The cyborg rules in arsenal state that a cyborg uses Response for Reaction and the appropriate Vehicle skill + Handling when an Agility attribute is required.

Say the character is specialized in the appropriate type of Vehicle skill pertaining to his drone type. Would his +2 specialization bonus apply to his Agility score? Since the character is using a Vehicle skill as his Agility, would the cyborg recieve a +2 bonus to Agility for having a Control Rig? Lastly, would his Agility also be raised by +2 since he is in hot-sim?

For example, Bob the Cyborg has a Pilot Anthroform skill of five and is specialized in Bipedal. He is plugged into a bipedal anthroform drone with a handling of +1. Would his Agility be 12? That being 5 for skill, 2 for specialization, 2 for Control Rig, 2 for hot sim and 1 for handling?

I note that the Arsenal rules and the FAQ lists a table for common rigger actions. One of the checks it lists is for Infiltration, being comprised of Response + Infiltration. I understand that while rigging you use the drone's attributes in place of your own. I surmise that at the time this table was created, they choose to link it to Response because drone's had no Agility attribute. However, since a cyborg has an Agility attribute would it be better to link Infiltration to Agility?

The cyborg rules also state that you can use a firearms skill in the place of Gunnery. If, for example, you use your Pistols skill instead of Gunnery, is it still linked to Sensor since you are rigging? or will it link to the drone's Agility instead?

Or when else might you use the drone's Agility for a test? Would Gymnastics or Palming be linked to the drone's Agility or would it be linked to Response similar to Infiltration? And any time that you use the drone's Agility, which is derived from the controller's Vehicle skill, do you recieved the Control Rig and Handling bonuses?

Yes, that was the intent.


In all of the above, I'd use the Cyborg's agility.

Hmmm, pilot skill 7 (not sure if there are any skill bonuses a cyborg can get, so I'll leave it at 7), +2 specialization, +2 control rig, +2 hot sim, +3 handling for the Mitsuhama Akiyama, that's an effective Agility of 16. (that's higher than the augmented max of an elf with exceptional attribute and that gene mod) Add a firearm skill of 6 with a +2 from a smartlink and another +2 from specialization, and we're throwing 26 dice on your favorite firearms test. Or melee, or whatever your favorite agility-linked task is.
Vehicle armor plus worn armor.
Hmmm, suddenly cyborgs aren't looking so bad.

I still have no idea where that misconception came from. Drone and anthroform bodies are plenty nasty if modded right (which pretty much all cyborgs are going to be) and their inherent resistance to magic makes them quite tough in that respect too.

Oh no? Well let me clear that up for you. It came from having Augmentation before Arsenal. Without anthroform bodies or the ability to mod them right, they are kinda sucky compared to a regular rigger. Look, I know you always promised that cyborgs would be cool once Arsenal came out, and I think most people believed you, and you were right. But in the meantime, they did suck.
And now I can play Ghostintheshellrun.

On this subject, I have a question.
What does Otomo cyborg model really looks like?
The description says:


The Akiyama description is much precise and we know what to expect but the Otomo is much vague.
So does it really look like a metahuman? Can it actually be confused with a living human (à la Ghost in the shell)?
Or is it obvious that it's a drone vaguely imitating the shape of a metahuman, like how an aibo imitate a dog...

Look up the Mimic upgrade.
Page 139. Sounds pretty Ghost in the Shell to me.

An Otomo is metahuman-sized and shaped. When it comes off the production line it looks like a robot/android version of the appropriate metatype (think: Terminator without the skin), but since Otomos all come equipped with the Mimic mod when they're fielded they can pass as normal metahumans except on close inspection.

Good, thanks for the answers...
Between that and the topic how to build a tachikoma, maybe I'll add some Shirow flavor to my game...

Are you guys sure cyborg agility is vehicle skill + all and every modifier you can conceive? I get the impression it's rather skill and handling is all that comes into the equation. Specialization might be good too, but everything else produces ridiculous amounts of agility.

Yes. That's kind of the point.

Also remember -- intended for NPCs.

A jarhead is something that's hard to kill -- especially when you don't realize it's a jarhead -- and very capable of killing in return.

There's nothing fair about it.

The hard to kill is not linked to agility. And since they attack via sensor+skill it's not game breaking or stuff. It just seems so... pointless but huge beyond reason. They sure can make fine entertainers or cat burglars.

most of those dice pool bonuses would apply for a normal rigger anyways. the cyborg still isn't really that far ahead, if at all.

and on a side note, you forgot control rig boosters to bring the base skill up to 10

!!! I did forget control rig boosters.

Using the jarhead's Pilot skill for Agility makes perfect sense to me. The jarhead's Pilot skill represents his fine control over his body, and the more skilled he is the better understanding he will have over what he can and cannot do with his drone body. This got me to thinking about a few things though.

First, in most cases a jarhead's effective Agility attribute will be higher than his Sensor attribute. In most cases it would seem the better choice would be to roll Agility + Firearm Skill rather than Sensor + Gunnery to attack. The only case that I can make for Gunnery is that it is a broader skill and cheaper to obtain in skillsoft form. If I understand correctly, Sensor + Gunnery would cover the use of any firearm by the jarhead, while using Agility + Firearm Skill would be more costly since the jarhead would have to purchase Pistols, Long Arms, Automatics, etc. to cover the same broad base. I suppose you could make things more even by raising the Sensor attribute, but I'm still a bit unclear on how that works.

Second, is the ability to use Pilot Skill for Agility an ability exclusive to jarheads? I could see a case for allowing any rigger to use an appropriate Pilot Skill to generate an Agility score for a jumped-in drone. I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing, after all I don't see much difference between a rigger jumped into a drone and a jarhead, who effectively is also jumped into a drone-his body in this case.

If regular riggers can do this too, it makes me refer back to my first point, where for most riggers it would be better to use the drone's virtual Agility score rather than relying on sensors to attack.

Anyone else see it like this? Or have a counterargument? I'm not find the ability to use Piloting for a drone's Agility a bad idea, but I'm worried that it will make Gunnery a worse choice in most situations.

*Ack double-post*

Stupid question, but if you get your hands on one, can your rigger rig a jarheadless cyborg body? I assume so, especially with some mods, and if so, will it run as a regular drone with the correct softs?

No matter what kind of weapon the jarhead uses, he always rolls Sensor+Skill. Gunnery is used for mounted weapons, if you shoot with a pistol, you roll Sensor+Pistols, a shotgun is Sensor+Longarms, etc.

And anything a jarhead can do with a drone body, a rigger can do, too. So, if a rigger needs to do some agility test while jumped into a drone, he'd use the vehicle skill. Of course, there are not many situations where you need to do that, and even less drones have bodies where you would think of it a agility, not driving/manuevering

The only thing a jarhead can do a rigger will not be able to do, is to cut of wireless and still control the drone. Unless it's some freakish huge mecha drone with a rigger cocoon. Or something.

So, to finish this. Drones don't use their agility score for attacks, no matter who controls them or how.

So, if a technomancer has one of these, and has it inhabited by a registered machine sprite, is it close enough to an ally spirit to have it dikoted?

/derail

Shrug. It's a drone. Drones use Sensors.

That is not correct. If a jarhead is using a carried weapon -- be it a shotgun, a katana, or a monofilament whip -- he uses his calculated agility score.

That is also, not correct. A rigger would use the drone's attributes. It's a function of the CCU.

If this isn't clear from the way things are written in Augmentation, I'll look into getting this clarified in an errata.

Sure. It'd be much the same as rigging a car that didn't have a passenger.

So, the ability to use vehicle skill and turn it into an Agility attribute is a function of a cyborg's CCU? Ooooooooooooh. I had kind of gotten the impression that it was a general rule for using anthroform drones in character scale combat.

The rules in Augmentation are pretty clear. The jarhead is just a rigger, nothing more. A drone does not posses such a thing as a agility, reation or strength attribute. They are derived from other stats the drone and the riggers (jarheads) commlink has. And also the rules say pretty firm you use Sensor+appropriate skill for attacks. I don't really think an errata is needed to change this. It would be pretty fundamental change.
It would make a new rules set for something that does not need new rules. The CCU is just a container. I really don't see how this thing changes the jarhead's interaction with his drone body.

This is why people think cyborgs suck, Synner. You were wondering.

I don't really think they suck. Sensor ratings suck, is all

Unless you start using active sensor targeting. With 4 IP's it's not really a problem to lose a simple action. Or two.

I pulled out Augmentation, and doublechecked. You're correct in understanding what's presented. It's what's presented that needs to be errata'd. The asterisk in the inset box on p. 160 isn't sufficiently clear. The part where it mentions that the jarhead can use a non-gunnery skill to attack should also indicate that the jarhead can use his calculated agility in this instance. I'll make sure it gets added to an errata.

Ouhkay. That is an incredible powerboost, I say. So if I now use my insane agility pool can I still use sensors to lock on a target to boost my dice pool even more? Just curious.

And this option is CCU only? Because seriously, drones suck at combat as long as sensor ratings average around 2.

Under current rules something like the Renraku Arcology Shutdown is not possible.

i don't think you guys caught that riggers can do most of the same stuff.

they can do skill 6 + 2 specialisation + 2 control rig + 3 control rig boosters + 6 + 2 hotsim response for pilot tests (and of course add in handling). that's not very far off from what a cyborg can do. and they can do the same thing for gunnery tests as well, just by boosting sensor. it may not be quite as amazing as the cyborg dicepool above, but it should be enough for most people's needs.

It's actually specifically for carried weapons on anthroform drones. Essentially, if the weapon is vehicle mounted, then it falls within the rules of the targeting autosoft. As it's not mounted, it falls under the premise that the anthroform drone isn't working on a vehicle scale, but is instead functioning as a PC using a weapon. Under those circumstances, it uses Agility + Weapon skill

No one questioned Riggers can do the same stuff. But if I understand dunner correctly cyborgs can use that massive dicepool to attack stuff. Riggers can't.
At least, that is how I understand it at the moment.

I think, I will houserule vehicle attacks to use the vehicle skill as attribute. Drones suck less, Riggers suck less and I have some consistency.


That makes sense, I guess. Should have been mentioned in Arsenal or Augmentation.

so basically, we're back to the CCU providing nothing special except that the rigger is now really really small... well heck, that's certainly worth 250k

250k is more than reasonable for a first generation technology.

Not convinced? Try adding up all the various augmentation costs for what is needed to get a rigger near a jarhead's dicepools, don't forget to figure in the stuff that allows the rigger to have 4 IPs and a MBW-analogue. Then try to make the drone autonomous, un-hackable and unspoofable via the Matrix. Factor in its inherent resistance to magic and the fact that corporations get multiple drone/vehicle bodies and relevant modifications at bulk production cost - and economically sticking a cloned brain in a CCU starts to make sense.

None of the Cyborg body's has a pilot rating, can they be upgraded with one to run the body while the cyborg is otherwise busy, say with hacking? I know they'd still need to be controlled, but you could tell it follow X and shoot at anyone who doesn't have IFF while I hack this. It would be nice to have a body with an autopilot. Having to bring a Segway for your cyborg body to ride on while you hack is almost as lame as riding a Segway.

For that particular instance, a pilot is unnecessary. The jarhead is already in hotsim VR. He's always hacking. If he's doing something with his drone while he's hacking a node, that just means that he's active in two nodes at once.

[edit] this is in response to Synner's post. [/edit]

as far as magic resistance, a drone piloted by a rigger is just as resistant. corporate riggers can have the same access to drone bodies as a cyborg can also, so that's not a valid point. many vehicles can have the rigger inside, thus making it autonomous and unhackable (just turn off wireless) exactly like a cyborg.

as to the cost of the separate components vs the CCU, bring it on. i've done this math before, and it worked out just like i said: a CCU is *not* economically worth all of it's separate built-in stuff.


we start with the commlink. response 4 signal 4 costs 2500, implanted makes it 4500, plus 0.2 essence.
implanted sim module (hot sim) 5,000 plus 0.2 essence
Control Rig costs 10,000 plus 0.5 essence
Simsense Booster 65,000 plus 0.5 essence
rating 5 skillwires + rigger adaptation: 12,500 plus 1 essence
rating 6 damage compensators 90,000 plus 0.6 essence (to be honest, i would not have bothered, but cyborgs do technically get one)

total: 187,000 and 2.9 essence

and now for the cyborg:
CCU: 250,000 and all but 0.1 essence (we'll call it 5.9 for the sake of argument)
cyborg adaptation (note: this is where the skillwires are, technically): 15,000

total: 265,000 plus 5.9 essence.

so then, the real question becomes: is the ability to not spend 1 IP on piloting tests plus being smaller than a dwarf worth the drawbacks of being a cyborg (expensive maintenance, insanity, poor skills outside of matrix/rigging other than by skillwires, and inability to install any additional 'ware) worth 78,000 and 3 essence? if there was a piece of cyber in existence that applied those mods, how many people would buy it? in comparison, how many people will settle for 3 IPs of shooting and 1 (specifically, the 4th) keeping the vehicle stable? heck, by the time IP 4 rolls around, the combat could very well be over.

trust me, i am a bit of a powegamer and i do min/max on a regular basis, if i am not careful to the point of harming the roleplaying concept of the character (and, for the record, i would never blow that kind of money on a damage compensator either... instead, i would spend 50k less and, for the same availability even, pick up a pain editor, which will handle all the biofeedback damage i am going to be suffering in the vehicle (note that actually *having* a physical damage track at all is a leg up on the cyborg, as is being able to even take an action without being in a vehicle for that matter)

seriously, cyborgs are not worth the cost. they don't even come close. unless of course you've got some weird math up your sleeve that's telling you something different.

Yes, but can he Act on both nodes at once? It would be nice to have a pilot controlling your body so that it can take actions for you, he's likely going to have an Agent on his Comlink so that he can pay attention to what he's shooting while it watches his virtual back. So why not have a pilot to shoot at Enemys for him while he's busy paying attention to another node. The BBB basically says hackers that need to split there attention between two nodes are boned. That's not very Cyborg death squad.

Not that I want to play a Jarhead, but being so small is worth it. Metahuman sized bodies come with more combat power than most samurai bring to the table, and the drone can go completely wireless because the controlling intelligence is reliable. I do not see jarheads as perfect riggers. They are more like perfect samurai.

Consider a rotordrone jarhead that travels in a swarm with rotordrones and flyspys. A rigger would need a helicopter to travel in that group, increasing cost and group profile size significantly.

Why would a cyborg death squad have the need to hack the matrix and shoot stuff at the same time? A rather weird argument.

If it is a squad and the need for matrix arises for some reason, one of them, maybe two go matrix and the rest lays waste to the surroundigs. Also, with 4 IPs you can smoothly shoot a couple of guys and hack some nodes without dividing your attention too much.

who cares which one is the cyborg. just shoot them all until they explode... you're looking at something that should, by all rights, be a throwaway drone if you're expecting it to get shot at in combat at all, the last thing you want for something like that is to have the rigger *inside* the bloody thing.

and for the record, with the new PMVs, you can get a surprisingly effective combat vehicle that can drive around indoors easily. which makes them a lot like the samurai too, once you have a rigger directly controlling them.

honestly, if you think being small but unable to move without a drone is really that awesome, i bet you can find yourself a doctor who'll be more than happy to chop off a few limbs, and he'll probably even pay you for those limbs. congratulations, you are now about the size of a CCU, and you didn't have to pay 250k to get there.

i think his point is that it would be nice if the cyborg could just set the vehicle to autopilot and not have to pay any attention whatsoever. it could be useful sometimes.

Chill, dude. Where does all that rage and anger come from? Almost makes me want to throw a can of gas into the fire

And the autopilot still does not make sense. You don't want the cyborg do anything than pay attention to his body and surroundigs. The primary task of those beasties is physical security, you know?
So, yes, a smart employer does not include a pilot into a cyborg. You'd never know when the cyborg get's bored and switches to autopilot while playing Minesweeper. The cyborgs need to make sense in the game world first and in rule effectiveness second.

As far as I'm concerned, the main benefit of a cyborg over a drone plus rigger is that a cyborg can go into autistic mode and be completely immune from being wirelessly hacked while still able to make sensible decisions above the level of what is possible for an independently operating pilot program. Additionally, the cyborg has a chance of defending itself when being hacked via a hardwire, a drone in autistic mode is pretty much dead meat with regards to defending itself from someone with a physical connection.

That was exactly my point. It's not THAT huge a deal, but since Cyborg body's are basically drones then they should have a pilot, for the same reason that cars do, because sometimes you don't want to drive.

If your Cyborg is a street sam, no big deal, you slice and dice and let your Agent do the Look the place up on Google maps and keep pesky hackers off your back. If your running the teams recon drones though it would be useful to subscribe your body as one of your drones and give it commands or just order it to watch the samies back while your scoping ahead in your iBall, or positioning your fly-spys. If your the Hacker, you want to devote your full attention to beating the pants off the facility's spider and not have your body siting there being a useless lump that needs to be guarded, yes your still on that node, but if your not paying attention to it it would at least be nice to have a pilot to make a perception test and message you about that guy sneeking up on you.

...and that's not even getting into the question of if you can have the pilot on a regular drone (or a cyborg, if they can even have them, although with out a rules call I don't see why they shouldn't they are still technically drones) can say use its actions for sensor targeting while the rigger lines up shots and pulls the trigger. Does anyone know if Pilots can be given a task on a drone the rigger is dived into too assist the rigger? Like the RIO on an F-14. I.E. scan for hostiles, lock up anyone I point the gun at, drive down the hall while I line up this shot, ect.

[edit] apparently i can't for the life of me quote the right fragging post. this is in response to grymor's last post. [/edit]

as far as i can tell, nobody is discussing whether drones are competitive with cyborgs (when compared with a reasonably skilled cyborg, they aren't). the discussion now is "what makes a cyborg worth blowing 250k on that isn't just as easily accomplished by a regular rigger for half the price" (or at least, that's my point).

basically, if you're putting a 250k piece of equipment into a drone, that drone is not going to be a throwaway drone. it's simply too risky to put 250k credits into a rotodrone that could be shot down before it even gets a chance to respond. if having really small vehicles is that important, you send a drone in with fuzzy logic upgrades and risk only 10-20k , with a good chunk of that being software (and therefore easily recoverable if you use your own).

didnt see this come up in the thread (by i may be "blind" so), but what about agility mods to cyberlimbs?

if one read arsenal right, one can add cyberlimb mods to mechanical arms...

This is where we have a disconnect. You're making the argument from a players standpoint. Jarheads were not introduced as a widespread augmentation technology, they're as rare as CZs and treated accordingly.
For a megacorp it's not just 78,000 nuyen, 3 Essence, 1 IP and the maintenance costs, it's whether those additional costs are worth a mission specialist that requires none of the training, salary, benefits, education, security checks, loyalty issues, compensation, etc of a corporate employee - all at production cost values (and not 250k nuyen) plus maintenance.

For a corporation, it equates to having an Otomo bodyguard (or three for that matter) with 4 IP, all the advantages listed above, any skills needed for the task at hand from the corp's databanks, completely unhackable, unjammable and autonomous, packing as much built-in armor and weaponry as a small tank with all the advantages of a metahuman form, more resilient and faster than most bodyguards/samurai,

Or the benefits of fielding 5 jarheads in Tominos with 5 rigged Tominos in a modern urban battlefield where EW, signal jamming and combat hacking is pervasive.


Worth the cost as a player character option? Or worth the cost to the megacorps who are fielding jarheads?

hmm, i wonder what the outcome would in a encounter between a cyborg and a spirit...

In SR4 cyberzombies are the ultimate anti-magic weapon. Cyborgs are tough but only as tough as drones, while CZs have a number of built-in advantages over spirits and magic users that make them truly scary.

sure, the corps can just press-gang cyborgs. but then again, they can just grab some sinless bum off the streets, install a bunch of (substantially cheaper) cyber, and have the exact same thing. and just as much as the corp is only paying production cost for the CCU, they would only be paying production cost for the cyberware (given that the CCU is deltaware, i would think the fact that they don't have to tie up a delta clinic is a major factor also).

and again, like i said, if you can put a CCU in there, i can chop off some sinless guy's arms and legs, brainwash him, and train him to be a pilot for one of those same drones. it's not like he's gonna be any bigger than the CCU once you get rid of all the mass that allows him to be independant from the corporation after all. he doesn't need arms or legs to be a useful rigger, and it's very inexpensive to chop off someone's arms and legs. better yet, they can just use chemicals to stunt the growth of a bunch of sinless children, and remove their (not useful to you) extra bodymass, and you could probably fit *two* of them in.

all i'm saying is that for something as completely unscrupulous as the megas, it's silly to take the moral (relative) high ground (which isn't really very much of a moral high ground to begin with, all things considered). it is just so much cheaper to use the method that doesn't involve a CCU.

about the only thing i can agree with is that if you look at them as an experimental prototype, they could be worthwhile... after all, if it's going to reach a point where in 5 years it'll cost 5 essence, 25k and only alphaware, then i could see the corps investing in this. but i don't particularly anticipate seeing them use it other than as a status symbol.