Does a drone/rigger get a +2 bonus for using a weapon that has a smartgun, or is a smartgun required in order for a drone/rigger to fire a gun?

It depends. I am by no means an expert, but this is how I gather it works:

If the drone has weapons mounted into it (like those nasty Renraku Attack dog-drone . . . things) then the gun is designed to fire without the trigger being pulled, and you are free to fire whenever you want.


If you are trying to hardwire a Ruger Super Warhawk into a spiderdrone (And really, who hasn't??), then yes, it would need a smartlink in order for the gun to fire on its own (or build a rediculus looking mythbusters-esque mechanical finger to pull the trigger)

In order for the rigger to get the +2 dice pool bonus from firing his smartlinked gun, his drone itself has to have the equipment to interpret the smartlink data and send it to you. I'm not sure what the rules for this are, but if there are none present in the source book, I would say that you would have to pay for a 400 external smartlink on your drone, and then an extended hardware check (some number, I dunno), then an extended Software check (again, come up with some number here) to hook the smartlink into the drone, and then get all the software to play nice..


Of course some combat drones may come up with this already installed for your shadowrunning conveniance.

EDIT:
A-HA! I knew there was something in the book. A 2000 "Smart Firing Platform" (p. 311) allows a user to put a smartgun on a tripod and have it stationary. I can't see a reason why you couldn't mount one on an appropriatly sized drone, then have a Computer test to make the two softwares play nice. This gives the benefit of a 180 degree firing arc and no need to fiddle with the innerworkings of your drone. Plus you can mount it on something other than the Steel Lynx or the Doberman (which are the only drones that comes equipped with a weapon mount in the book.)

Give the runner a roll of duct tap and they can attach a few to there Bull Dog van.

ROFL! I can see it now! Several guns duct tapped to the side of a van, and a bunch of runners sitting inside, THINKING of firing at their Comlinks . . . .

The Drone needs a Camera (Sensor) with the Smartlink enhancement and a weapon mount with a smartlinked weapon. After that you are set to go.

A drone getting a smartgun modifier seems a bit strange to me. I was under the impression that the purpose of a smartgun system was to use the smartgun sensors to aid the more abstract, but less accurate human mind. A drone targets entirely by sensors, which is basically a smartgun system to begin with, once you've equipped the drone with a weapon mount. In order for a drone to fire on its own, it would have to make all of the same calculations that a smartgun system would make.

Similarly, I would have assumed sensor aided targeting with vehicle weapons could not benefit from a smart-link, as the two systems would either be redundant or have incompatible methods of providing targeting advice.

If the Rigger was "jumped in" to his drone and HE had a smartlink, and additionally there was a smartgun system on the gun wired into the drone, that's an interesting one. The smartgun system would be making firing calculations and giving that information to the drone, which in turn relays it directly to the Rigger.

The question you need to ask, again, is whether or not the drone's sensors are already making targeting calculations with supersede or are redundant with the smartgun system. My answer would be that the systems are not compatible, kind of the same way that I'm not going to give a corporate LMG turret a smartgun bonus.

That's how I would handle it in my game, but as a GM I am also not a fan of min/max builds and prefer keeping the game low key and avoiding stacking benefits. No authority or anything, just an opinion.

Well, technically speaking it only has its base Sensor suite which would be some kind of radar. Add targetting software and smartlink system to give visual aid to the drones basic radar system should indeed give a better targeting resolution.

But don't human eyes and mind do the exact same thing? Calculating distance and separating the trash. On a much more complex level of course.

Now with sensor aided targeting, I see it has having a second pair of eyes to help direct your fire and in many cases replaces your own vision.

If you have the smart link pieces, you get the smart link dice.

If the components of the system required for it to work are in place, you get the benefit of the working system.

IMO drones & riggers get the bonus. Having a smartlinked weapon gives you a) a weapon-specific sensor and b) an additional co-processor for targeting calculations. Those are advantages that a non-smartlinked weapon would not have and should justify the +2 bonus.

So I was doing a little research on this question and I came across something that clarifies it for me, though some of you might take this differently.

Page 311 | Smart Firing Platform.

The wording of this item description leads me to believe that a smartgun system is required in order for the platform to be able to fire a weapon. Since the system cannot fire a weapon that does not have a smart-link, I'd remove the +2 bonus.

This might serve for evidence for the opposite as your campaigns, just providing a little tid-bit of information

I'd keep the +2 bonus for smartlink on a smart firing platform, because the reason the platform needs a smartlink likely has nothing to do with that bonus. It has to do with being able to make the weapon fire through matrix commands, which is something explicitly allowed by smartlink.