Situation:
A Rigger is inside his vehicle. His vehicle wireless connection is shut down. His commlink wireless connection is shut down. The Rigger is connected to his vehicle by a cable. The Rigger goes to the VR in his commlink node. Through the cable goes to to the vehicle's node and uses his 4 VR actions to fire the vechile's weapon.

Is this valid?

Yes.

Just remember, when it comes to attacking with a vehicle, the battle goes to the opponent with the biggest kinetic effect.

Oh, look, I'm driving a dump truck with a heavy duty bumper that's full of sand.

presuming the rigger is getting an extra VR action from somewhere, yes it's valid (normally you only get 3 VR actions)

Hm.. a rigger with less than 5 IP's... normaly they have 5 *g*

Just kidding... the fifth costs what, 65.000?

But yeah, why shouldn't this be legal? One of the reasons cyborgs rock so hard is because they are so damn fast.

If the vehicle is moving (including, AFAIK, dodging), then you need to use one of your IPs piloting the vehicle. AFAIK.

Close, whoever's driving the vehicle must spend a Complex Action once per turn or the vehicle goes out of control at the end of the IP. You'll still get however many Free Actions you have for that same IP. (SR4a, page 168)

But as was already mentioned, a good rigger is going to have 4 or 5 IPs a turn while in VR. You just spend your second or third IP's Complex Action for "driving the vehicle" (unusual circumstances not withstanding) and you're fine.

… So, yes, you need to spend one of your Complex Actions (effectively, a whole IP, though I see your point about the Free Action), so you can't fire 4 times with 4 IPs. Right?

Well, you can if you don't mind the risk of crashing on your next turn if you don't take a Vehicle Test. Even then, everyone inside an uncontrolled vehicle is at a -2 DP to all actions (including the Rigger if he's in this vehicle).

Usually hitting a brick wall at 100kph is rather detrimental to your health. Doubly so if the Rigger's meat body is inside.

How do you feel about the idea that you have to make that Action if you're 'not going anywhere', but dodging attacks? I think you're clearly moving, and (if anything) it's harder to control a vehicle in that situation. I don't know if I've ever heard any RAW on it, though.

To me, if you are dodging attacks in a vehicle then you are moving and must spend a CA per turn to keep control (so seems we agree, Yerameyahu). I mean, we're talking about something that is most likely larger than a troll, likely weighs three times as much as said troll at least (very broad generalization of most cars), and is otherwise as flexible as a brick.

But yeah, as for RAW I don't think I've read or heard anything on it. In the games I've played, vehicle related combat has been practically nonexistent.

I would only really apply the "must control" rule if one is using chase combat, as normal combat will be to much stop and go (similarly, ramming would be less effective as you could get at best "running" speed). But then movement in SR combat rules have always been wonky, tho that could be an artifact of confusing reaction enhancement with movement speed enhancement (seriously, it is more about reducing the time it takes for the character to go "oh shit" and decide to get out of the way then anything else).

mind you, with a sufficiently skilled rigger i could definitely see someone deciding not to bother with taking an action to control the vehicle. after all, with VR to reduce the threshold and with enough positive modifiers, it's very unlikely that you would fail

So a rigger connected by cable can pilot vehicle (with no wireless) and shot with its weapons using his VR actions.
Can an autopilot software make more actions?
And what would an autopilot software lose by guiding a drone without wireless connection?

You can have the Pilot or the rigger control the vehicle, but not both (more or less, you could technically jack out mid-IP).

A Pilot without wireless (and without a connection to a rigger, I assume?) loses GridGuide and can't get new commands. It has to rely on its own sensors and dogbrain.

Sorry, I wasn't clear.

How can a drone (not a vehicle) with his normal autopilot software (not a rigger) make more than one action pass per round?

All drones have 3 passes pr default.

Yes, any way to give them 5 passes? (like a rigger in VR)

Nope.

Don't forget, that's only riggers in VR with hot sim and the simsense booster, *and* the simsense accelerator. You probably know that already, but it's important to bear in mind. Cold VR is 2 IP, Hot VR is 3 IP, Booster is +1 IP, Accelerator is +1 Hot IP; so drones start out pretty solid at 3.

I think it's important to let 'real hackers' be at least *potentially* better than drones, but you could houserule a drone version of the Accelerator (total 4 IP). I'd probably require a mod slot at least, it's a big bonus.

Why? The Simsense Accelerator is strictly a Comlink Modification... All Vehicles have a Comlink installed, that is how they access the Matrix afterall... Modify the Comlink just like you would any other Comlink. Bang, 4 IP.

Of course, you could not go to IP 5 that way unless you could somehow have the Simsense Booster Cyberware upgrade, which generally means that a Meat Person will always outshine the Metal (Assuming both upgrades of course)...

It's a commlink modification for a person (specifically, a persona), using simsense, using VR, using hot-sim. Machines don't use simsense, VR, hot-sim, nor a persona.

Excuse me, but Pilots/Agents ARE a persona... Complete with a Condition Monitor and everything...

Why would a Condition Monitor matter? A persona is the interface program between a person and the commlink. The book clearly differentiates them, listing agents and personas separately as constructs. Even if you think they are, they're still not using hot-sim VR. I can't imagine why you're arguing with the suggestion to have a house rule do exactly what you're supporting.

I'm not, I am arguing that the Accelerator will work for Pilots on Drones...

Which is what the house rule suggestion was. Christ.

And it doesn't. They don't use hot-sim VR and they're not personas. They 'function at digital speeds' and they're constructs.

I'd point out that 2-3 passes is pretty average for a shadowrunner.

Not many have even 4 and 5 is darn rare.





-k

Super-rare, yeah. But it's nice that 'real' people can still get better, eventually, than an out-of-the-box drone (which start at like 500¥? Feh.).

Still I think it's strange that a person (with the right man-machine hardware and software interface) can act more quickly than a machine (that don't need any interface at all).

Actually, Machines DO use Hot Sim, and they function as Persona's... Digital Speeds IS Hot Sim afterall, which is why Humans in VR go as fast as the Machines.

No worries though...

Show me in the book. You keep saying that, but you've offered exactly zero.

To get you started: If they're separate in this kind of list, they can't be the same thing.
Again, if listed apart, they're clearly not the same thing. The table on p239 SR4a also makes this distinction for cybercombat.
Pilots are OS, so they're not persona, and they 'access' the device directly.
Operating system, not user.
Machines don't need simsense, they get data; they're not a user.
Not VR, let alone hot-sim, which has no meaning for a non-meat brain. Neither do any drones have sim modules, hot-sim modified or not.
Pilots have no bio to feedback, no nervous system, no simsense. They're not vulnerable to Black IC, and they can't become addicted.

I'll leave a few for you to find.

We interrupt this thread for an important public announcement: "Don't Chip And Drive".

That is all, we now return you to the thread currently in progress.

Heheheh...

Well said...

And Yerameyahu...

Wall of text all you like, but I will never agree that the Machine speeds cannot reach the same limits as your Meat Brain can... to say otherwise is ludicrous... A Meat Brain needs an interface to act like a machine... a machine DOES NOT... therefore, if a brain can get to 5 passes, why would a machine not be able to reach 5 passes? In this case, you allow the machine the equivalent technology to reach that limit, or the verisimilitude of the system breaks down. Something that requires extra layers of protection and a buffer between mechanical and meat is capable of thinking faster than a machine that needs none of that? Really? You must be joking...

Anyways, I will look up some references when I get back, as I am about to leave this sub-node for another...

Tymeaus, I specifically suggested allowing the machine equivalent of the Accelerator 13 posts ago, and reiterated it more recently. Twice. I never said any of the 'must be joking' details you've just given.

And you meant, 'wall of detailed evidence'.

Sure, and probably... been a rough morning, and I am not quite right in the head today...

See, we agreed all along. House rules are a *good* thing!

i guess it comes with the "mystique" of the matrix. That a human, with the right kit and training, can outperform a computer.

Its more or less the same thing that have given us the technomancer...

He's not necessarily saying it makes SENSE that machines have a lower potential IP limit than metahumans.

Just that the rules say they do.



-k

It's all arbitrary, in the end. It's a personal (for the author/GM/group), thematic choice. You could undoubtedly come up with a reason that meat is better and a hot-sim meat brain has more potential, if that's the setting you want (and, of course, vice versa). There's also game balance to consider (again, in either direction); some people think that drones are too good already, while it might be fair for others (especially if dog-brain 'smartness' or flexibility is strictly limited).

i would say it's simply that the pilot program is never going to be anything more than a dog brain (unless it turns into an AI, in which case i would support the availability of further IPs). the human getting more IPs isn't so much the human being able to respond faster because of having a better connection. drones have a hard time interacting with the world, in some ways. in particular, our brain is extremely well suited for dealing with visual information. we look at an apple and we think "oh look, that's an apple", whereas a drone has to subject it to a series of tests, pass it through databases, and until the pilot has identified the object as an apple, then there's at least as good a chance that it's a dragon or a battleship to the pilot. it doesn't know any better until it gets some form of input that tells it what the object is. and what's more, it has to do this for *every single object* in the area, something that your brain just does automatically for you.

now, you could argue that a drone could use a more digital form of perception, like reading RFIDs. that's fine for a cleaning drone, where you can be fairly certain the owner isn't going to take away the RFIDs from their household products. it's not ok for a police drone, which has to deal with criminals who would remove the RFIDs in a second if it essentially made them invisible to police drones. likewise for security drones. even more so for drones that are heavy and/or fast moving that might crash into someone because they simply don't even perceive the person. military drones are, if anything, even more dependant on being able to identify objects visually. the drones that shadowrunners use will likewise need to be able to respond to visual information (and other forms, of course) as well.

so consider, for you, walking down the seattle streets? your brain automatically prioritizes things and automatically ignores stuff it doesn't consider to be important enough to waste processing power on. a pilot program doesn't have that advantage. they don't know if they can ignore something until they've scanned it, analysed the data, and passed it through assorted object identification databases. and each and every unidentified object is a complete and utter unknown to a drone, because the drone has no paramaters that tell it how to respond to it specifically (meaning it has to default to a generic "interact with unknown object" function). now, this may not sound like such a big deal... after all, if it can't identify something, it was presumably not important enough to be identified, you might think. well, remember... for a drone to detect a metahuman standing someplace, it's actually a pretty hard test. not having it take into consideration those unidentified objects means that it might decide to just fire it's gun at someone standing behind an "unidentified object" that just so happens to be a 3-year old child, or the security chief of the facility it's supposed to protect, or the gas line... a construction drone might decide to dig a hole through a construction worker, or the tenant of the apartment the drone is supposed to be doing routine maintenance on gets drywall stapled to them.

and that kind of accident just isn't going to persuade people to buy your drones.

(bear in mind that IPs basically only come into play in combat situations, so while a given factory drone might be able to tighten a bolt 3 times per second or something like that, that is more like "firing a burst" than it is like taking 3 separate actions in a second.