I’m new to SR4 and I’m going to GM a group, we’re all experienced players and used to play both 2nd and 3rd edition of SR.

We find these rules interesting, especially how they integrate hackers and riggers to be more playable. However with the more open ruleset we find alot of information missing or hard to interpret, especially those connected to riggers and drones. I’ve not found good answers to all my questions searching the forums so I’m going to ask them here.

1) Will there be more info on riggers in the upcoming Unwired book or any other book and when is it coming out?

2) What are the hardware and software attributes on drones, is it based on device rating? Then what is the device rating. Wich drones are average and wich are complex and so on. Is the Pilot rating equal to system rating?

3) What is the cost of raising these attributes, let’s say a drone has pilot 3 and you wan’t to raise it to 5 is it just once 5*2500 or do you pay the difference between the pilot 3 cost vs. Pilot 5 ? If you have to buy it with full pilot 5 cost can you sell the pilot 3 rating you have left over?

4) What’s up with sensor, I just let my player buy from the sensor table at p. 325 at an extra cost added to the drone. Is that correct? What about weapons, it says you can take any lmg for the doberman, is that at no extra cost and is the weapon pod then taken or can you add an extra one because of his body 3.

5) autosofts, it’s enough to buy one of each right and upload copies to your drones. You aren’t using all the autosofts on your commlink taking up the system spots and lowering your response? Does it work the same way with drones, for (system) many autosofts you lower the drones response by 1?

6) Are there any samples online of rigger/drone/hacker/matrix action I can learn from, with rules and all?

7) When you are commanding drones (not rigging, and not giving commands) with the command program you are doing everything at your own action rate right, you are controlling them all at once, shooting with one costs a simple (or complex can’t remember off the top of my head) action and then you shoot with another as a another one of your action, except of course if the are subscribed as a group then I can command them all to shoot one guy with one action. Is this right?

Some of you use the logic+skill with program cap house rule. When agents/IC/nodes do you then use rating*2 with program cap?

9) Is there any easy way to see wich pilot skill to use with what drone, I’m mostly concerned about iball.

10) Activate/deactivate sensor action, wouldn’t you just wan’t to have all sensors activated all the time or is there some reason you wouldn’t wan’t to have it on? Same question with weapon system.

I probably have plenty more questions I just can’t remember at the moment, if anyone can answer these question or at least a part of them i would be a happy man.

Thank you

1) Yes, at least in arsenal, if not in a rigger book itself.

2) Yes, pilot = system on drones.

3) 5*2500. Ask your Gm if you want to try to pay the difference. (Ex: Does microsoft let you pay the difference between XP home and XP Pro to upgrade?)

4) You can choose what sensors the drone has from the table on p 325, if you want that kind of detail. It comes with the weapon mount preinstalled, and can take up to an LMG on it. You pay for the weapon. You can't add a second mount.

5) No. You buy the autosoft and run it on the drone. Too many will negatively affect the drone just like too many programs negatively affects commlinks. Pilot rating is not a program and doesn't count against the drone.

6) No idea.

7) No. You send the command on your action, it follows it on its action. Sending an order is a simple action, it spends a complex to follow the shoot this guy order. You could spend a simple action to send one drone shoot man A, and then use another simple action to send a different drone shoot man B. Or, you can use one simple and send both of them shoot man A.

No idea, I dont use it.

9) Not particularly, not yet anyway. I'd go with ground vehicle though, since it doesn't fly (air) or float (water).

10) If you have thermographic sensors on, and there is thermographic smoke, you'll take penalties. If you turn it off, and go with say, ultrasound, you won't take the penalties. Weapon systems, if its armed, an enemy could spoof a "fire" command and have it shoot. If it isn't, they have to spoof "arm weapon" and then "fire" giving you more chance to notice. Not to mention you can only shoot one weapon system at a time anyway, so having t hem all on is kinda pointless.

I'm gonna take a crack at this too. Note: rigging rules were changed up in the SR4 v1.5 errata, you should probably check it out if you haven't already. When not stated, I agree with Tarantula, most of these entries are just to help provide another viewpoint/clarify.

2)Drone matrix stats are based on device rating. Most are rating 3. It has been recommend (unofficially) that any drone that comes w/ a weapon mount be considered security grade (Device rating 4).

3) I was under the impression that you payed the full cost for upgrades. Especially hardware ones. Although you may be able to sell your old response chips and radio transceivers.

4) I enhance sensors using the table and paying full cost. Your millage may vary, but generally it is a very small portion of total drone cost (IIRC, haven't made a rigger for a while)

7)Ok, I think that Tarantula misinterpreted here. I think he is referring to giving orders to subscribed drones which I don't think you were asking about. I think you were asking about the use of the command program. I was under the impression that giving orders doesn't require the command program. The command program is used for actually manipulating the mechanical aspects of the drone using appropriate skill + Command Program rating. I think this occurs when the Rigger takes the command action, and effectively overrides the Pilot programs control of the drone. For example, the command program lets you drive ANY vehicle remotely as long as it is a node you are accessing and you have the proper permissions. This is different than issuing orders or jumping into a drone. With this method it is if your are actually doing the action but only remotely, so no I don't think using the command program could reasonably make more than 1 drone perform an action at a time. (if they were slaved they would mimic one another's actions in an unintelligent way, for example all of your drones firing along the same vector (e.g. to the southeast) even if they were on different sides of the intended target)

8 ) Generally Agents and IC use their Pilot rating in place of attributes. So I assume they use Pilot * 2 capping at program rating.

9) I'd also recommend Pilot ground craft. Or you could go Pilot Exotic Vehicle. Depends on how hard you want to be on your players and how general you think groundcraft/watercraft/aircraft/aerospace should be.

10) you can only have 1 weapons system active(armed) at any time. keep weapons deactivated if you don't know which one you want to shoot first (yet). Also keeping them armed may attract even more unwelcome attention. I believe the activate sensor action pertains mainly to gunnery and using active sensor assistance. I was under the impression that passive sensors are always active as long as the drone is on. Active sensors might also attract more attention.

Hope that helped

I did misunderstand, my new answer:

7) Yes, you are manipulating the drone remotely at your action rate. You can only shoot one drone at once, as you are directly aiming the gun via your controls. Takes 1 complex action to fire a weapon.

If you run it on a drone and need extra copies, would you just copy the software illegally to save ¥?

Yes, you would.

Autosofts are still programs. Too many programs degrades performance on a node. A drone is still a node.

In my games, glitches or critical glitches on tests to crack the copy protection on software lower the rating of the cracked program and destroy the program completely, respectively. If you're the GM, this may help to curb illegal copying in your games. If you're not the GM .... don't let him or her see this post!

OK this mostly answered my questions, thanks you for that. I'm am though a bit scared about running the AR/Matrix part even if I kinda understand all you can do and all that, so any help there like pointing me to a place where you can read about a typical matrix run or rigger action would be very helpful.

One thing there about question 10 about only having 1 weapon system active Narse says it's so you could choice wich one to activate when you need it, however if you have one active it only takes a free action to change between them instead of a simple to activate them.

About getting into trouble when you have one active wouldn't you just be in troubl having a weapon on your drone? How would a hacker know if it's active, use a analyze program?

Could you run a ongoing scan looking for active weapon systems?

No rules about it yet, should be in arsenal.

basically, all you miss out on is the chance to change what happens in the missions universe.