The Drones have shrunk.

Its the only explanation I can find, other than a glaring error that needs to be errata'ed.

If you pick up your old copy of Rigger 3 and begin comparing Vehicles to SR4 vehicles with the same names, there are several, Ares Citymaster, GMC Bulldog Step Van, Dodge Scoot and others, you will notice that Body has been multiplied by around 4 and Armor has been doubled where it existed already, and all vehicles that used to have 0 Armor now have between 2 to 6 Armor.

Overall this makes sure that vehicles are compensated for losing their ability to halve the attacking Power and reducing the Damage Level by 1. However, because damage is no longer counted unmodified, but modified, many weapons can now damage vehicles with regular ammo. Particularly if you take a Free action to shoot at a vulnerable spot, losing up to 4 dice on the to hit roll, but gaining +4 to DV.

The Ares Predator IV can produce 12DV-1 which is enough to beat Armor 13, with just regular ammo and 1 Net hit.

And now to the point. Look at Drones. Sure, a few recieved a point of Body here and there, but Armor remained the same. This means that even a piddly hold-out gun with 4P can do serious damage with just 3 Net hits.

A simple offroader bike now has 6 Body and 6 Armor, where the Doberman has 4 Body and 6 Armor and is supposedly a deliberately armored Tank and not simply a rugged bike with a good build.

Similar for the Harley Davidson vs. the Steel Lynx. Harley with 8 Body and 4 Armor vs. Lynx's 4! Body and 9 Armor. Again the drone is described as a serious business hard target, and the Harley is just a Harley yet carries 4 points of Armor.

I can only make this fit, if the Drones have all Shrunk in size and toughness. This has to be a mistake. The Armor values should be roughly doubled, as they can Still be hit by regular ammo from common runner weapons with the new Armor rules, but they wont be scrap in the first fight.

An Armored Jacket has more armor than a Doberman!

But a drone the size of a large motorcycle is Not supposed to be as weak as a motocross bike.

It may be the price is set too low, but they should reduce size instead of introducing incongruity.

Or, better, improve armor and body as they have done on every other non-drone vehicle.

It makes no sense that it should be easier to shoot and kill a robotic mini-tank, than a body 4 human in an armored jacket. Seriously.

Yes the drone carries an LMG and can pack quick a punch, but said LMG can be purchased for 2.400 nuyen and then includes SmartLink and 5 points of RC. The human can easily have a reaction of 5, agility 5 and Longarms 5, making him roll 5 dice + possibly Edge for Dodge tests and 12 dice for shooting tests.

He doesn't have to spend 1 pass to control the vehicle, nor does he have to spend 1 simple action to target before firing. With just 1 extra pass from cyber/bio he'll be faster and better in every way.

I am not saying a PC should not be able to best a single Drone, but atleast the Drone should be able to soak up one or two volleys and not simply go belly up before it even discovers the human. - The rigger takes half the drones damage as stun btw, more if its blown up.

Rigging has no real benefit anymore. Its a passtime for Hackers who don't even need to focus on attributes and thus can sink karma into combat skills and money into programs, making the best character in SR4 the multitalented Elf Hacker Cybersamurai Ninja.

And no, I do not think that is as intended.

As for Drones being cheap, have you looked at software and hardware upgrade prices? - Noone puts that amount of money into something with Armor 6 or 9 for that matter. Look at Sensor upgrading and it gets worse. The stock drone being little more than a frail shell of what it could be, but no rules provided for adding armor that could make it more survivable and thus entice to put in all the toys that Did make it into the rulebook.

I think they're a more correct size also, though they could definately use a little more armor (I've lost about 5 drones now). The other thing that has changed about drones is that they are much more capable on their own, especially with a good pilot and autosofts. If you put 25-50 k into your drone, its going to be rolling 10-12 dice, and is going to survive much longer than the normal 3-6 dice drones.

The problem is currently that once you get to 15 or 20 armor, vehicles are almost invincible

Once you get to 20 Armor you are dealing with the equivalent of an Amored Personel Carrier. Attacking it with small arms fire should be relatively ineffective. Have you tried attacking them with an AV missle? The right tool for the job.

What kicks hoop about drones isn't stats, it never has been. Their real danger is numbers. Issuing a command is a simple action but the same command is automaticly issued to all subscribed drones. A rigger can only subscribe system*2 drones per comlink but I am unaware of any rule that prevents one from carrying and using multiple comlinks.

In a single IP a rigger can bring 16 drones to bear against a single target or 8 drones each against two targets, using stock comlinks. With customized hardware and software the damage becomes even greater.

The great thing, of course, is that sammies, adepts, magicians, faces, and ect. can captain's chair just as easily as a hacker or a technomancer. Any character with the willingness to put up some cash can send giant swarms of drones against an enemy.

Consider this scenario. A rigger is in full VR and has eleven comlinks subscribed to his tweeked out primary comlink. Each of these eleven subscribes seven drones.

On his first IP he orders drone groups one and two to attack. One his second IP he orders three and four to attack. On his third IP he orders five and six to attack. Now, he has put fourty-two drones into combat within three seconds from the safety of his armored command center.

On the next combat turn the deployed drones continue to attack their targets and he has thirty-five more to work with.

Also they work great for recon as expendable scouts that are able to go places a person can't, at least on the physical plane. They are also a bit tougher to trace back to the owner than spirits are, though spirits still have their own advantages.

Ok, lets trick out a Steel Lynx.

Response to 6, depending on how you play the upgrade costs this may cost from 4.000 for do it yourself to 14.000 for plug and play. (And I've seen places where it costs 28k to plug and play)

Pilot 6 costs 15.000.

Autosofts costs 3.000 apiece, so for Targeting(LMG), Clearsight, Maneuver(Crawler) and Defence its 12.000 nuyen.

AE Jammer rating 10 is 10.000, stops all signals from penetrating to the drone, it can effectively not be hacked but is on its own for all tests. (Remember to include a timer on your command to active this Jammer field. )

Important sensor upgrades are a camera with enhancement 3 and smartlink, this will effectively give you Sensor 6 when using visuals. Its written in the book that a large drone can have up to Sensor 5, but no price for it. It setting Signal=Sensor, then it'll cost 3k for Sensor 5 + 100+500+2000 for around 6.000 nuyen you now roll 8 dice on visual sensor tests and have +2 dice on shooting due to Smartlink.

I think this will do for now.

The Lynx now has initiative 12 with 3 passes.

To detect a human, visually, it has to roll 8+6-3=11 dice vs. a threshold of (Infiltration+Agility) from the target, if they are hiding that is, else it just needs a single success to detect the human. - This costs a Simple Action and in principle has to be repeated evey single combat turn unless the drone locks on using Active Targeting.

To shoot the human it has just detected it can take 1 shots using Passive Targeting, rolling Pilot+Targeting+Smartlink for 14 dice vs. human Reaction. Damage with regular rounds is 6P-1, but since we can use Long Burst for no recoil since we assume our gun is a Ingram White Knight, the human has 5 dice less to dodge with. Giving us a good chance to hit him with lots of hits to spare to make it a 10+DV when it comes to soak time.

We can also spend our other Simple Action in pass 1 to do Active Targeting, locking on, rolling Sensor+Clearsight (note Pilot is NOT added to This test) for 14 dice and an average of 4+ successes, which we can use to add to our dice pool in Pass 2 when we open fire.

Pass 3 we spend driving. If we don't we crash.

Now, thats a fine combat monster. And it only costed.. oh.. wait.. 52.000 nuyen. Thats alot of runs havin' to be done to get such one.

Now lets pretend the human got lucky, or had a friend come in from the side. Lets give said friend an Ares Predator IV, AGI 4, Pistols 4, spec. semi-automatics, smartlink and regular ammo.

Thats a base DV5-1 with 12 dice and fearsome as it might be, he only has to reach DV9-1 after all modifiers to hit the drone and deal physical damage. Now he can either roll his 12 dice for an average of 4 succeses vs. the drones 6 dodge dice, which will net 2 succeses, but then he will probably not meet the DV requirement to deal damage. Instead he sacrifices 3 dice to raise DV by 3, making him roll 9 dice with DV8-1 vs. the drones 6 pilot dice.

On average he'll tend to hit every time, needing just 1 net hit to deal damage.

The drone then needs to soak atleast 9 boxes of damage with 4+9=13 dice, averaging 4 succeses, taking 5 boxes of damage.

The human repeats this in his next Simple Action. The drone has now suffered 10 boxes of physical damage from a common Ares Predator IV and a subpar runner in pass 1. - That is simply not balanced.

In pass 2 the drone dies.

If you exchange the runner with anything better or the gun with a SMG or bigger, you can finish the job in pass 1.

In pass 1.

This is not balanced.

@weblife

one thing, are vehicles with filled out damage track defined as destroyed? or just disabled? i seems to recall that in SR3 you could bring a vehicle back from D level damage with enough time and money. can this still be done in SR4? if so, a softer drone isnt much of a problem as you can have more of them and then recover the ones that gets taken out. maybe you can have 2-3 drones that have this as their job?

Basically, the problem seems to be the insane +4 dv option on called shots for just -4 dice.

Luckily, the GM can withhold his agreement to this option. This is in the rules for a called shot.

I agree and suggest 2 dice per +1 DV.

Against a security drone, I wouldn't allow a called shot for more than 2. Against a milspec drone, I wouldn't allow a called shot at all. To make a called shot, the opponent has to have a vulnerable spot.

I think the problem was that the guards in the compound your unlucky doberman drone infiltrated were issued with a single round of APDS ammo in each clip each. (Which you were warned about before your drone arrived when you checked the clip of the young security decker your group accidentally liquidated). I aggree that drones are somewhat fragile. Your tricked out doberman would take 10BP out of chargen. And this is a (albeit not as heavily armored) drone that moves at twice the speed of a metahuman, is utterly unaffected bu biochem weapons (such as those lovely CS grenades you guys lobbed into the assembly hall), and will be fixed far sooner than your face's eye after his breif, yet intense tango with Pete the troll.

Do less powerful drones make riggers less über? Yes. But in addition to your drones shrinking to the state you becry, so did the VCR by, oh, 2.5 essence points and 50.000 . The 52k nuyen drone you describe is more vunerable than your teammates, but also more readily replacable than, say, your cybersammie who threw about 120k worth of chrome into his body.

If the armors were scaled up like the vehicles without a substantial jump in price, this game would become a robot army war. That would NOT be Shadowrun.

Just rule that unless the base damage of a attack doesn't exceed the armour of drones/vehicles etc it bounces.

Calling a shot won't do jack unless the caliber is large enough/powerful enough to penetrate it's armour. But if it is, then it does it.

I wouldn't let regular predator rounds hurt a doberman. Load it with anything though like ex, ex-ex or apds and then I would.

as a side note, ruger super warhawaks x2 with apds 4tw.

I beg to differ. The following is all IMHO: Page 140, Compare Armor defined modified Damage Value and modified Armor Value as (base Damage Value + Hits) and (Armor Value + AP).
Ammunition modifies the base damage and AP of a weapon (p.312), so this is factored in.

Other modifiers do not apply at this step. And in our group we don't calculate them.

The -x dice / +x DV exchange is for hitting a vital zone and the resulting higher "wound effect" such a hit has, it is not for penetrating (or ignoring) armor, for which another modifier exists.
Since, if a vital zone is protected by armor (most likely IMHO), and the armor is strong enough to deflect (in case of vehicles) a shot that would not penetrate if the area beneath it wouldn't be vital, why should it be penetrated easier, only because the protected area is vital?

I think this would be less of a harsh transition had they left the old drones the way they were, carried a couple of the "minitanks" over into SR4 (and priced them appropriately) and then given us a whole slew of drones on the scale we've got in the new version without them being named the same as something that used to perform entirely differently in SR3.

The Doberman and the Steel Lynx have always been hardcore... so leave 'em that way, and make sure their availability and cost reflect how hardcore they are. Just call the (smaller, lighter, cheaper) new drones something else.

Riggers were way out of scale in SR3, arguably worse than magicians in many areas including combat. SR4 fixed their little red armoured wagon. Good. But it certainly didn't make them into gimps. On the slate for SR5 are magicians. A pipe dream that an RPG with magic using characters will not be dominated by magic. But hey, I can at least dream can I not?

Wanna bet I can design a rigger who runs a minitank in SR4?

Just rig a city master - enough armor, but a little weak on the offensive side, as long as you don't drive somebody over.

Just depends on how big the drones really are.

Is a dobberman an rc car.

the size of a dog.

or the size of a motorcycle.


The steel lynx for example is nearly man size in height but not solid like a harley. lots more moving bits vulnerable spots etc. than a solid harley.
But does that justify the body of 4. Armor 9
In my opinion no way

It IS a MILITARY hard core come to kick hoop drone. with armor a 1000 rounds of ammo and a big machine gun. built for close up urban warfare and limited open groudn engagements, made to resist small arms fire and take on light vehicles.

And i take my handgun and kill it in one hit

doesn't even fit the description of the lynx's capabilities.

A burst from a heavier machine gun, couple burst or three from an assault rifle several shots from a pistol or a VERY lucky shot.
one straight on solid hit from a panther cannon sure.

but one hit from a pistol with normal ammo doesn't make sense bases on the drones stated capabilities.

In my experience in shadowrun 3 we worked hard to get our lynx and loved it.
The rigger only had a few good drones. Being illegal AND hard to get.

And while the rigger was issuing commands to his army ? of drones. The enemy street sams where spending there action breaking his drones.

Now on top of that a street sam built for speed (wired reflex 3 and a high vehicle skill)
can out rig a rigger. Driving AND issuing commands to drones in AR better than a rigger can do it in hot sim with a control rig.
And God forbid the samie takes or has delta ware he can get agility boosts and be a better gunner to.

I know thats not something some characters will ever have access to or achieve in there carreer, But that it is possible concerns me greatly.
Hopefully future source books will de gimp the riggers.

In SR4 you can't gun it out without tactics, eg. cover, surprise etc (or just superior weapons and armour).
It's just fair that drones have to be used in the same way.


Example from today, just look at this prototype:
picture from metalstorm.com

Four 40mm tubes on an unmanned ground vehicle, but not even paper armor ...

That's a Talon, and it's typically used for bomb disposal. It was never meant to be a primary combatant, unlike the Steel Lynx. They are looking at outfitting it with a variety of weapons, but emphasis is on camouflage and cost-effectiveness. This seems much closer to the SR4 Steel Lynx's capabilities than its old incarnation. Tanks they are not.

http://www.defensereview.com/modules.php?n...article&sid=704

Yeah, it's a slow moving, remote controlled, unarmoured vehicle, which exists today.

in 2070 it will be faster, autonomous, and reasonably armoured.

Interestingly, in SR the offensive capability might be worse than reallistically today.

I don't recall the book saying you can't refit it with different weapons...

Drones never did last long against things that could penetrate the armor, Just got to bring the right tool for the job.
As in a pistol shouldn't kill an armored anti personal drone in one hit. A heavier machine gun, an armor piercing shotgun slug a rocket or panther cannon, one hit sure. but a pistol no way. Several good hits from a pistol sure. But we now have the situation where one samuri can kill 8 steel lynxs, in one round. Thats silly in my opinion. (especially since samurai can drive and shoot better than a rigger now to) I may just be coming from a different game experience but we where lucky to have one of the things, and we used it maybe 3 times in 20 sessions because it was so damn big, illegal, and unstealthy, and drew allot of attention running down the road making it usless in most runs. Now when we needed firepower and sneaky didn't matter or no longer mattered Snookums was the ticket. And while no pushover was not invincible and was not unkillable (poor snookums) I can see cheaper, time marches on and if laser pistols can be affordable than eventually 8 steel lynxs knock off's can be to.
And drones were not overpowering in our runs either which seems to be the counter argument. If you knew the mark packed heavy drones you brought heavy guns. Now you can hack them to. Drones either shrugged of the damage or fell to pieces. I think thats what they where shooting for in the conversion. and the lynx does roll 13 dice less ap to resist damage. so that makes it close to the cars in resistance dice. just not damage bar. Not necessarily to far off the mark. other than the called shot issue which is what makes the one shot pistol hits possible.
disallow called shots on drones and your really close to good old 3rds feel. It took 6 success to bring the shot from L to D in 3rd. Now you need 4 Not bad since the target can dodge. so thinking more and typing on it i can see the arguement both ways. Now if we could just teach our new rigger to drive and shoot. sigh.

i say we wait for the vehicle book and hope for some armor modifications

yeah, as allways get the main book then wait for the really real rules. I hope the rigger book isn't out just before sr4.5 or 5 or whatever comes next. In general the book is good, vehicles/ drones are much easier to use and chase, that helps alot. Just some hickups that can either be smoothed out or made worse in the next vehicle book. I'm excited about seeing where all of it will go.