Oh. Oh that really sucks. I mean they could have everything regarding rigger rules and cyberware.

But Do they even have pop up turrets yet? Did the rigger books not sell in the past or something?

I suppose I should look and see how rigger 3 might work with SR4 but prices have changed so much. THey really should have done something different.

A HMG is the kind of thing you mount on a fighter jet or the top of a tank, I wouldn't let a troll fire one standing up without needing to see a physiotherapist afterwards.

But this has veered wildly off topic. Bans all round

I also wouldn't let a rotodrone operate indoors. Not just because the rotor/s couldn't fit through a doorway, but because of the horizontal drift of a rotary craft. a complete stall in a helicopter is very difficult. Piloting a drone through a hallway would be intense, and I'd only rule it as possible by a skilled rigger, with a tough difficulty on the handling tests.

Also, who wants a roto/ducted fan drone indoors anyway? The force would mess up the office ficus and paperweights!

Not to mention game balance. Rotordrones with weapons on them are deadly because they've got all that firepower and they're very mobile. But not mobile enough to operate indoors, unless the rigger piloting it is crazy, but many of them are.

As for a steel lynx? Sure it could go indoors, but unless the doorways are wide enough, I don't see it getting in. Not to mention that it's not very maneuvarable and it's long. I imagine trying to do a 3 point turn inside a hallway with a steel lynx would be very much like that infamous austin powers scene. A doberman is a much better choice for indoor ops, especially seeing as it comes with a walker mod for ascending/descending stairways straight out of the box!

skimmer/hover-Drones would be more or less ideal . . untill you get to the stairs again *g*

Ah, but the Steel Lynx can stand up on it's "Legs", and then be taller, but narrow. Great for shooting over the desks, as well as making for a shorter turning radius.

Just don't try to go too fast with the top-heavy system at that point.

But, yeah, the Dobie is a nice design as well. Steel Lynx for speed, Dobie for manouverability.

Also, do you think the Shadowtalker, Steel Lynx, won his lawsuit?

I've always seen then as the size of a heavy duty 4 wheel ATV. Which doesn't seem that big until you are next to it, but it is. They are well over 3 ft wide, often almost 4 ft wide and 6-7 ft long. They won't get through an average door or fit in a cube farm corridor, particularly if they have to turn.

Hm... the more I look at it the more I have to agree with folks who think the Steel Lynx is on the big side. Given that the doberman can maneuver easily indoors it would make sense that the Lynx (especially if it was up armored) would fulfill the role of "very small tank". That's not to say you'll never run into an interior patrolling Steel Lynx, but it'll be in a warehouse or something, an area where it can turn around without three point turning.

Or major hallways in office buildings. Sure, it can't go into offices or cubical farms, but it could easily patrol along major traffic routes by stairways/elevators.

Or "Stand Up" and be a major surprise when the elevator doors open!

Actually most cubicle farms have well more space than 3 feet between walls and such. I'd say 6 feet is standard most of the time.

So navigating areas like that and using elevators a Lynx could get a lot of places.

As for smaller doors the Lynx has some ability to be twist itself/be twisted sideways to aid in getting through.

In short what I'm saying is that on their own a Lynx could patrol the main hallways and rooms. However to get info offices and other rooms with smaller doors it's going to need someone with arms to open the door and maybe help get it through like a couch.

I kinda like that. It keeps the Lynxes around but their limited versatility in movement means the cheaper doberman stays the most common type of drone.

Note that in SR4 a Lynx isn't all that tough. Your Warhawk with even regular explosive rounds can be relied upon to punch it's hide. So you might not want to deploy one and expect it to actually threaten the runners. It'd take a squad to make them sweat.

Also it is not 4x4 sized. I think that would be a body 8 vehicle (same as for the Harley Davidson Scorpeon), this thing is only body 4 and so I think the picture shown earlier is probably about right.

Still makes them tougher than your average, or even your above average, security goon.

It depends a little on what gun you give to the sec guys and what gun you give to the drone. Also depends on how you play them.

But yeah I think I'd rate a Lynx with a good weapon to be worth about 2 goons from the BBB.

Though that assumes they aren't played cleverly. By default they're equiped with a smartlinked and sound suppressed weapon and are inclined to take advantage of thta by shooting around corners without exposing themselves and firing from hidden positions such as behind a planter and hoping that the the -4 penalty to tell where it came from keeps them from getting noticed. (Though I'll often say they have a gun model that trades the sound suppressor for a gas vent 2 )

Grenade launchers with airburst rounds are my favorite, fired two rounds per action. Start with flash bangs on the top of the mag before going to HE after 4 or so shots. It's hard to miss by 10 meters, particularly indoors.

When is that appropriate? If I want a drone to patrol my building and protect it from intruders, I am not giving it a grenade launcher full of high explosives.

It would be like putting a perimiter sensor outside the White House, that triggers a nuclear bomb.

If you didn't want to stop bad guys with deadly force you wouldn't use a steel lynx, you'd just call the cops when your little senor drones spotted them. It's an armed and armored combat drone, not a quiet suggestion to leave.
Avoiding serious damage to the building is why it starts with the flash bangs. If the bad guys are still standing after 4 x 6 -3ap blast then they are serious and the lynx(es) shift to HE. That's harder on the furnishings, but such is life in the 6th world.

Or fill the room with LMG fire. Or give it giant tanks of freeze foam or... etc.

But yeah, if your in the habit of deploying Steel Lynxs I think you have murder in your heart.

Sure, deadly force might put a few bullets in the walls and upholstery that need to be fixed, but if you're using HE grenades there will be no walls and there will be no upholstery.

Won't anybody think of the upholstery?

Anyway, there's much cleaner ways of being straight out deadly. Such as wargas grenades. and Freeze foam. Freeze foam breathes! And then you roll up and burst them with an assault rifle. Anything but bringing the walls down is acceptable force.

Autoshotgun with Gel Rounds. Keep shooting them after they go down "to make sure".

"Oh, sorry Officers, the stupid Shotty must have malfuctioned and pummelled them to death with gel rounds."

im guessing all this is about a rigger bringing his big toy on a extraction or data steal job?

as using drones like these for indoor security seems wasteful when you could rather mount them on overhead rails...

i'd probably steer in an ruthenium polymer coated flying mini drone with improved invisibility, silence and this concealment power from a spirit to get around the wifi-barriers and then use the drone to hack in and get the paydirt

Are you saying a lynx can't be stealthy? <--says the guy with one mounting silenced sniper rifles max moded armor and ruth coating* hehehe ...ooo geko tips...mmm I wonder

Wouldn't the wifi barriers cut you off from the drone?

One drone trails a 100m fiber optic leash to another.

Or one has a laser link to another.

This would be worth it just to have a frustrated player shoot Bob from accounting in the butt after he stands by the water cooler blocking the beam for a half hour.

Actually rail mounted drones were popular back in the days when they were in the books. Though they don't have the range of a Doberman and some infrastucture is required.

Rail mounted laser totting drones are perhaps the most dangerous thing on the sprawl for a runner bar squads of security goons. A run I'm planning has a few of these (no meta gaming fokes if you read this and it might not be for you (for all player I GM))

ah but what about a tower drone with chealoncoated flyspys riged to explode? <cue evil mad man laugh here> yes! invisable death from above BWAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAH

Or you can buy the drangonflys with HE explosive charge built in. Even more fun as less time spent modding the fragging things.

true but the point of my set up is to have multi targets, and flyspys are cheaper, more importantly if your plan is not over thought over worked and over done you can't use the maniacal laugh! so you can't do the easy way and laugh because it simply wouldn't be right.