It is stated, rather clearly, that all vehicles can be adapted as drones. Also, the difference between a drone and a ordinary vehicle is that it has a Pilot. Since all the vehicles in the BBB are also drones (have a Pilot program), and all drones are rigger-adapted, thus all the vehicles in the book are already rigger-adapted.

Honestly, I don't see what the big fuss is. It's not like this breaks the game in any fashion. The worst that can be said is that it makes the Rigger Adaptation gear redundant.

The difference between an ordinary vehicle and a drone is that the drone has rigger adaption. You can rigger adapt your vehicles if you want, then they are drones. A drone is only automatically rigger adapted if it is listed under drones in SR4. Only having a pilot is no argument against vehicles, see Pilot chapter.

No. What the book says is that the distinction between an ordinary vehicle and a drone is that a drone has a Pilot program. If it lacks a Pilot, it's a vehicle. If it has one, it's a Drone. Simple, straightforward, and ironclad according to the RAW.

You're trying to use straw man logic, when this is an argument of definition. The *definition* of a drone is: "Vehicle with Pilot".

What you're trying to say is: A drone is a vehicle, except when it isn't. Which in addition to being too non-specific to hold as an argument, but doesn't negate the facts at hand.

I've never met a rulebook that didn't have contradictions. For the contradictions, I look at the body of the text and compare to the way the rules typically achieve balance.

Looking at the evidence, I find it more convincing that the writers meant for rigger adaptation to be required for all non-drone vehicles than to believe that they meant that all vehicles to come with rigger adaptation included. I think they just simply started with one concept, and then thought a pilot rating for all vehicles made sense (and it does) and forgot to clean up the bit about rigger adaptation adding a pilot rating.

No biggie, everyone can choose a flavor and let's move on.

In the spirit of the overall post, here is my rigger guide I have been working on. Please comment and add. I will refine it and post it once I have all the info pulled together.

Rules for Using Drones

Step 1. Equipment.
1A. Purchase or Steal
Riggers or other characters that plan on controlling drones on vehicles must either own a vehicle/drone or hack one (rules for hacking one are being argued in a separate thread: Stealing Drones). When purchasing a drone/vehicle, the item is purchased using the value indicated on p.342 SR4.

1B. Add Rigger Adaptation
All drones come with rigger adaptation. Vehicles require the purchase of rigger adaptation (unless your interpretation of the rules is that they come with it based on text that says that a rigger adaptation grants a pilot rating and that because all vehicles have a pilot rating this should give it to you for free). Rigger adaptation cost is on SR4 p.341.

1C. Add Weapons
If you want a weapon on the vehicle, use the Weapon Mount on SR4 p.341. This does not include the weapon or ammo, which must be purchased separately. Some security drones (Doberman, Steel Lynx) come with a weapon mount - the weapon and ammo must still be purchased separately.

1D. Modify Ratings
By default, the drones/vehicles you purchase have a Signal, Response, and Firewall rating equal to the device rating. The device rating is on SR4 p.214. Most drones are device rating 3, while the security drones (per the FAQ) are device rating 4. There is no way to increase the device rating. The Pilot rating is stated in the vehicle/drone tables on p.342.

Thus, must be spent to upgrade the Signal, Firewall, Response, and also the Pilot if a higher rating is desired. To do this, purchase the rating you desire at full cost. There is no indication that the previous version can be sold, though house rules could allow for this. Program Costs are stated on p.228 and p.321.

Example1:

As demonstrated, those programs and the baseline modifications add a significant cost to vehicles. Riggers with skill in software or hardware could consider copying programs (buying one Pilot 4, then copying it to other vehicles) or writing software or programming hardware, but these checks are often long extended checks. The easiest way to reduce cost is copying software (Pilot and Firewall are software) and purchasing the Signal and Response (hardware).

1E. Autosofts and Programs
Autosofts provide critical software that assists riggers and drones in carrying out skills such as targeting and maneuvering, usually when the drone is allowed to act on its own. In addition, programs such as Command are critical to providing orders to drones, and others such as Analyze and Spoof are useful for hacking enemy drones.

Programs are straight-forward. One copy of a program is needed only, and they are loaded on the commlink, counting against the maximum number of programs run at one time. Programs are purchased at the costs described on p.321 and 228.

A look at the Archetypes shows that they have only purchased one copy of the Autosofts, though reading the SR4 rules makes it pretty clear that autosofts reside on individual drones. The rules for copying software rules can be used to stretch cash a bit, as writing Autosofts takes a long time. Thus, most riggers would probably buy one copy of each needed Autosoft, then slowly make copies as game downtime allows. Riggers wanting a bit more up-front utility may choose to buy lower rating Autosofts for the other drones just to get 1 or 2 dice for the meantime.

Example costs for Programs and Autosofts:
As demonstrated, it would be pretty expensive to start the game with 4 modified drones and have each contain rating 4 autosofts!

1F. Commlink and Cyberwear
The Commlink must of course be purchased and any upgrades are paid at the full cost of the upgrade. Because of this, it is often cheaper to purchase the cheapest commlink and then pay for the upgrades.

Example Commlink and Cyberwear:

Step 2. Setting Up for Rigging: Subscribing Drones
Riggers may want to try to subscribe drones to their Commlink ahead of time. Each drone/vehicle is subscribed as a simple action. A rigger can also have drones subscribed to each other so that they can better share tactics (I am not clear on whether this is a separate action).

The limit is the Systemx2 of the Commlink.

If in combat, the rigger will need to spend valuable simple actions on getting drones subscribed, so it can be useful to set up ahead of time.

Step 3. Remote Rigging
To control a drone remotely, a simple action is used with the Command program. A single simple action can provide the command to a single drone, or the command (attack target) may be applied to all subscribed drones if desired.

3A. Initiative
If the drone is acting on its own, initiative of the drone is Pilot Rating + Response, with 3 passes.

Note that the rigger could be in VR doing other things (gaining 3 passes and using their Matrix Initiative) or could be jacked out using regular initiative (usually with 1 pass) depending on the circumstances.

Note that a rigger could be also be actively driving a vehicle using AR, but not jumped into the vehicle. If using AR, Initiative would be Response + Intuition, with 1 Pass.

3B. Checks:
Checks are generally made using the Autosoft and the drone's version of an attribute.

Common checks are shown below:

3C. Other notes
Arming/Disarming a weapon system on a drone is 1 free action per drone.
I do not believe a rigger gets to use the +2 dice for VR or +2 dice for hot sim or the -1 threshold in any way while remote rigging.


Step 4. Rigging by Jumping In
Jumping into a drone is a simple action. When you jump in, you actively control that one vehicle/drone, leaving any others to act on their own. You may still issue commands to them as you would normally for remote drones.

4A. Initiative:
VR-Controlled drones act on the rigger's initiative: Response + Intuition + 1 (for VR), 3 Passes (2 are granted by VR).

Note as in 3A above that a rigger could be actively driving a vehicle using AR, but not jumped into the vehicle. If using AR, Initiative would be Response + Intuition, with 1 Pass.

4B. Checks:
Checks while jumped in are generally made with the actual rigger's skill plus Sensor or Response.
A rigger using VR would gains +2 dice due to rigging with a control rig, +2 dice for hot sim, and -1 to all thresholds for vehicle tests.
A rigger also receives +1 die for all vehicle tests if physically piloting a vehicle (the bonus is lost if piloting remotely).

Common checks are shown below:

4C. Damage
When a jumped-into drone takes damage, the rigger must resist 1/2 the damage (round up). This is Stun damage with a test using Willpower + Biofeedback Filter to resist. If the drone is destroyed, the rigger is dumped and suffers dumpshock (p.231).


There you have it. Please note any corrections, resolve issues in red, and add anything missing.

Thanks!

I think you would be better served starting a new thread and posting those 'Rules' in the first post. That way, people could use the whole thread just for your rules set, and could easily find any changes you have made, since it is in the easy-to-locate first post spot.

i'm not totally clear on what you mean when you say "remote rigging".

you appear to be confused either way, however.

the dicepools you have given appear to be the dicepools i would expect from giving drones orders and letting the drone carry out the order itself. the confusion comes from the fact that you don't need, nor even particularly want, or care about, the command program while doing this. that's not what the command program is all about. in any event, for the drone to be acting on it's own, the dicepools would be as follows:

attack: variable. either sensor + targeting autosoft + sensor-perception mods, OR pilot + targeting autosoft + net hits from sensor-test (but requires that you actively use your sensors on the target first)

infiltration: pilot + infiltration autosoft (not canon yet; for now, the drone will have to default to pilot -1, or you can just houserule in a new autosoft)

electronic warfare: EW autosoft (if any) + some other rating... usually this will be either the rating of the sniffer/scan/etc program the pilot has access to, or the rating of a radio scanner or other device that uses EW. note that technically, no rolling is involved in either the offense or defense of jamming... but if it were, then the dicepool would likely be EW autosoft + jammer rating/ECCM rating

Jumped in: your dicepool for electronic warfare would be the same as the ones above, except obviously your EW skill instead of an EW autosoft rating.

also, the attack dicepool would be the same as the drone's above, except for replacing the targeting autosoft with the gunnery skill.

for what i would probably call remote rigging (or, more likely, remote control or remote operation or control device, each of which appear in the rules somewhere but appear to be referring to the same thing), you would use your command CF rating instead of the drone's response rating, but otherwise your dicepools are pretty much gonna be the same as for jumped-in rigging.

hmmm... i think you're still missing some things.

first of all, it does say that you use pilot + targeting autosoft for drones to shoot. as far as i can tell, the implication under the sensor based targeting section is that when you aren't physically using the gunnery skill directly (that is, if it isn't the SR4 equivalent of a pintle mount) then you must use either active or passive sensor-based targeting. drones are not exempted from this. thus, your dicepool is either sensor + skill/autosoft + target's signature modifiers (plus all the usual attack modifiers) or it is pilot/response + skill/autosoft + net hits on a sensor test. it isn't innacurate to say that the gunnery dicepool of a drone is pilot + targeting autosoft, but under passive targeting it indicates that you replace the attribute (pilot) with the sensor rating instead.

any reference to autosofts used while jumped in was in error... essentially, replace pilot and autosoft with response and skill whenever i am referring to rigging, and vice versa when referring to giving drones commands and allowing them to follow however their programming dictates (i will call the latter "captain's chair" mode, hearkening back to the days of SR3 and probably earlier too).

i personally don't particularly feel the EW skill + sensor particularly makes more sense than EW skill + device rating or program rating, particularly since i am unaware of a time where the device or program wouldn't have a rating... in the event that it came up where there was no device or program rating, EW + sensor would work fine though, i guess.

now then, on to what i would consider to be the most significant thing that you are missing (or at least, misunderstanding):

the remote control option (wherein the command program actually has any use whatsoever) is used for directly controlling drones without rigging them in jumped-in mode.

...OK, now my matrix specialist Violet (#55? - I'm losing count now & too lazy to look up previous posts) as several drones which she primarily uses for surveillance and scouting. She has upgraded/added autosofts on all of them as she has no Control Rig implant (since she has no vehicle skill). Her Command programme is rating 5 the autosofts are rating 4.

As I understand (and the way we ran it in our last session) when she issues instructions to one of the drones to operate independently it still relies on the rating of it's Pilot + any other applicable Autosofts, and not her Command programme. However, when she is directly linked, she uses her Command programme as part of the pool then?

assuming you take over control without rigging, yes your command program would kick in. you would have to use your own skills though, so you should definitely stick with letting your drones control themselves imo =P

...so to use command she still needs actual piloting skill in the type of drone?

well, if the skill can't be defaulted yes.

otherwise, you can use command -1.

note, however, that with vehicle skills it is really easy to get them pretty good for remote controlling. note that all vehicle skills that have specialisations, have an available specialisation in "remote operation" afaict. so for really cheap, you can be rolling command +3 dice to control the drones. (the same applies to gunnery skill and "ballistic" specialisation btw)

The command program is used to give orders to a device; the execution of said order is left to the device.

So you need high command if you want to give complex orders. See it as bot control program for your FPS of choice.

You need high Pilot/Autosofts/whatever to execute difficult orders. Difficult tasks might be assigned with rather simple instruction sets.

For reference . FAQ

You may wish to read p. 220 Controlling Devices which contains the following statements.

"Remotely
controlling a drone would take a Command + vehicle skill Test,
and so on.
Note that remotely controlling a drone in this matter
is different from rigging a drone (requiring you to “jump
into� the drone with full VR and “become� the drone) or
issuing commands to a drone (in which case it acts on its
own accord)."

essentially, you have the dicepools for controlling drones directly via the command program correct. however, control device (the action in question) is a matrix action: you can use it in AR, but you can also use it in VR. thus, the drawbacks are actually:

1) you can't use the control rig (however, you can take codeslinger in control device, which is basically just more expensive)

2) it is mostly limited to one vehicle at a time. you could theoretically drive 4 at once, by making a single driving action in each one (having your icon in 4 different places) if you had 4 matrix IPs, but at that point they really aren't doing anything worthwhile, just driving around.

3) it is always a complex action. a drone can take a simple action to do a sensor test. so can a rigger. control device is always a complex action, however.

4) the reduced threshold for vehicle tests is not applied to the remote control rigger, whereas a jumped-in rigger does get it.

so yes, a rigger who only intends to ever operate drones 1 at a time, and intends to directly operate them all the time, does not need to invest in good response, pilot, or autosofts for their drones. that being said, having half a dozen drones that are stronger than normal *plus* the rigger's drone means that the rigger can have a much more effective force... it is basically only a replacement for jumped-in rigging, it is not a replacement for drone armies at all.

so basically, you seem to have it figured out now, from what i can tell. yes, it is a very good method of control... but note that (for example) a response 6 vehicle can run a reality filter (boosting it's response to 7) giving you effectively 7 for the attribute. a control rig adds another +2... that's 9 dice for just about any action before throwing in any skills, at a cost of about 20k or 4 BP whereas in order to get 8 dice before skills in any action the remote controller is spending 10 BPs for the codeslinger quality alone.

...so for a Matrix Specialist who is not a Rigger, drones are pretty much useless as she cannot make use use the sensors for surveillance unless she has the rigging implant and has "jumped in" or is directly controlling the drone using the appropriate vehicle skill?

I believe drone perception tests are Drone Sensor + Character Perception, either jumped in, VR or AR. The Drone on it's own just uses Sensor + Clearsight.

actually, it's plenty useful.

first off, you can order the drone to make a sensor check itself. that's likely to have at least a reasonably decent dicepool, if you make the investment (sensor 3 + clearsight 3 is easily achieved, and adding in a camera to the drone's sensors with vision augmentation on it adds up to another 3 dice fairly easily).

secondly, it doesn't explicitly say, but you should realistically be able to take control of just the drone's camera, for example.

(for the record, LTA vehicles are a subset of pilot aircraft, and iballs are a subset of groundcraft, being a ground vehicle that does not use legs to travel, so the skills required are not that obscure... i tend to bring up that kind of thing whenever someone suggests a vehicle skill group for riggers, because quite frankly each vehicle skill is a skill group discounted to the cost of just one skill =P)

...so since her Stormcloud did have a camera + vision enhancement III and vision mag I was rolling the correct DP then..

it's fairly clear if you look at the examples. the command program itself is not linked to any skill. the examples given are vehicle skill + command to pilot a vehicle, mechanic + command to remote control repair stuff, etc. the matrix mechanics are also quite clear: program + skill. in the case of command, the skill is not a hacking skill (necessarily), it's the skill that you would use to accomplish the desired task.

it's a matrix action, the rules for which are fairly clear [edit] they're fairly clear on how you roll them at least, if not always about when you roll them [/edit].

...OK, so this is how I see it.

Vi wants ti use the cameras in her LTA drone to scope out the roof and area surrounding a building in detail. For this she uses her Control programme (she is only using the camera while the drone hovers above) the drone's sensor rating and the Visual Enhancement 3 That comes to 11 dice (5 for programme, 3 for the drone's sensors and 3 for the vision enhancement).

Next she wants the drone to warn the team while they are inside if anyone apporaches and enters the building. This would mean she has to release the drone to it's pilot and clearsight + Vision Enhancement. So, if someone does come up to the outer door, does the drone need to roll again to send her the alert?

Now she wants the drone to follow someone. She uses her Control DP to have it snap a still image (using it's vision mag) and keep that in memory. Next she has to issue a set of orders to the drone. It is to follow the mark until he reaches his destination, note the location and return to a predetermined set of coordinates to report She releases it to its pilot and Maneuver autosoft. Does she need piloting skill to issue the command set, or does she use her Control utility since the drone will be functioning on internal systems until it returns?

I suggest the following

i agree with direradiant on all but one minor point... you don't need command to issue commands to your drone. it just doesn't even need to be there. it's used for remote controlling stuff, and that's pretty much it.

...thanks for the help. Still kind of feeling out some of the 4e rules. Yeah I could have made her a Rigger/Matrix Specialist but it didn't really fit her backstory and her Infiltration/B & E skills have been so bloody helpful to the team.