After watching the vid in Bladerunner's post, I threw this together. Thoughts?

Jump Pistons (Ground drones only)

Sometimes you wish your ground-based drone could just jump over that obstacle instead of having to find its way around or through. Jump pistons are mounted on the underside of the drone's chassis, and when engaged, allow the drone to jump up and forward to clear obstacles. The maximum height that a drone can jump is 8m, although the height the drone leaps is decided by the pilot and can be less than its maximum. Forward distance covered by the jump is 1m from a standstill, and up to 3m with a moving start. To land the jump successfully, the controller of the drone must make a successful Pilot (2) test. If the test fails, the drone takes standard falling damage, and the controller must make a successful Pilot test to right the drone.

Jump Pistons
Slots: 1
Threshold: 8
Tools: Shop
Cost: Body x 300¥
Availability: 6
Special Skill: -

ummm... i'm having a hard time envisioning a drone flying along at 120 kmph, deploying these things, flying up 8 meters... and then only moving 3 meters forward before hitting the ground.

suggestion: just make them jump a certain portion of their current move speed per meter jumping upward (with stationary drones being able to choose any distance up to 1 meter)

Agreed... This was the disconnect that I was having as well...

Good good, that's exactly what I wanted to hear, actually. I had no desire to come up with how to model a "jump with a running start."

I wanted to leave it out entirely, actually. "Can't do this from a running start."

But I couldn't decide whether I wanted people saying that was retarded, or if I wanted them to say that the distance I picked was retarded. In the end, I went with including it and waiting for someone that wanted to spend more time on the idea to fix it.

However, as I think about it, I think I'm leaning back to "can't deploy them while moving." Mostly because even if you figured out how far it went in the air, then you'd have to figure out its arc, you'd have to figure out how far out to jump, etc. etc. And then I'd want to make the test to land while moving harder or something.

Doesn't this come standard on the mach 5?

Would this technology translate equally to a larger size drone, or only a smaller drone capable of flipping without recourse?

I think there would definitely be problems with doing it from a moving start of anything over say 15kph.
You could put a cap on how fast it could go without incurring a penalty and then roll the handling penalty out for every 10kph over the maximum allowable speed. So it would be too hard to do it at 35kph, but 65 would be asking for this thing to crash and burn.

Then again, if the drone is packed with explosives... maybe that's what your looking for. Could be great for those second story jobs that you need a quick entrance.

I watching the video again and looking at other tidbits about the robot on other sites, I don't think that you could roll this out as an open mod for any vehicle.

The vehicle in question has top/bottom symmetry and wheels large proportionately large enough to prevent chassis impact with the ground. The launching mechanism also seems to flip the robot (not to mention the subsequent tumbling rolls).

I doubt that this could be installed in an autodoc drone without launching it to it's destruction.

AND?!?!?!??!

Could be one hell of a fun bomb.

I agree though, the drone in the vid is symmetrical, which gives it the ability to land on either side.

But, what about if I purchased Smart Tires? 16cm is roughly 6 inches. Anyone think I could do it if I put smart tires on that bad boy?

I don't know that smart tires would make that much of a difference.
The launching mechanism would have to be fundamentally revised.
The launching mechanism generates forward movement and also generates the forward tilt.

Canceling the forward tilt would remove the necessity of top/bottom symmetry by reducing the possibility of rolling over mid-flight.
Canceling the forward tilt would also limit the ability to generate forward movement without significant momentum.

I would be satisfied with a 1-2m hopping mechanism for most drones.

Eh, you could limit it if you wanted to. I'm just going on "the bigger the drone, the bigger and stronger the pistons." As to "launching itself to destruction, I think that's taken care of by the potential damage if you fail the Pilot test to land it correctly. (Also, I wasn't trying to model the drone in the video directly. Obviously it is designed to flip all over the place and just land however. Jump Pistons: The Shadowrun Drone Mod is the "new and improved" technology based on the concept.)

That's how I'll be using it anyway.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Can I mount 4 of these on my Westwind?

It depends on how awesome you want your Westwind to be.

(I envisioned them as only being available for drones, but hell, your game. )

Now, we just need buzz-saws and homing bird-plane thingies and we're set! We can already get bulletproof glass, amphibious mods, and treads

Doesn't seem very likely to be useful, or even work well, but then (1) there will be sixty years to perfect it, and (2) it's not much weirder than half the other stuff in the game. This is science fiction, after all.

To jump while on the move would require the wheels to be on the pistons. Otherwise when the pistons hit the ground, you'll pull an endo. This would require a higher cost, I think. And also need a suspension capable of handling a landing - GM prerogative, based on size of vehicle. And still may take damage.

I want to say the distance should be based on the time it takes to gain and lose the altitude, but I don't know how to figure that.

The threshold for the pilot test should be based on speed and/or height. Plus 1 for every 10m of speed?

I definitely think that in 60 years the technology would be significantly refined. I wonder though what type of g-forces and concussive force a driver/passenger would be subjected to if this were applied to a vehicle?