Ok, I've used my search-fu on this one, and gotten multiple contradictory answers.

This question has 3 main parts:
1) Sensors
2) Attacking
3) General modes of control

so...

1) Sensors

To detect someone or something with a drone, you have to make a sensor test.

This will be Sensor + Perception for a rigged drone, or Sensor + clearsight for an independent drone. Most drones do not come standard with clearsight autosofts, and have Sensor ratings of 1-3.

Enter the Signature Table, on p162 of the BBB.

To detect a metahuman, you take a -3 dice penalty. This means your average drone has zero dice for the test, and cannot detect a person. Ever.
Those wilth clearsight will be using any dice left over (1-3 dice, most likely). for a small chance of detecting a target.

Forget doing this in an opposed test with someone sneaking (1-3 dice vs Agility+Infiltration)

Is this right?
In my searches I ran across some very arcane references to adding cameras, sensor packages and whatnot. There aint no rules for that as far as I can tell.

2) Attacking

When a drone attacks, it has to choose either passive or active sensor targeting. Lets assume Passive for the moment. Does it use:

Pilot+Targeting Autosoft+signature or Sensor+Targeting Autosoft+Signature?

When using Active Sensors to lock on, the book says that you add hits from the sensor test as extra dice to the following attack. Is this true for all such attacks as long as lock is maintained?

3) Control

I found 3 modes of control. I'd like to be sure they are correct.

a) Independent drone - Controlled by Issuing a command (simple action). Pilot+autosoft or Sensor+autosoft used to do actions. Drone's initiative and passes.

b) AR-controlled or non-jumped-in-VR-controlled drone (for non-rigger-adapted devices) - Controlled actively by Rigger. Uses Command+Skill to do actions. Worst of Rigger's/Drone's Initiative and passes?

c) full VR (jumped in) control - (Rigger's matrix stats or sensor + Skill to complete tasks.
Rigger's matrix intiative.

Rules schmules, who needs them when you have dumpshockers to read them for you!



Drone Device Rating

Droen Sensor packages

And I believe a drone without clearsight can't make perception checks independently anyway, not any more than a drone without targetting mself... even if airborne.can fire. You need the autosoft. It does seem quite harsh when you look at opposed tests, but then if you are in any density of terrain it would be hard for drones to positiohn the

You've been busy, DireRadiant. Thanks alot. For some reason I never considered looking for the drone sensor packages in that part ofthe Gear list.

So is it your opinion that Drones operating independently do not use sensor-enhanced gunnery? I figured it was their base mode of operation - them being not too bright and all.

Any idea why anyone would use sensor gunnery? It would seem to be harder than anything else, unless you ignore visibility, movement, etc. modifiers when using it.

So here's my current interpretation based on what I've read above, and moving on to some assumptions which may not be correct:

0) The sensor packages are completely independent of the Sensor rating. The sensor rating of a drone is simply the Intuition stat for the drone. Ranges of the sensors are based on the drone's device rating, or the particular sensors in package, whichever is lower.

1) If you buy a drone, Install a sensor package with some vision enhancements pronto, for the extra dice. Toss in a clearsight package equal to the pilot rating as well.

2) Under most circumstances, You use normal rules for gunnery - ignore the sensors, unless you are attempting to see if you can detect someone/thing (kind of the point of sensors). This includes both the drone pilot, and the rigger.

3) You may try to use sensors to help your gunnery instead of doing it the normal way, but the only reason I see for doing this is if it ignores the usual modifiers for ranged combat and in situations where negative modifiers from visibility, movement, etc., are so awful that its better to take the hit on signature. I would imagine that extra dice from the sensor package enhancements would apply in active sensor targeting (just like clearsight), but not in passive sensor targeting (just like clearsight).

Vision enhancements do *not* add extra dice. They work likee the enhancements in eyeware and contacts, providing reductions to penalties in some conditions. Having a camera with thermo is like a guy with thermo cybereyes.

And using the sensor targetting whilst jumped in uses the rigger's gunnery skill, which could quite easily be above the drone's targetting autosoft.

One of the things I've always thought would make sense for computers and drones is to have a certain amount of automatic successes instead of actually rolling most of the time. Basically the computers have an atvantage in that they get a higher number of automatic successes (say 1 per 3 or even 1 per 2 dice) but they don't get the variations of luck and exceptional rolls like people do. That way you can always count of a computer or drone to do a certain amount and then you just roll for the others.
Another thing that I do because I don't want drones out performing the PCs is that I limit the kinds of actions they can do on those extra IPs. They can do a normal movement as one pass, use their weapons as another independant pass and they can do computer/sensor/communications as a last pass. They do them all at the same time on their first IP on their inititative. This way they don't act like hyper crack monkeys. Each of their actions are covering different things but it still shows their high processing speed. This keeps the rigger from dominating the game but also keeps them useful.