than a general cybersense implant over the sensory-processing lobe of the brain. As skillwires are skillwires bodyware rather than some form of skillcomputer headware, it's fairly safe to assume that in the SR4 world it's still easier to install as a set of neuromuscular controls for active skills rather than as a brain-interfacing piece of cyberware as is presumably used for knowsofts and similar.

Personally I think it would be possible, but very limited. First of all it is clearly stated that a rigger adaption is needed in a device in order to give it a pilot rating. This poses a slight problem, because I don’t think one would be able to get access to rigger adapted cyberware (adding pilot programs would be somewhat extreme if you add it to every system you have installed.)

Having a drone committing itself to remote control ANOTHER drone would be something else entirely. Now, If you can make a toaster into a drone then you can make a commlink into a drone. Get the following.

Cybereyes, Ears, Senselinks (touch link, olfactory etc)
Skillwires
Commlink with skinlink and good response and a rigger adaption

Subscribe all the wares to the commlinks persona (yes, it should have it’s own since it is a pilot with its own system and can go around on the matrix for itself.)

Now it gets a bit more complicated

The drone is the commlink, not the meatbody which means it got no clue in how to move your meatbody around, that’s when we add some activesofts – so, what are needed?

Pistols (For shooting)
Dodge (for full defense tests)
Perception (The drone needs to see things the way you do)
Athletics (if you want to run away)

Now we have the basics for the drone commlink to remote control your meatbody through the skillwires since the drone can access the skillwires through the subscriber list.

Since skillwire is aimed towards the meatbody’s ability to control other objects it would be a bit silly to add anthroform activesofts to the skillwires since we might as well use athletics to “walk” around with the body.

We might want to add some open-ended activesofts since the pilot program might not understand the concept of holstering a pistol in downtown seattle, a “common sense” knowsoft perhaps that the pilot can have active.

Even if you gained a rating 4 pilot program you would basically be limited to the skillwires rating of 3 since the pilot program would only be useful while doing things that involves the commlink, like computer skills.

Now comes an even more fun part: having the drone remote-controlling your meatbody to drive a vehicle…how would that work? I would probably say you required two skills – Groundvehicle+Athletics instead of Groundvehicle+Reaction since the drone must first control your own ability to move and also use the Groundvehicle skill.

Since you havn't got wheels, I still think Anthroform (any vehicle that walks on legs) would be more appropriate - if not "pilot, exotic vehicle" just because the concept is so weird.

Also, I would say that rathe than getting senseware, cyberears and cybereyes, you're better off going with a simrig - that way you get the full array of human senses (including the user's emotive track, if you care). Also 0.5 essense for every sense is a good deal.

Aside from that, there are certain things that your drone is going to need in order to even walk around. One would be the sense of touch (a touchlink only sense touch senses to the body, not the other way around). As far as I can tell, the only way to "read" touch sense from the user, is with a simrig. At least, this was my understanding of the touchlink. I could easily be wrong.

Take both, remember, you can squeeze in a lot of things into cyberears and cybereyes. Hmm, I forgot the simrig, I thought more about the Sim-module.

What about the Command program?

It says that when you command a divice to do something, you use the program rating in place of an attribute. So, if the agent commanded the skillwires to shoot a gun, would use the rating of the command program + the rating of the pistols autosoft? Or would it be limited by the meatbody's agility?

Likewise for strength? Could the skillwires be told to lift something that the person just couldn't make his muscles do? That seems unlikely.


Also, a rigger could act in place of the commlink in this example, right? He'd recieve simsense from the simrig (which would match up exactly to his own 5-6 senses) and he could issue commands to the skillwires as easily as an agent, right?

So it wouldn't be a rigger adapated drone, in the "jump into the vehicle" sense, but he could move it like a puppet, or issue commands to the commlink-drone jsut like any other remotely controlled drone? That actually sounds pretty sweet, and once you take out the ability to "jump into" someone else's body, I think it's a lot more in line with the rules.

(Course, this is mostly speculation, cause who would get all this cyberware installed for someone else to use. Certianly the team's sammy wouldn't appreciate being 'locked out' of his own body while the rigger makes him fumble around.)

There are some scary implications in this scenario when it comes to hacking.

Say that you hack into someones commlink (or through the team hackers routher to reach the commlink) then you rewrite the entire subscription list in the commlink and upload an agent program and tell it to basically play merry hell with the devices subsribed to the comlink it now inhibits (in this sense it wouldn't work with a pilot since the enemy probably does not have a drone-commlink).

Even worse is if you hide your actions from the target and replace the control interface for the OS so that the target has to hack the system to get it back.

In the case of skillwires the agent could randomly issue commands to different skills and even rename the activesofts that it uploads into the skillwires.

Not a fun thing to happen to you when you use your skillwires for your "Martial Arts: Crane style" fighting and and up with "Feng-Yungs Yoga Style water balloon throwing" as a replaced file name.

...Somehow I don't think water baloon yoga is the way to go when you face off against an angry close combat adept...

So what happens when a self-rigger takes 1 box of damage? Cascading death?

EDIT: Rather, a diminishing-returns damage loop, since you have to soak half of the damage your drone takes.

Well, if you were rigging yourself, I imagine you'd get quite a few feedback loops.
Like, your sense of touch would be overwritten by the touch track fo the simsense feed, which is streaming your sense of touch... so IF your meatbody got hurt... I do imagine the pain would enter that feedback loop and so the cascading problem might be legit.

At the very least, its incentive for PCs to not try this sort of thing in game.

This is some scary, evil, evil stuff.

I'm thinking a Prime Runner antagonist who is an Aztechnology rigger who attacks the runners with cybered meat puppets is a hell of an idea. Thank you, dumpshock, my players will hate enjoy him.