what can the bust-a-move drones really be used for? if i buy 50 of them can i have them attack someone? can they defend my home? just trying to understand. i am new to the game and i dont know much.

They are about knee high and are great at stealing small items like jewellery or cigarettes. Outside of that, not much really. Maybe you could sell them on Walkign Street to LBFMs and fallangs.

We have a character in our game that has a nurse teddy bear in the back of his truck that applies a savior nanomedkit to people. And there's always my character plan to dress one up in a nazi SS outfit, fill it with a couple kilos of C12 and have it goosestep up to someone's front door and knock...

Interesting ideas come out of late night drinking binges...

I have this image of him creating a platform with his black uniform and jodhpurs on, while being smartly saulted (assaulted or saluted, take your pick) by ranks of bustamoves, which are marching in Stechschritt.

Well.... they can dance....

I mean really it is listed to show the world as a whole. There are really advanced toys in 2070.

I mean if you wanted you could mod it out. It only has a body of 1, so you get 1 mod slot, but that is enough for a weapon. Now the book says up to LMG, but I would say a bust a move can have up to a Heavy Pistol.

But you can also fit them with cameras and other sensors, then swap them out for a mark's kid's toy.

I like to think of as an example of common electronics that can be used as drones.

Seen threads like this before. I know the search function is crap, but see if you can find a thread from a few weeks back about more subtle uses for drones. The bust-a-move featured heavily.

Give one as high a rating first aid autosoft as you can find, as much of a pilot upgrade as you can get, and keep it in your medkit.

pilot 6
first aid autosoft 6
medkit 6

18 dice for first aid rolls, and you don't need to devote someone from the team to patching up the wounded team mate.

Note: a T-mancer could use a sprite to make it rating x2 + 6 for the first aid dicepool.

Autosofts are capped at rating 4, IIRC. Which I might not.

Also, I can't help but imagine a little tickle-me-elmo in a white doctor's coat pushing a medkit the same size it is (put the medkit on wheels, for chrissakes) across a bullet-torn battlefield towards a wounded runner. Hey, at least it would be able to take advantage of cover pretty easily.

They are minidrones, which means that they cannot get weapons mounts (have to be small or larger drones (or normal vehicles) to get such). Additionally, they have 4 mod slots, since that's the minimum.

Bust-a-moves are good for two things in my game:
1.) creative subterfuge that somehow involves children (up to and including blowing them up)
2.) getting you shot in the face by the professional criminals you hang out with

I think that illustrates my opinion on BaMs.

Oh, and see the link in my sig regarding how to make the search function actually work some of the time.

Yeah, Method, narrowing down the search and using terms correctly is important, I'll give you that. I just wish it had a "sort by relevance" option.

You are right. Though I have always house ruled the weapon mount by size of the weapon instead, seems to make more sense to me.

Get a load of them, cover them in Ruthenium polymer and give them razor hands. Now there's a nightmare.

Dozens of near-invisible little Freddies. Awesome.

Our group's Rigger snagged one of these. I'll let you know how we end up using them.

i appreciate the ideas and i have tried to search the forums (before and after posting) and the search function does suck. thanks for the help.

Bust-a-move software patchers.

the ones you can buy are. the ones machine sprites can come with are not.

Add gecko tips and buy the "squirrel", "devil rat" and "pigeon" bodies. No one really pays attention to small animals perched on buildings or power lines. (No, the pigeon doesn't fly but a lot of pigeons just scurry around) Add a Rating 6 laser link and an extended battery and you have a surveillance/stake-out drone that's good for 12+ hours of operation (depending on the GM's stance on how much battery life you gain from minimal movement) and that doesn't RF broadcast even in stealth mode.

Note that all drones act as relays (read the Unwired section on "Mesh networks") so you can use 2 Bust-a-Moves to provide WiFi to a secure facility: one on the outside with their radio on and linked to the matrix with a laser link pointed across the fence to the second drone, located somewhere unobtrusive, in stealth mode with encryption, ECCM, and the highest signal rating you can cram in it, or possibly linked to a comm it carries with a 5 or 6 signal rating.

While they are too small to equip with most weapons (recoil is a harsh mistress), the stupidly rich can consider adding a laser pistol since they are recoilless and don't involve moving parts or ejection ports. The simplest way to weaponize a BaM is to strap a grenade to it. Smoke and flash-bang will tear up the non-structural shell but won't harm the mechanics of the drone. A full blown grenade will trash it, but you can consider a BaM to be a slow, cheap guided weapon.

One could mount flash packs in the eyes, and the pain beams would work also, but those may prove a bit largish. Squirt weapons are also basically recoilless

Actually, the bust-a-moves are just a single entry which covers multiple toys. (look at the Similar Models line).

My GM balked when I mentioned the prospect of buying my own 'army' of whoreslammer 40k chaos space marines based on the bust-a-move template and loading them into a multi-launch drone rack. (10 of em in a single rack... or say a squad of 6 plus 8 drone missiles :))

He wasn't too enamoured of the idea of subscribing all of them and issuing a single command... attack this target... then watching 4 foldout/light pistol grade shots pop out of their rifles, giving a -1 reaction for each additional shot.


The single biggest advantage of bust-a-moves is they're cheap!! (and by extension... disposable).

If cheap, then the mods are really limited....
amphibious +250
anti-theft +200 (don't laugh, 10s electrical touch attack)
armour +600 (almost not worth it for the mere 3 points max)
gecko tips +300
improved economy +500 (double operation time)
smoke system +800 (you can load other aerosols/gases than merely smoke)
ram plate! +250 (now if it only moved faster than 10)
reflective hull +300 (yeah lasers are that common.... not)
touch sensors +500
winch +500 (provided you can find some way to anchor the damn thing for 10 TONS of force)

Note that to provide this relay function, they must be in Active Mode. Drones in Passive Mode or Hidden Mode do not relay. (Unwired, p.54)

However, the Retrans Unit vehicle mod from Arsenal (p.142) makes no mention of such a limitation.

Ways that you can use them (they are, after all, perfect decoy where children are involved):

- Need to spy on an exec, who has children. Add sensories, and bring him to 'life' during the night. If the exec doesn't have children, find something that can work out to be the same (if he's a hunter, swap a hunting trophie with the drone. It takes prep time, but it could be done.)

- Perfect suicidal bomber, without the need to lose, well, a living bomber

- Use several to kidnap the kid of an executive (have the players come up with a believable story for delivering the 'teddy bear' and voila)

- Have an exec's friend who has children 'forget' his 'teddy bear' at the exec's place after an evening's get together. Again, lots of prep, but possible good turnover.

I know you cannot put a weapon mount on the Teddy Bear, but I just has a nasty thought ...

Can you put mini-blades, like turning it into the equivalent of a Wolverine doll for a nightmarish wake up call in the middle of the night ??

How about troll dolls that suffocate people?

And once again, we swing in with an idea blatantly sporked straight out of Doctor Who.

Bust-a-move doll with an empathy software that convince your target's children to do whatever you need (and assist him if necessary).

Actually the Army of Spehss Mehreens would work. Every Drone gets at least 4 in letters FOUR Mod Slots. So you can add two mechanical arms and augment them using the cyberware rules. You could even add armor to the arms, probably more than to the drone itself.

I'd however prefer prefer an army of orks with a heavily modified Steel Lynxs as Waaagh Boss. Too bad that doesn't work. I'll have to downgrade the Waagh Boss to a Doberman.

Now I can 'ave a roight and proppa Waaagh!

Is everyone making WH40k armies with BaMs? I've actually been thinking of building an army of Tau armed with pulse rifles (custom look tasers).

This may even be Games Workshop's idea for making even more money in 2070. Not only can they sell more figures, the miniatures could even hack each other to pieces so that the players have to buy new models

Doesn't the busta move have hands that it could use to shoot a light pistol or taser?

According to the Arsenal and its Errata it doesn't even have arms. How can it have hands then? This may be an ommission but until this is fixed, you'll have to add two arms first.

Yeah, but without arms, in the fluff how did the matrix gang use them to steal stuff?

No Idea. Maybe the drones kicked the boxes

As I said, I assume this is an ommission but by RAW they don't have arms.

Said gang actually used hijacked LEBD-1s. They pinned it on the BaMs so they'd be taken off the market in the wake of their heists (earning them a small compensation from MCT's competitors) rather than the places they'd hit beefing up security - allowing them to do another set of runs without concern for new threats in that department.

Nah, I'd get the base koala model, add claws and maybe one-shot fang injectors, then hide them in trees around the compound. The assembly shop would be a very twisted version of those Build-a-Bear stores.

What happens when you get your bustamoves mixed up.

Or with a bit of magic

Who would build a dancing monkey without arms? There are already dancing robots with arms. Small robots with dexterous arms... I mean, they make Gnome sized cyberarms, how would little monkey arms be much harder?

Jeremy, Cloud and I discussed it, and here are a few things we would allow in our game:

Modified Holdout pistols. They can use a SA, but the second shot counts as heavy recoil. Pay for metahuman adjustment to represent availability/cost for making it work with tiny monkey hands.

Blades. Damage base of knife with one strength (1/2=1 +1 = 2DV physical).

Electronic devices. Anything that is handheld can be built into their body for one mod point.

The anti-theft system with 10S was designed to be bulky because it was fit in a big ole car or truck. The monkey equivalent would be a hand-held shocker version (6S e instead of 10S).

We would allow any number of tiny mods, but for things like a 6S shock or hand-held size upgrades, it is going to take up a slot. I would allow one slot of upgrade before the start taking movement penalties. They rely on being light and dexterous, so for each mod past the first, you are going to be removing one die from all their physically active based actions, ie. Climbing, Running, Jumping (Piloting) and grappling, knife fighting, dodging shooting etc.

Also, you will need to puchase targeting software two or three times. Once for grappling, Once for blades/spurs, and once for shooting their holdout pistols. With your software (piracy) skill you can copy the software to other drones, as per rules in the core book.

Dont forget, the Vehicles page on the upgraded generator you are using assumes you are paying for software only once per drone, so use the multiplier cell to the left of vehicles.

I think it would be cool if the apothecaries could rebuild the less damaged minis, thereby making them actually useful in the game. And each army would have its own overall behavior programmed in. Squads could learn from fighting different armies. that would be damn cool

Creative subterfuge using children and packing them with explosives has already been mentioned, but our game probably has a unique use for one: a body for a fledgeling AI. It's a cheap way to teach her about gravity, before we let her at any of the really cool drones.

You know now that I think about it, it is things like this thread suggest that got me banished from playing a rigger ever again. I'm sorry, I can't help it if my fav bad guy from "The Dark Knight" animated series was the 'Toy Maker'. My GM objected to radio controlled nitro cars with blocks of C4 in them.

If he didn't want me to build an insane army of high explosive bundles of joy, he shouldn't have let me get all that whn I brought an RC mag in and said "I want to buy all this stuff".

BTW, try making a Predator with a BaM. Stealth coating, a short fineblade, and a taser will to it fine. Really funny with it zaps em and slits their throat.

I this thread!