currently the way I attempt to garner the bonus is bby using Micro skimmers on a preprogrammed command to update user data on the network automatically and input new data as needed.
basically this gives my team a 3D HUD and ambush directional for combat, we always will know where the enemy is and where they are moving in real time not just their present location whenever the hacker can get his turn to update positions.
the sensory enhancements of the dornes can be overlayed onto the subscribers of the network etc...
what else can we add to always get the bonus?
in addition what do we need to add that we are missing in order to gain the non rules advantages in combat and noncombat.

The question that I would be asking is how do you keep your shiny toy from being hacked/jammed?

*Edit*

Or being the target of Ball Lighting?

Something to remember is that a ball lightening cast at your drones stands a very good chance of frying you as well.

And unless I'm misreading the jamming rules, the fact that you are keeping your drones close to you won't actually help, although I imagine that you could spend the necessary money to boost your drones signal as high as possible and hope for the best. I don't consider the fact that jamming takes everyone off the air to be a huge deturant in most cases. For most sec-guards, it's better for everyone to be blind since they already have the "home turf" advantage and their job isn't really to capture the Runners, they just need to delay them long enough for the heavy backup to arrive.

Sometimes having a bigass network of drones around you is great. You get cool bonuses like this one.

Sometimes having a bigass network of drones around you is a good way to have your radio signal triangulated and some seriously heavy fire put down on your head before you realize you've entered someone's free-fire zone.

You decide

The drone network trick can work really good. Be careful indoors, grenades don´t discriminate inside their detonation area.

Consider having a radar sensor installed and relay information from that.


What I would/do allow:
- target aquisition without direct LOS (at -2 DP due to coordination issues)
- tactical coordination of ambushes (DP bonus for surprise based on tactics test)
- information about armor weaknesses (DP bonus for Called shots)

Note that you will not get +4 on principle.

It's my understanding that +2VR bonus if for "matrix tests". Matrix tests as defined in BBB early in matrix section are tests in which program replaces Attribute.

Example; Skill+Program+2 in full VR

Other tests would'nt receive bonus then?

How many drones are you loosing on average? The rigger in my group who uses that trick found that once or twice per round a drone will be the only target security has, even if one is careful. Not that expensive, but has to be accounted for.

I'm allowing the bonus +1 per team member max of +4 as long as everyones shareing info via commlink with at least one person (hacker) coordinating. I'd allow drones to stand in for team members for that purpose.

Plus you need 4 successes to affect the drones at all. Which needs 12 dice of magic/sorcery on average. Not your average SR4 mage.

Unless I've misread something indirect spells don't have to deal with object resistance. Although it's true that the mage would have to resist drain and possibly be fried, remember that your mirco-skimmers will always fail after being hit by the smallest electrical attack since they don't even get a resistance roll, and your flyspys aren't much better off with a ( Dicepool 1 ). (Of course, ARSE might have rules that change things.)

AS for throwing smoke, why in the hells wouldn't the sec-guards be using their control of the enviroment to their fullest advantage? Not only should they be throwing smoke, they should also be lobbing flashpacks, turning the lights off, jamming everything, and using supression fire/cover. In the end their job isn't to defeat the runners, they just need to slow the runners down long enough for backup to arrive.


As for how long my combats last, the answer is that it varies quite a bit depending on the exact situation and whether or not one side or the other can get the drop on the other. However, I try to run my NPCs as realistically as possible, which means that in the majority of cases they want to be able to walk away from the firefight so they are going to be fighting as defensivably as possible.

The mages answer is/should be a to expend a combat service on a spirit of choice, preferably Air/w. Elemental Attack Lightning. Not ball lightning. Close combat shreds drones, and drones won´t escape a spirit.

Out of sight/hidden is hard to do indoors, because even ruthenium and size mod won´t fool someone with Visual Enhancement 3. Or high Int/Perception. A radio signal scanner 6 is a whopping 150 ¥, should that option be to expensive for your taste.

If collateral damage is not an issue, shred small drones with grenades. Suppressive fire works real well, too.
--
Combats vary in length. Security Guards are constantly retreating or hiding. Engaging them costs a great amount of time, ignoring them carries the risk of sudden attack. The all-out attack is left in the domain of gangs and Fast Response Teams. While the former usually go down fast, the latter are reason for the runners to flee.

The main function of the drones is keeping tabs on the guards. You will want to know of incomming attacks beforehand, but you will usually not want personal LOS. The doberman is great at closing possible vectors of attack at the same time, but that would be leaving the topic of this thread.

I see the difference in our games now.
the average security guard doesn't have cybereyes and multiple vision enhancements.
they are full essence cheap replacements. if they die big deal you hire another one.
they are not the High threat response team who is in route once the alarm is sounded.
so throwing smoke blinds them.
flash bang disorients them.
jamming them prevents communication to the other guards and results in friendly fire.
a mage is going to be employed only at highly sensetive areas, not every high security location. and even then not 24/7. he's expensive cuz he's magic.

No, you don't "see the difference between our games", taking cover in order to avoid being shot at and falling back to the corp's SOP responce to being invaded is a far cry from being a robot that uses 100% strategically sound tactics.

Although given the cheapness of low grade cyberware and the fact that the corps can mandate implantation while forcing the sec-guards to pay for it, there isn't any reason for sec-guards not to have gone under the knife, although before you "see another difference" no, I'm not saying that sec-guards are sub-essence cyberzombies.


As for mages, sure they are rare and can't be everywhere at once, however as Ryu has pointed out spirits are relatively cheap and any target that actually needs your drone sensor net should be important enough to warrent better protection.

I like the change fortune suggested, just have to look at 8 different levels of the AR "bonus" levels 1-4 add their rating to all test, levels -1 through -4 add their levels to the bonus as well. I think using a further level decreasing IP's by one should take care of additional hacking attemps to overload the users. such as throwing a spam virus giving him 2 popups for every popup he closes. anoying in AR but detrimental in combat.

taking cover isn't considered a tactic its a response its something everyone does, who has common sense. "OMG they are shooting DUCK!"
retreating is a tactical decision, is it good to retreat now? is it bad? if you shoot the guard in the leg, he's thinking "crap it ain't worth minimum wage! you can have it!"
the drone that is linked to the guys who just shot him whizzes around the corner, instead of shooting it (which will piss off the rigger). he runs away.
yeah spirits can patrol an area for cheaper than a mage...but you get what you pay for.

Remember that I GM for a player with that strategy. It works financially in our group because they can afford to replace lost drones. I rarely have to use augmented guards with these strategies, as they can provide enough of a challenge.

A well-equipped group, with someone like you, one who has worked out a drone support strategy, will not be challenged by guards with bad equipment. So your campaign will move up to better targets. With the players in my group we have to start at that point. A quarter million spend on bioware and weapons does make normal security into easy prey.

But on the higer level you can really have fun with your drone network. You need ground combat drones, aerial combat drones, and small recon drones of all kinds. All at the same time.

Recon drones scout ahead, aerial combat drones provide flexible firepower around the firebase of your team, and ground combat drones are left at strategic point defending an avenue of retreat. Having multiple recon drones running is not exactly a priority, having all in one slot (commanded as group) really becomes an option.

Lifestyle costs may cover alot of things, including dining out and staying in fashion, but unless ARSE (Having troubles ordering it, PayPal and Battlecorps had a glitch somewhere and I'm waiting to get it straightened out.) changes things in no way do they even pretend to cover equipment upkeep. If they did then there would be guidelines on what level of lifestyle was needed to upkeep different pieces of equipment, after all you can't expect a Rigger's "low lifestle" to cover keeping her T-Bird and various other expensive toys in tip-top shape, or a squatter Street-Sammy's cyber from going on the frizt from lack of repair.

I hate to say that, but a drone network strategy does not work in a low-paying campaign.
Even with Arsenal, lifestyle does not cover anything in the way of runner gear. You have to repair drones on your own cost.

A bit off-topic, but the question begs itself. Why do you run against weaker targets than you could handle, if you are lacking money all the time? With that kind of preparation you can handle augmented guards. My campaign pays 20k¥+/run, enough to aquire new gear once upon a while.

adding to the threadjack, once my runner players got too good for their normal opposition they started getting hired for tougher and more pricey runs. Now their characters are much more affluent and also desperately running away from Ares hit squads with much better gear and stats. But the game is so good, ah!

Cheers,

Max

Then look at freelancing. Jewlery stores, for example....

I´m talking 20k¥ per run and runner, quite a bit more. Quite a few campaigns don´t have runners struggling for medium lifestyle. If mine did, I´d give any rigger fair warning.

Your campaign seems to focus on runs against ill-prepared security forces. How about telling your GM that you are going to steal something valueable? A collective of six runners at the 400 BP level can easily beat lightly augmented guards. Especially with that supporting drone network. Unaugmented security would be quite boring for my group.

Some things you´ll need to deal with:
- Helmet or Googles with vision enhancement, flare compensation and smartlink.
The guards will spot your drones, flash grenades don´t work, and they hit better. Deadly for small drones. You´ll need to be careful coordinating the position of your drones.

- Automatic/ heavy weapons. Makes that positional data on the guards much more important. I recently threatened my group with ONE enemy, using a full-auto combat shotgun. On the upside, selling captured gear starts to be profitable.

- Enemy combat drone networks. Great for replenishing your number of drones, but very dangerous. Radio signal scanners should be rather common here, as the operator will have electronic warfare skill.

- Enemy mages can have drones shredded. OTOH, the spirit tasked with that is not trying to shred you. A toss-up.



My impression is that you can deal with all this. What kind of members does your team have? The configuration of your support network somewhat depends on that. My friend is running it this way:
- blimp drone over the target facility. Gives fair warning of arriving reinforcements. Also the prime candidate for being shot down, once it is noticed.
- microskimmer scouting ahead. Can often avoid destruction, but if it can´t, whoever entered the room first, instead of the drone, would be in a world of hurt, too. If this one survives, it can relay information to the rest of the team.
- Steel Lynx / Doberman as mobile cover. Especially with your low money, see Arsenal for better armor. While that position is boring for a samurai, you can leave a drone behind to cover your retreat. Anything that frees up a samurai for a fixed investment under 10k¥ is good. Weapon of choice is an assault rifle with underbarrel grenade launcher.
- MCT Nissan Rotordrone, same weapon, max armor. Mobile suppressive fire.
- Microdrones as spies, depending on the run. A human is much harder to infiltrate.

The key trick is using active target aquisition with the combat drones, nicely creating auto-updated positional information for the whole team, as long as sensor lock is not broken. Gain: indirect target aquisition for runners without LOS, info on the strategy the guards use. Depending on the sensor suite setup, you also get info on the guards equipment. See MAD sensors.