Help - Search - Members - Calendar
Full Version: A couple Rigging Qs
Dumpshock Forums > Discussion > Shadowrun
Semicolon
During a run last night my gaming group ran across a couple of stumbling blocks in regards to Drones and Rigging (and mounted weapons).

First: Drone Initiative.
Stated in the book, Drone initiative is a Pilot + Response roll. But Drones don't have a Response. Is this referring to the Response of the Commlink they are subscribed to? But then how do you handle a drone that is opporating autonomously?

Second: Mounted Weapons.
Vehicles and Drones have a number of weapon mounts equal to their Body/3 (round down). That's the easy part. Now defining those mounts is of course a little more difficult. The old Rigger 3 book had all the wonderful options, and I'm sure SR4 will eventually have the same. But in the meantime, the question we had was, do weapon mounts on Vehicles and Drones offer any sort of Recoil Comp? Seems logical that an LM mounted on a hardpoint would have at least some RC.
Rotbart van Dainig
QUOTE (Semicolon)
Stated in the book, Drone initiative is a Pilot + Response roll.  But Drones don't have a Response.

Of course they have - by default, a Device Rating of 3 and thus, a Response of 3.

QUOTE (Semicolon)
Now defining those mounts is of course a little more difficult.

Why? Right now, they are obvious turrets.
DireRadiant
For the drone mounted LMG, I'd allow someone to add Gyro Stabilization, but instead of upper torso, attach to drone/vehicle. However it would only fit on large drones or vehicles and consumes a lot space.
James McMurray
Weapon mounts do not have builtin recoil compensation, but they do negate the penalty for firing from a moving vehicle.
James McMurray
The best weapon I've found for a mount is the Ares Alpha. You get the same damage value and fire rates, plus can get the recoil modifier higher. The underbarrel grenade launcher is also very useful at times.
Shrike30
White Knights are more my speed... the higher damage code on an LMG, combined with the belt feed just works for me. The lack of a GL is sad, though.
dcpirahna
What effects if any DO drones have in terms of recoil?

My group has just begun digging in to the rigging rules (which are woefully inadequate) and the impression they had was that Drones firing weapons are like Vehicles firing mounted weapon. You just roll Gunnery+Targeting. Recoil is not a factor for a Vehicle/Drone firing a weapon.

While this seems wrong to me for drones (smaller ones anyway). I do not see anything in the book to really clarify either way however.
Rotbart van Dainig
Normal Ranged Combat rules apply.
Geekkake
QUOTE (dcpirahna)
What effects if any DO drones have in terms of recoil?

My group has just begun digging in to the rigging rules (which are woefully inadequate) and the impression they had was that Drones firing weapons are like Vehicles firing mounted weapon. You just roll Gunnery+Targeting. Recoil is not a factor for a Vehicle/Drone firing a weapon.

While this seems wrong to me for drones (smaller ones anyway). I do not see anything in the book to really clarify either way however.

I'd imagine you could address sufficiently large drones as stable firing platforms, which may receive recomp bonuses along the lines of a tripod. That's a house rule, of course, but makes sense, given the situation. It does, however, overpower drones a little bit more (what's a tripod give? -6 in earlier editions, I remember. Combine that with the insane recoil comp available on a factory White Knight, and you've got sustained, belt-fed firing at no recoil).

Also, did you like that "recomp"? It was a typo, but it is now my abbreviation of choice.
ronin3338
QUOTE (dcpirahna)
While this seems wrong to me for drones (smaller ones anyway). I do not see anything in the book to really clarify either way however.

The small ones have a Body<3, right? I don't have the BBB with me, but if that's true, then they can't mount a weapon.
mdynna
Some drones have a Body < 3 but specifically state that they include a weapon mount. These are exceptions to the rule. If the book doesn't say that hey already have a weapon mount, and they have a Boyd < 3 then they can't have a weapon mount.

As an aside, I am beginning work on converting the Vehicle Modification rules from Rigger 3 to something that will work with SR4. I will post them when I have something of significance to show.
ronin3338
Crap. Once again we have vehicles that don't follow the stated rules. I think I'd rule that the mont will only fit a smaller weapon, like an SMG, and apply a point or 2 of "recomp" (cool points for geekake)
Big D
How do you handle reloading a drone, though?

Or do you have to make a few rolls to modify the weapon to feed off of a large magazine or hopper?

If you gave a drone one of the ARs with a built-in GL, is there any way that you could get more than the single shot out of the GL?

I'm thinking White Knight (see the suppression fire thread) or MGL-12 kludged with a large (belted?) ammo bin, a la a Mk19 or M-307.
Lagomorph
edit: These are basically both house rules

The response is supposed to be 3, but IIRC for hackers you can't have a system > response and since a Pilot is a System, you can't have a pilot more than 3 (since there aren't really rules for upgrading the device rating in a drone), which is illogical, so we just ruled that you roll PilotX2.

In our games, we treat mounts as tripods with -6 RC.

edit2:

I beleive that weapon mounts are listed as including a 200 round ammo bin
James McMurray
QUOTE (Shrike30)
White Knights are more my speed... the higher damage code on an LMG, combined with the belt feed just works for me. The lack of a GL is sad, though.

All mounted weaponry has an ammunition rating of 250 (or thereabouts), so belt feed vs. clip isn't an issue.

I upgraded the ratings on all of my drones because I wanted to be able to run rating 5 autosofts and have good communications and hacking defenses. It's pretty cheap to buy the upgraded response, signal, etc. and one copy of IC can protect every drone you own multiple times. I ended up with 5 system and 9 programs running on all of them. It lowers the response by 1 but means there's 4+ rating 3-4 IC running around waiting for an opposing hacker to try and take over.
Shrike30
This is just me being amusing/stupid, but...

RE: 250 round ammo bin: does that include a 250 minigrenade capacity for the UBarrLauncher under the Alpha/XM-30, in addition to the 250 rounds for the rifle itself? Or does the UBarr not count as the primary weapon?

RE: recomp: If put a bipod on the LMG (or a tripod) and bolt it down onto the hull of the drone, does it provide compensation?

By the way, BigD: most underbarrel GLs in SR hold multiple rounds of ammunition.
James McMurray
It doesn't say if that applies to the GL or not. We opted to not have it count, but could have gone either way. It's way too expensive to fill a 250 capacity container full of grenades when you may see that drone a smoking wreck after 3 seconds of combat. And if you need more than 6 you're probably screwed anyway. Either that or the drone is immune to the weapons fire of the opposition and the grenades are actually just icing on the cake because the drone can handle them by itself.
James McMurray
We opted to not allow bipods and tripods mounted to drones, as they're supposed to be resting on a solid, steady object (generally the surface under you). Well, I shouldn't say we opted to not allow it, because I didn't bother asking about it.

It didn't make sense to me and sometimes my group can get sidetracked for 20 minutes or more on a rules question that was just asked out of curiosity. Like looking up the haggling / fencing rules in the middle of combat, which has happened before and caused a lot of "hey, it's your turn" moments.
hobgoblin
hmm, how many autosofts do a normal drone need to function effectivly?

i have a bad feel that as pilot stands in for system, and if one go down the route of more then system programs result in a drop of response, then the poor little dogbrain could be very confused very soon wobble.gif
James McMurray
I don't have the sheet, but offhand I believe the loadout was:

Defense (never used, and new drones probably won't have it)
Gunnery (for the AK)
Heavy Weapons (for the GL)
Maneuver (for maneuvering)
Awareness (for noticing stuff)

Since that hit the limit for a system of 5 and dropped the response to 4 there was no reason not to slap 4 more programs on there, in this case the stun damage IC program.
Big D
QUOTE
By the way, BigD: most underbarrel GLs in SR hold multiple rounds of ammunition.


Duh. *whacks self*

I'm starting to warm to the Alpha. You don't really need a LMG if you're using it mostly for suppression, which is what I'd suspect. A couple of drones laying down a few frags and then suppressing the snot out of the entrance can slow down the guards chasing the fleeing team out the door. That's worth a $4K risk per drone.

To make up for the fragile nature, what about leaving them at long range, with a suppressor (if that means you lose gas vent, it doesn't matter, if you're firing suppression), and taking whatever cover is available? I'm thinking mostly aerial drones here, which can hide behind buildings or terrain (while smaller drones run recon), and stick their noses out just enough to suppress the target, hopefully without being easy to notice in return.

Again, I'm thinking mostly about noisy entry or exit--I don't know that I see a lot of use for armed drones indoors or camping next to the team outdoors. That's what eles are for.
James McMurray
I used them mostly for firing single long wide bursts at people. The AK can get exactly enough recoil comp to negate the long burst penalties, and the weapon mount negates movement penalties. 8 dice and -5 dodge pool hits most people at least a little bit. It also served to lower their dodge pools for future shots by the sammie and myself.

One thing every rigger should do is get as much electrical protection on your combat drones as possible. Electrical attacks have a chance of just flat out shutting you down for several turns. That's how we took out the opposing drones with stick and shock ammo.

I like the aerial suppression idea though, and will definitely swipe it. I didn't have any aerial drones with me on the run because we were flown to the run site and had limited cargo capacity. The dalmation couldn't keep up with the plane so I left it at home.
Voran
I was thinking along similar lines. Using drones not so much for the minigun goodness that the LS pictured ones do, but loading them up with combat modifier gear. Flashpaks, smoke grenades, tear gas, whatever.

I was wondering if you could also mix a drone's setting. I've see largely 'in air' type drones and 'on ground' type drones, but was thinking a drone that could fly, get itself a nice perch, land extend its legs like a tripod, engage a gyro sabilizer or something and become a miniturret might be useful too.
James McMurray
That sounds like a cool idea. Hopefully the SR4 drone creation rules will have something like that in it.

I had three drones with me, two of which had frag grenades and one had thermosmoke ones. Unfortunately for me when the firefight started the ones with the frag were where the ones with the smoke should have been. I also had failed to get an airlink for them, so the grenades never actually did much when coupled with our "dodges can negate grenades easily" ruling.
Big D
That's where I'm really liking your Alpha idea...

One drone suppresses, the other drops a couple grenades on the folks who hit the dirt. The survivors are obliged to relocate through the suppressing fire.

The combination can't be good for morale.

Switch out when one drone runs out of grenades.

I'm liking the emplaced aerial drone, too.
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.
Dumpshock Forums © 2001-2012