I'm thinking about a rigger character and i got about 10 bps to play around with for drones (kinda). What are some good CharGen set ups for drones? What are the layouts and costs?

thanks!

The obvious question is do you have arsenal?

I do have Arsenal, and all of the SR4 books. I don't know much about drones, the matrix, or anything like that. We have a technomancer in our current group, but he doesn't really utilize drones much. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

General rule with drones: System and Firewall are *software* so you buy them once, crack the copy protection, and now every drone you have has a rating 6 system and firewall. This is very useful and something you should do. You'll also probably want an agent, crack the protection on that too, to run on every drone armed with analyze and attack.

You'll also want to buy the best autosofts (rating 4) as soon as you can afford them, then repeat the crack them, then paste onto every drone trick. The particularly important one is Electronic warfare, so drones can provide their own anti jamming. This saves you both the BPs and IPs to learn the skill yourself.

A rigger can bring three things to the table with drones:

Surviallence

This includes fly spies (a very popular choice) at the micro end of the scale to the blimps and stealth UAVS (lockheed optic X) you need this capability, but the drones themselves should be cheap and relatively disposable.

Mobility - Get a car or a van, the 17k sedan in Arsenal is a great starting place if you are not planning to use big drones, otherwise you'll need a Van or SUV. Get whatever skill you need to drive it.

Firepower - Whether it is a van with some steel lynxes, or three LMG armed dog drones in the back of a sedan, you can throw down serious firepower as required. So get some firepower based drones and you bring serious firepower to any party. More than the troll.

you basically want to do all three things, and can I suggest theirfore you get 3 dog drones with LMG from the basic book, one of the 17k sports sedans, and then a bunch of survelliance kit.


i'm still not toally up on the options in the book, but here is a starting point Say:

17k Sedan from Aresenal
9k Three dog drones from the BBB. Depending how you read it you may need to buy guns as well
3k LMGs for the drones

1700 1 x Lockheed Optic X UAVs
2000 1 x Renaku Stormcloud 9might have cost wrong)
4000 2 x fly spies
2000 2 x Crawler Drones

Ammo, software as you can afford it. Firewall 6 is the priority, then system 6. Rating 4 autosofts might have to wait until after character generation.

There's a good argument for mounting an Ares Alpha rather than an LMG, as the Alpha has the same base damage, and it has the advantage of a built-in grenade launcher for laying down smokescreens or gas screens. Equip your gun-drones with low-light vision so they can see through their own smoke, and they are already immune to Pepper Punch, Neuro-Stun, etc. Alternatively, cheap route, just an AK-47 with a muzzle brake (aka gas-vent-3).

Check that these will pass with your GM. A lot of GMs will issue a slap-down on this and you don't want to start the game off in this way.

As regards drones, make sure you have a decent ariel reconnaisance drone such as a Renraku Storm Cloud with good sensors. The usefulness of a good bird's eye view of a situation is beyond compare. As you've stated you have Arsenal, check if you're allowed to start off with modified vehicles. Armour is cheap and very effective on drones. And although not appropriate for all situations, a Vindicator Minigun is the same class as weapon as a Light Machinegun so can be fitted in place of the obligatory White Knight. You'll want to fit additional ammo bins if customisation rules are allowed. Again, give your GM some idea of what is coming is way as unexpectedly mowing down vast number of opposition can provoke GMs into bovine mode (which is bad). But having a Doberman rolling along by your side fitted with one of these weapons can turn your character into a force to be reckoned with.

EDIT: Get yourself one of those automated wheel chairs or a horseman (either with additional passenger armour) to ride around in. Then you can remain mobile whilst hot-rigging one of your drones. VERY useful.

Knasser definately has a point, though its a tricky issue really. The flip side it is that it is totally unreasonable to expect for you to pay for a copy of firewall 6 for every drone because that is more than most drones. By a lot. Hell you can buy a car for that much.

It's certainly something you need to talk through though with your DM, and set/met expectations/goals. Many a game has been sunk because the GM and the various players expected different things.

This is a pretty nice combo
Roto drones, weapon mounts, grenade launchers (semi-autos with air burst link,) frag and/or neurostun grenades, auto soft grenade launcher 3 or 4, maneuver 3 or 4. They are pretty crazy when deployed in the right situations. They are fairly cheap and they pretty crazy at dropping gobs of hurt on people. The air burst means you don't need a high response chip to deal hits on the enemies and it can save you a bit o' money. Feel free to sub the roto drone for any other type of drone. Some people like to focus on high end drones, but the are costly and until rigger 4 comes out they are still pretty crummy for how much they cost. Best to tie up like 7-12k per drone instead of 20k for the time being, because when one of them explodes it might take a few runs to replace it.

What you do with drones is up to you. There's a wide wide range of choice. You can have one tricked out expensive combat drones with big guns, lots of disposable cheap drones with guns, a tricked out surveillance drone with 20-40k of extra sensor mods, hordes of cheap fly spy drones, and don't forget that your Nissan Patrol car or step van can be modified to have big guns, rating 6 sensor suites, and tons of other goodies, like upgrading system and response on all your drones so they can act as flying, driving, moving commlinks for your hacker.. And all of which might be driven by you directly, via remote control programs, via Jumping in, or by the drone pilot software.

...agreed with Knasser. The Stormcloud is a nice low cost way to cover the team's butts. Violet has two which she usually puts up when we are doing recon and going into a facility. She is also looking to install a retrans unit in one so she can extend her range and giving both of them chameleon skin.

Another good one (if you do your facility research well) is the Ferret, which according to Arsenal, are commonly used. A change of appearance (Ruthenium) and you have a nice little spy which can blend into the site's routine security patrol.

As for Pilot upgrades and any manoeuvre related autosofts, I'm with the school that you need a different programme for different type of drone movement mode. You could bust protection for drones that are common, (like between VI's two Stormclouds) but for a rotodrone she would need new programmes. Autosofts like Clearsight could be freely swapped between any drone as those are sensor dependent.

...masterofm: I don't think there will be a Rigger 4.

The best mini-drone since Arsenal is the Cyberspace Designs Dragonfly.

For only 500 more than the FlySpy, it is faster, comes with a micro-weapon of choice (or HE-grenade), Autosofts, a Rsponse of 4 and strictly speaking, a camera with ultrasound.

Agreed on the Dragonfly, nasty. Also I second K. and his comments, surveillance is pretty valuable, and also transportatio,. In my games, firepower comes second to those, because the sammies pretty much can provide that. Still it's worth keeping one or two aces in the hole.

Be creative

Cheers,

Max

Hi,

I'm new here and was mainly lurking till now, but I do have a question. From my reading of the Matrix chapter, System is limited to Response rating...to have a Firewall and System of 6, wouldn't your drones have to have a Response of 6 as well?

Firewall and system do not count towards your Response Rating.

Ok, that I understand. But, what confuses me is this line on pg 213.

"A System program is limited by the Response rating of the device it is on; a System run on a device with a lower Response rating functions at the Response rating instead."

The system will be lowered to the response rating, but it's base rating can still be higher than response. That way, if you increase response during the game, your system will also increase to match. Firewall, on the other hand, is specifically an exception to the rule that says programs are limited by the current system rating of a device.

Ok, that makes sense. Thank you!

N/P

Where is that information? I believe you because it makes sense, but I can't find it my copy of the BBB.

p. 213, SR4 second paragraph under System (Software). It's never spelled out that your current System rating could be altered if your Response is increased, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be.

No I get that part... the part about having a Firewall 6 running on a System 4, Response 4 system and having it contribute 6 dice of defense instead of running at Firewall 4 is what I can't find.

Running system 6 at 4 on a Response 4 system makes sense, and yes when you upgrade to response 6 it running system at 6 also makes complete sense... Just like Running Vista with 1 Gig of Ram vs 2 Gigs.

From the FAQ:

That explains why I can't find it in the book.

Thanks!

N/P; Glad to help.

Firewall is considerd a Matrix Attribute, not a Program.

The Bust-A-Move and other toy drones have all sorts of room for abuse, Teddy Bear Bombs anyone?

10 bp on a rigger? um...define cheap drone? as for that doll drone some one mentioned above...um any one seen a movie called screamers?

mmmm Roto drones with a MGL 6 mounted...ooo fun, oh or a ares alpha. a assult rife and a grenade launcher always fun. I guess for cheap...theirs always a lynx, sure you can cut costs by not mounting a weapon..and you can always just run peopel over with it

Especially if you equip the anti-minidrone/anti-vehicle variant it with a Grapple.
That way, it can pick up what it destroyed and return it for research/salvage... or simply carry a grenade to drop on unsuspecting victims.

Well, technically, it should come with a Grapple, but it's not listed:

Agreed on the fact that it should have a grapple, but doesn't. Even if you install one, the thing has strength 1 though. Unless you have it taking down other micro/minidrones it won't be carrying anything back.

Well, by RAW, Strength 1 means it can carry 10kg... that's enough to take the interesting (electronics) stuff after cutting it off.

So... buy 10 of them, equip them with grapples and let them hunt down & make disappear people you don't like...

Touche.

well 100kilos of them ... from the street to the organ bank by virtue of some dodgy remote surgery

courtesy of your poor and slightly unhinged rigger ofc.

That's a very good reason for getting both the versions with vibro-blade pincers and micro-welders indeed.

Of course, using the rules given for the micro-drone weaponery is great for equipping other drones with it - like the Kanmushi... oder the Bust-a-Move... let's march, my little dancing furry death-machines from hell!

...don't give Violet any ideas....

Well, there are rules for what kind of damage a mini-drone loaded with C-12 does... it would be a sad thing not to abu... errr use them, right?

On second thought, a Kanmushi with a micro-welder is extremely useful... not only it can now chew it's way out of ventilation shafts... but it also can sabotage wiring.

Personally, I've always like to imitate what works: Manhacks from Half Life 2. Cheap, effective, and good for swarming. And all they are is your choice of drone loaded down with monofilament saws, a few half decent autosofts, and a good firewall.

Basically the cost is 300 (for the saw) plus drone(preferably flying), plus one copy of the programs(copy+paste to others).

And even if they aren't always that effective, it's gotta be pretty terrifying seeing your corp sec buddies being torn apart by a swarm of flying chainsaws:P

Also, first post. I've been lurking for a while though.

If you are using SR4 arsenal - Semi automatic grenade launchers with air burst and white phosphorous rounds.

You might need like 1 or 2 drones, and it would rock.

I'm liking the Chariot, it a Moded delivery drone, it's weapon mount is hidden and it's the only body 2 drone with one, give it concealed armor 6. That would be a mean little combat drone. Pack two of them in that little delivery van with the stock drone racks. That should be pretty cheep. Be sure to by used if the GM let's you. If can't afford the blendy inny coating thingy just paint it "Airport Delivery" or something, that's what all the shady cheep delivery services seem to be marked.

"Hey... Ed? Why do your dragonfly spy drones have a Medicine autosoft anyway?"

Edit:

Still better than a Drone B/R autosoft.

"Ed... didn't you have three dragonflies before we took out that doberman patrol drone?"
"Yea, why?"
"'cause I count five now."
"Muahahahahaha"

Speaking of the Doberman... since Arsenal, it's a really nasty fragger:

It's a walker Drone, which means it can get the Gecko Tip upgrade. Add Chameleon Coating and you got stealth combat drones that can climb walls.