What's a good way to capture a drone from the opposition, assuming the shadowrunning team is bored and willing to spend the doss for a lot of equipment, and are just stealing as many drones as they can for a scavenger hunt?

Buy the equipment that lets you subvert control of a drone.

Then drive around Seattle stealing the Lone Star Strato-9s.

SR3 right? Rigger 3 has the answers though it'll take you some time to decipher it. To start with you need an RC deck and some electronic warfare addons / skills. You can go with the brute force method of screwing up his channels (if he has any sort of real encryption go this way), or you can try slide right into his network and subvert it from him (cleanest if he isn't running encryption).

Alternately a radio jammer that you can fry an egg on to break the other rigger's connection and then some way to physically grab the drone can work too (spirits are nice for trying to snag flying drones). This method kinda depends on what the drone was last commanded to do if the connection to thier rigger was lost.

Another way is to walk up to the rigger and use the 10mm hijack method. However riggers with lots of toys and any shread of sense are tough cats to deal with and usually don't leave themselves open to easy direct attack.

EDIT: Is a condition of the scavenger hunt that the drone be in working order? Because you could just conjure up a few spirit to accident the drone into the dirt, then go scrape up the little bits into a baggie.

There's always the junk yard, it should be possible to scrounge up enough parts to rebuild one.

The shaman in my campaign used a combination of Force Wall, Animate and Analyze Device to quickly capture and control an enemy's drone. It required good timing, quick wits and sustaining a couple of spells simultaneously, but he did it; and now that he knows how, it'll be easier next time.

Our team botched their last run, so we're trying to collect as many drones as possible just for something to do and also to replenish what we've lost. Since the opposition is playing it close to the chest how long we've got, we figured that stealing drones is the best way to rebuild an army. We have a tech wiz, but building a drone is way more time than just reprogramming one.

So far, we managed to get one by jamming it to hell, but it just started to fight with its automated systems because our rigger couldn't master it. So that failed.

Our second attempt had us raid a lonestar drone that we had codes for. The rigger alerted a mage who sent an elemental. The drone was *very* helpful, but did not survive the assault.

Just buy it. Any drone worth stealing will be encrypted, and then they aren't worth stealing anymore.

~J

Steal from manufacterer, jsut raid the transport truck taking a load of drones to the Star or any other corp/sec. Or shoot them down/ fry them, and then repair them.

Why is an encrypted drone not worth it?

the easiest way to get someone's drones is to steal their control deck. my otaku character ended up with five LS-9s that way (yanked out the transponders while the Star rigger was otherwise occupied), plus a free RCD. seriously, if you gank the RCD, there is nothing the rigger can do to stop you.

Use the rules in SOTA2064 re radio signal location, to figure out the rigger's physical location. Have a high quickness/fast car to get there quickly. Get at him, take his RC deck. If he's in a secure car, break the security. If he's in a secure building, get in and get at the RC deck. The measures and skill requirements and equipment costs to get through physical security (maglocks, shock systems etc) are several orders of magnitude easier than trying to hack broadcast encryption. Simply put, it's too difficult to contemplate stealing any drone that is worth stealing. Steal Saab Dynamits instead and sell them, then buy the drone off the street or pay for a fake security license and buy them legitimately through that.

[Edit - spellin']

Or just get a good B/R skill if your using SR3, and go and trash a few random drones (don't have to be that good even) and use spare parts, guns etc to make customized ones how you want them

Yum, free Stress Points.

~J

Its worth noting that loan star dose not encrypt there drones as standard. Reference, take a look at the stats for all the lone star variant drones, they don’t have encryption. If you steal from them often expect that to change.

As to the investment against an encrypted system I didn’t think you needed to roll twice encryption rating, or need 2 net successes. Even if you do the investment is only 15min. in a day you could try to infiltrate 20 networks.

If you have a hot Decker in the party then the easiest way to get drones is to have him hack a warehouse database and fake (or alter) a delivery order, orange average at worst, have them delivered to a place you can control temporarily but wont trace back.

If you have the time and don’t want to take a risk drive into the middle of a AAA rated naberhood in a truck painted “AAA drone repair and service” and have the household service drones drive themselves into the back of your van, one or 2 then move round the block, do so at a time when everybody is at work so an alarm doesn’t get raised.

Edward

Rigger 3, page 36:

Sounds like it would be easier to sneak up on and shoot the offending rigger through the head, then just take his VCR.

Don't shoot the head, that's where the VCR is. In fact, save the bullet and just cut his throat.

Use a mage with invisibility, then. I know invis works on all of the light forms, and if he's using radar at ground level, you're clearly dealing with a madman.

what you need to do is, sneak your mini-blimp sniper drone up and use that to shoot him in the head. sig 13 and a ruthenium coating? awww yeah.

The one time I attempted to take over a rigger's system, I had no luck. Target numbers are high... you really need to specialize in it if the enemy's system is protected worth a damn.

I did succeed in capturing two enemy drones once. Based on that, I would say that the best method of capturing drones is the blow up the van containing the enemy rigger after he deploys the drones from said van in preparation of ambushing you an hour later (but since you deliberately baited the ambush, you were two hours early and ambushed him instead).

Yeah, the SR group I play a rigger in is fraggin' devious in their planning.