Hey guys, I was wondering what everyone thought about converting a few bust-a-moves into combat drones? Obviously they are not the most efficient but they are cheap, and the idea of a small gang of tickle me elmo wannabes piling out of the back of a van with TMPS amuses me greatly...lol
Now obviously the goal is to upgrade them with abit of armor, and get them some good targeting/pilot/firewall programs and whatnot. I think its plausible any thoughts?

Fairly sure they are too small to mount a weapon on, and a weapon mount seems to be the only way the game really allows drones to have weapons. (Though I'm sure it would be easy to have them carry around guns, and they likely should be able to shoot, there just doesn't seem to be support for it)

Doesn't the text for Bust-A-Moves in Arsenal describes how they got a bad rep for being used to commit crimes?

A player of mine was wanting to do this, In my opinion it makes sense that they could carry and use guns (modified for size) and told him I would probably allow it.

Ummm its my understanding that size doesnt come into play with a weapon mount. but common sense does. Cant mount a Panther cannon on em...lol

Ya, mall gangs used them to steal from the stores in the middle of the night, by hacking into them while they were on the shelves

From the way i read the rules I would assume that weapon mounts would be required. But this would convert their cute fuzzy little arms into guns. I would say purchase the metahuman degree flexible arm and hand them some dirty harry .45s. "Eat lead punk hahahhaha" the doll starts to vibrate before blowing your face off. You'd need to buy some decent pilots and specialized targeting software, but should be doable. (And fuzzy logic, ALWAYS buy fuzzy logic)

However, the cheaper solution seems to be putting a self destruct and some pirated software into those bust-a-moves. I hate coming up with terrorist plots, but that self destruct upgrade does HUGE damage. Give them a descent pilot, fuzzy logic, and the covert ops autosoft from unwired....mmm ninja tickle me elmos that explode when discovered...fun.

My suggestion, skip the guns. Coat them in Ruthenium polymer and give them razor claws. Do this to a group of them and you have a slasher movie style nightmare to send after people.

hmmmm The ultimate in anti spirit defense.


10 bustamoves with a taser. Decent pilot, and clearsite.

Hold your action until the 10 BM attack. The dodge dice should be -10 from the spirit, and it might have taken damage. Then you can attack with a narrow burst APDS to finish it off.

I put Termination System (Self Destruct) into mine. It was more for a last resort, though.

A Dissonance AI/Sprite living in a bust-a-move...

Possess it with a Guardian Spirit with Gauss Rifle Skill.

Many spirits would not choose to dodge a 1ft tall drones attack...


In our game we allowed a player to modify hold out pistols with bust-a-move size handles. Anything bigger seemed silly to us.

even worse: coat the blades with your toxin/drug of choice.

I like to use spider drones for this usually. much smaller, easier to sneak in and out.

All drones can have one slot for a weapon mount (though remember size of gun versus drone common sense.) So I say you could give them light pistols or tasers.

The math is Body divided by 3 rounded up. So 0-3 body drones can have 1 normal size mount and 4 body drone can have 2

If small, malnourished African youth can fire an AK, bust-a-moves can have machine pistols and smaller SMGs

We have a demented clown hacker who has a heavily modified bust a move doll with modified hold outs that look like cap guns, tool hands and from time to time spontaneously breaks out into chorus's of LA COOKA ROCHA.

Does this guy wear a purple suit, having pasty white skin, possibly painted on, big red lips, and green hair?

Put a grenade in one hand, and the pin in the other. Motion sensor activated, behind a door.

Your game your call, but.... when you look at it... No way.


I think if you compared the weight of the child soldier to the AK to the weight of the Bust A Move to any thing larger than a hold out and you would see why they would have trouble.

A human is going to be much more sturdy than a fluffy toy drone.

Say child soldier is 80 points (13 year old).

Bust a move has a body of one is a minidrone.

From Arsenal
Minidrones (Body 1): The size of a large insect or mouse,
minidrones range from 10 to 25 centimeters in length and fit in
the palm of one’s hand (or a pocket). They receive a Concealability
modifier of –2 (see pp. 301–302, SR4).

Say 2 to 4 pounds for a minidrone.
Figure Bust A Move may be over twice that at 10 ten pounds of soft and fluffy toy drone (anything larger would be too heavy for a child to pick up).

Now consider this an AK47 is 8 pounds. That is a ratio of 10 to 1 to our child soldier.

M1911 Colt 45 pistol empty is 2 1/2 pounds. That is a ratio of 4 to 1 to our toy.




Really the closest I could come is a M60 light machinegun. The M60 is 23 pounds which would be about the same weight ratio to an 80 pound child soldier of 4 to 1.

There is no way an 80 pound child soldier could fire an M60 on the move when an average size infantry soldier running 200 pounds or two and half times the weight of a child soldier (Or a ratio of 10 to 1 to the M60) would not find it easy to fire an M60 on the move. That would be like our infantry man trying to fire a 50 cal machine gun on the move.

Certainly I could see child soldiers having to treat an AK47 as a heavy weapon (uncompensated recoil is doubled).


Add the fact that the Bust A Move servos are designed to allow the drone to walk, dance, and maybe fetch a commlink. What more I doubt that a Bust A Moves hands are designed to hold a firearm (if any thing they would be designed to not be able to pull the trigger on a gun or even to hold a knife). Bust A Move is also one fifth the price of any other minidrone meaning it likely lacks some of the sensor and other stuff found standard in minidrones.

Now the idea of a taser or a dart pistol with little to no recoil has some interesting possibilities .


But really why go to all that trouble to convert a walker toy in to a weapon when you could take a remote control nerf glider, put a small rocket engine in the back, a grenade in the front, and then upgrade autopilot and then use it as a smart weapon. Dirt cheap. Bring a lot of them with a variety of payloads.

You could get it aloft like a kite, use a floater drone, or have a flying drone pull a string of them. Get them near the battle perhaps riding the thermal currents. A rigger could pull three out at a times, and each IP aim one at a target and ignite the rocket. Close counts with grenades. If they were high enough up, you might even avoid any jamming.


Same goes for a remote control car.




You would have to treat anything as a heavy weapon for recoil purposes.

That conjures up quite the image in my mind.

We had a situation like that, with devil rats. For numerous insignificant attackers, we handled them as a burst.

So, your burst of devil rats or bust-a-moves would gain one additional attack die per additional attacker.

Small, malnourished African youths are not made of lightweight plastic endostructure, plush, and faux fur, intended to be harmless to a child to play with.

They might, with some alteration, be able to pull the trigger, but after the first round they would flop prone, certainly with a cute flourish and funny sound effect, and the rest of the burst would go hazardously, adorably wild.

I'm not sure where you guys are all coming from here.

A Bust-a-move cannot have a weapon mount. It is a minidrone and can only have mini/micro-drone or 'all' type mod's.

Weapon mount is a 'standard' mod' and only available on 'small' or larger drones.

While the illustration and fluff clearly show the drone to possess arms they are cosmetic at best because it lacks the actual mechanical arm mod'.

Even were you to handwave that, or pay the 8000 to retro-fit it with proper arms they would only have a STR of 1 and a reach of 10 cm. Barely able to operate a light pistol.

If you can imagine your great-granny firing a pistol with only one finger on each hand then you pretty much have the picture there.

Special Equipment is the way to go here. I like splash grenades 'cos they don't destroy the drone. You could have hours of fun with Surtr in splash grenades.....

Totally missed the lack of arms.

The other think is that the Bust A Move is only 20% the price of the other minidrones.

Wonder what got left out?




For the gliders, I thought about having a dropable grenade (great for laying down smoke or gas) and then an internal one for pip point accuracy.

you consider how small a grenade launcher round is.... You could likely carry two or three.


Figure a small engine to help the glider maintain stand off distance with enough juice for about 10 minutes of full power flight and a small rocket booster to get it where it needs to go fast.

Have some good reusable reusable gliders that can actually take off and land.

Then them supplement them with the dirt cheap one shots.

Gets around the biggest problem for a rigger, if any thing goes wrong you can lose a lot more cred than your share of the run in destroyed or damaged drones.

That was a really well spoken point. Excellent illustration.