First thing you do is go over that drone with a fine-tooth comb, cover every single design point and check the errata. I blew up at a player this weekend (we are still not talking to each other) over what started as a mistake due to the horrible mess that is Rigger 3 (seriously, who edited it? A retarded monkey?) and ended up with both of us blowing up at each other and taking most of the group with us (we all GM, so all sorts of runs are now FUBAR because of a goddamn typo).

Other than that, I agree with Kage. But also, getting multiple small drones (which is what my drone rigger has done. He has this whole spider motif going using them for spying, signal boosting, anti-personnel stuff, etc.)

But other than that, one combat drone is about as useful as one combat monster troll. Sure, it's great to have when things go loud, but in my games if they went loud then we failed miserably.

A editor who knew that FASA was going to be closing up shop, wasn't sure if the game line was going to have a future, and wanted to be absolutely sure the last of the "Core Archetype Splatbooks" made it to the shelves so that if it did turn out to be the last SR product ever published, at least third edition would have had a full set of splatbooks.

Needless to say, it was a bit of a rush job. R3 Revised took care of some of the problems, but it could only do so much.

Not totally true—if you go heavy enough the drone will always outgun and outsoak the troll—but vectored-thrust and fixed-wing drones have some crippling limitations for shadow combat use. For vectored-thrust, they're hot, their signature hangs out with 0, and they burn fuel like nobody's business. For fixed-wing, the whole "not being able to stop and hang out in a good position for a while" thing is pretty harsh. I'm a fan of rotodrones and miniblimps, myself.

~J

No worries there, there is more to my game than combat.

Fix-it quote

The players are not dumb enough to make their equipment known to the cops, but I will remind myself to do more random pull over's.

All in all I am not that keen on the cops getting involved that much. My players have already experience the wrath of the cops. If the cops get involved then the PCs have screwed up. Assuming the group doesn't mess up, then star shouldn't be much of a factor.

Mmu1

I let him have a VCR3 of course. :-/

Pendaric

While I am pretty familiar with the magic rules, I am not sure how effective spirits are against drones. Assuming we are talking about reasonable powered spirits of 3 or 4, what can they do? They are too weak to attack them physically and most of the powers do stun ... So can you explain how they can be effective?

noname_hero

Thanks for the suggestion, but I am not going to tell him how to play his character. I want to allow him to do his own thing. I feel it is more responsibility to raise to the challenge.

I mean no offense, but this is the kind of philosophy I am trying to avoid. Don't get me wrong, I know how squash the rigger and the whole group like bugs, but I want to take a more grounded and elegant approach. Also keep in mind that the rigger isn't a madman. He hasn't done anything wrong ... I am simply looking to the future to provide a reasonable challenge.

I find it reasonable for him to have his equipment, so I don't want to punish him by throwing a lot of high power enemies his way.

Syd

Thanks for the reminder sometimes I need to remember that a tough challenge all of the time isn't always fun.

I am having a hard time thinking of any other spells that are goint to be simple and effective against drones. The problem is I don't want to make all my npcs gear to stop the rigger. And since the npcs are less powerful in general, my NPCs mages only have a few spells ... I suppose I just need to do some more studying with drones in mind.

I am not worried about professional NPCs. In fact the PCs just went up against some Spirit Company security and lost. The security slowed them down enough for the cops to surround the place. Only the sniper was able to get away after a car chase.

Kagetenshi

Can you explain a little more on this?

Ed_209a

Nice point, I will try to have ganger and other confront them when they are gearing up.


Thanks again guys for the comments, they are some real good one here. If you could please answer some of the questions I asked. For example the important ones are ...

1. Can people give me more examples of how spirits can be effective against drones?
2. Why isn't vector thrust that good? This this because of the lack of drones?
3. What are some common problems with drones. Environment problems for example.
4. How do you guys did with fuel? I have completely avoid the issue, but I might have to start making this mundane aspect of the game more important.
5. Besides lighting any other spells that would be good? ... Assuming that they are too creatively used. I don't want the NPCs to be more creative then the pcs.

1. I'm pretty sure there are some spirit powers that can be used fairly effectively against drones - Accident comes to mind.

2. Like Kagetenshi said - not especially subtle, hard to use inside buildings. Though you didn't say what you meant by vector thrust, so maybe this is just a misunerstanding over terminology.

3. Any cramped space is going to be a problem - so will be such simple things as doors. There's also a lot of places - basically, anywhere aside from the bad neighborhoods - where an armed drone flying at low level is going to attract negative attention. So you need to be judicious in their use - it's usually best if they loiter at a high altitude to have a good field of view and avoid detection, which means it sometimes takes time for them to get into the action.

4. There are a lot of drones that can be owned and used legally, so I'm sure there are plenty of places that will sell you fuel without a hassle. It's not really a major issue, most of the time.

Just about any Physical Combat spell or Elemental Manipulation... Physical Illusion spells can f**k with their sensors...

Why don't you want creative NPCs? Just curious.

Accident, immunity to normal weapons, movement, engulf.

Actually, I'd suggest looking at the Ares Guardian. A slowly flying wall with a small gun port.

Depends on the mobility method of the drone. Fixed wings have trouble in tight hallways with right angles, tracked have trouble on cliffs, etc.

See tank size vs. economy for single use duration. I'd toss it in with the maintenance costs unless the drone needs to be recharged/refueled on a run.

Shape earth, ice sheet, most elemental manipulations, a high force physical barrier used to odd effect. Basically, any physical spell with a TN other than OR or Body (or 4+mass).

But that kind of stuff hardly ever happens. That would be GM sadism.

*Looks innocent*

~J

You can also do it with AV HMG rounds. Sure, the availability is higher, but you'll spend a whole hell of a lot less money to do it.

~J

I can't comment on other vector thrust drones, but the Ares Guardian is a good pick in my experience, and I've been in two campaigns that involved an Ares Guardian, one where I was the rigger and one where I wasn't.

The Guardian comes with a mini-turret, which is enough to mount an HMG.

The "slow-flying wall" part is true, however. The Guardian's speed is only 60 but it has Armor 12, which with vehicle armor means that anything that isn't AV isn't going to penetrate. Of course, Speed 60 is plenty if you're using it against people rather than vehicles. The description makes note of the fact that it's small enough to use indoors, and with vector thrust it can go over any sort of obstacles or up stairs.

The downside? Even with noise cancellation (which I assume is built into its Signature 7) it won't be terribly quiet, so it's no good for a stealth op. Once you bring an Ares Guardian into play, all semblance of "subtle" goes out the window. And a Load of 24 means you may need to spring for engine customization just to be able to carry the recoil adjusters for it's weapon. And it can't be mounted with manipulator arms of any sort, so it can't do much solo except fight: no opening doors or downloading paydata. Even if the rigger's drone isn't threatened, you may still make him sweat bullets by being a threat to his fleshy compatriots. (At least, that's what happened to me on a few occassions.)


An alternate drone option that I've been having fun with is the G.M. Mr. Fix-It. It comes with manipulator arms, so your rigger can rewire gizmos without having to be there in the meat. It doesn't have armor, but you can buy armor and mount it. It's inexpensive (27,000:nuyen: with a Street index of 1, vs. 99,000:nuyen: and SI 2 for the Guardian) and easy to find and even comes with one free Build/Repair autosoft. But it's tracked, so you lose the advantage of being airborne, and even with maximum engine customization it will never be fast from a vehicle standpoint. But for something to move in concert with your meat-body teammates (and maybe even carry the meat body of an astralling mage, decking decker or rigging rigger strapped ot its back) it'll do fine.


As for countering drones, it's totally doable. I play a street sam in Syd's campaign, and our rigger just had his Ares Guardian shot down by two bursts of AV ammo from the submachine gun of a Renraku Security Guard. (Of course, I turned right around and used two bursts of AV ammo to destroy one of Deus' super-freaky drones, so turnabout is fair play.) AV ammo is good for threatening a drone... perhaps even too good. With their armor halved, a drone's Body of 2 makes it pretty killable. Since it can pretty frustrating to lose a 100,000:nuyen: piece of equipment to 500:nuyen: worth of ammo, I'd advise not bringing it out in every fight unless you enjoy the sound of your rigger's player getting frustrated. But it definitely stands to reason that, just as the PCs will try to have something on-hand to deal with vehicles, NPCs of equivalent power will as well. A drone is hardly invincible, and there's plenty of times I would have risked losing my Ares Guardian if we hadn't used deviousness and tactics to get the jump on the opposition.

It actually makes sense when you consider that those weapons are all being operated remotely. He's using a mouse or joystick (or a rigger's cyberware interface) to aim a crosshair like a player in an FPS game, and never lays hands on the physical weapon at all. For him, aiming a pistol is the same as aiming an assault cannon, just like aiming the pistol in DOOM is the same as aiming the B.F.G.

Having a decent gunnery skill is going to cost him a fair bit of Karma, so until he's got about 8 to 14 Karma to spend, his drone isn't going to be doing much damage. And while he can default almost any vehicle skill to Reaction and still do fine, he won't get his control pool to those checks until he buys some Vector Thrust Aircraft skill. He's quite a bit of Karma away from being an airborne death machine.

They do? Aw, crap. We've just been rolling vs. TN 4 plus wound mods for drone dodging in the campaigns I've been in, and we'd have some less damaged drones if we'd realized it was vs. TN Handling. Our rigger might not have had his Guardian sunk on Monday if his TN had been just that tiny bit lower.

But still, don't underestimate the effectiveness of lightning. The rigger only has control pool (however substantial) to dodge. The mage has Sorcery plus spell pool. That's enough dice to make the difference.

Sure you can.

It's just that there won't be a door left afterwards, and you'll have to expend ammunition doing so.

It isn't that I don't want any NPCS, but I want to allow the PCs to think they are more creative.

I can't check the books right now, but isn't the power of the spell halved just like other weapons? In that case most elemental spells are useless for the pure damage. Of course the main advantage is the secondary effects, but expect for lighting I don't remember the rules being very clear on how drones are effected.

Taran

I hadn't thought of the concealment power in that way per say. I have always used it as additional modifier for stealth rolls.

Also a rigger in the caption's chair uses the manual gunnery rules, not the sensor rules. It states this in the book ... What are other people thoughts on this?

I wasn't thinking of attacking the rigger, but just the drone.

jervinator

Could you enlighten us?

TheNarrator

With a availability of 14, Av rounds are not very common. Elite security like Renraku Red Samuria of course would have it, but the group isn't going to encounter them very much.

However what you just describing is not rigging, but decking. A rigger becomes one with the vehicle, so when he/she is rigging it is like they are holding the weapon. Which is why I think the game mechanic seems broken.

Page reference? I'm pretty sure you've got that backwards—that while in the 'chair a drone can be ordered to perform Sensor-Enhanced Gunnery (using the Drone's Pilot plus autosoft, if applicable), but that a Rigger must be jumped in to perform manual gunnery via the drone.

Also, in my opinion your understanding of how a Rigger interacts with their vehicles' weapon systems is flawed. More on this later when I figure out how I want to say this.

~J

So you expect the rigger to run all the drones in captain's chair mode? Any rigger that doesn't jump into his primary combat drone is going to find himself losing an awful lot of money.

SR3, Page 151 Under Manual Gunnery, "Riggers jacked into vehicles may use manual gunnery rules to fire vehicle weapons." I assumed that they would have to use sensor rules until I read this.

Any kind of clarification you want to give would be appreciated.

mmu1

No, is that how I made it sound? In my mind attacking a drone that the rigger is in, isn't really like attacking the rigger directly. If I remember correct in SR3, a rigger won't take damage unless
A. The drone takes a serious wound in one hit
B. The drone takes a deadly wound.


Btw here is another question for you rigger types ... When doesn't dumpshock happen? I started to rule that anytime a rigger jacks out they are disorented. However my player talked me out of that ruling, because it would suck Every time he used a rig. ON the other hand when else would the dumpshock happen? Just when the drone is destroyed? So the rigger gets REALLY screwed in that case. Can anyone enlighten me on this issues?

You said "I wasn't thinking of attacking the rigger, but just the drone.", which is what I found confusing - because when he commented on the ineffectiveness of lightning spells, Taran wasn't saying they weren't a good way of attacking the rigger - he was saying they weren't much use against the drone either, provided the rigger was controlling it directly. (they're really easy to dodge)

As for Dumpshock, it happens - as I understand it - every time you're suddenly and involuntarily disconnected from something (a drone, a network, a host), which means that if you jack out normally, you don't suffer any problems.

Right. A Rigger jumped into the drone has the choice to use manual gunnery. Note that a Rigger who is not jumped in, but merely commanding the drone via Captain's Chair Mode, does not have the option to use Manual Gunnery—it must be SEG, as that is the only option available to drones working semiautonomously.

As for dump shock, think of it like a Decker—they take dump shock when they're abruptly disconnected. They take more severe dump shock if it's disconnection due to destruction of something they're jumped into, but generally, if it dumps them into meatspace without warning it causes dump shock.

Jacking out deliberately does not fall under this guideline.

~J