Please help me with the after action review of something that happened in my last session. I'm still new to SR4, so I'm not positive I handled things in keeping with RAW.

The setup:
The team is looking for a fairly distinctive BTL dealer in Redmond. They trade info with the Crimson Crush gang and get an address. There is a rival shadowrunning team already doing surveillance of the target with a rigger and a hacker holed up in a disused storefront a few blocks away. The hacker has hacked the target's commlink and is monitoring traffic. The rigger has a pair of MCT Fly-spy drones patrolling outside the target's apartment building.

How it goes down:
The team approaches to within a few blocks in their vehicle. The team hacker launches his own MCT Fly-spy to make a sweep of the area around the target's apartment building while the mage does the same in astral.

I decide that the hacker has a chance to spot one of the other MCT Fly-spy drones. Not knowing if there are any specific rules for setting the Threshold on a test like this, I decide that it's pretty hard and give it a Threshold of 5.

The hacker doesn't have a great Perception skill, so he tells me that he's piping the sensor feed from his drone to the image link of everyone else on the team (except the mage, who is still busy). I decide that this is okay and call for a teamwork roll rather than having everyone roll separately. Between the four helpers, the character with the highest Perception DP gets the maximum bonus allowed from the helping tests. He makes the test and scores 5 Hits. I tell him he's spotted a suspicious flying object. Several Complex Actions later, the hacker has identified the hidden nodes of the drones, intercepted the wireless traffic and decrypted the signal.

This is a pretty significant point of divergence in the story. Subsequent events, which I will not bore you with, went very differently because of this Perception Test. Without it, they likely would not have figured out that the target was under surveillance by a rival team.

So, my question to you is: did I do anything blatantly against RAW? Was this a perfectly legitimate use of drone sensors, image links and team tests? My impression is that it's all kosher, but it does mean that the team will be awfully "Perceptive" via drone in the cases where they have the time to use teamwork.

Sounds legit, although I think I'd have either forced the Decker to be the primary or have them make seperate tests since they are basically just looking at their own tv screens and are at best on a confernce call with each other.

I don't see how the hacker viewing the sensor feed in AR is any different from how someone else would view it in AR. If the hacker were hopped into the drone in VR, then I can see it being different.

He is the one controling the drone's movements and "zoom", ect, ect...

I definitely see your point. That seems like enough justification to make the hacker be the primary in the teamwork roll.

was the perception test Sensor+Perception?

The Size of the drone would subtract dice from the perception roll if I remember correctly... -4 or thereabouts (maybe even -6), can't remember

Keep the Faith

I definitely forgot about that. Thanks.

Looks like you raised the Threshold number instead... no problems really...
Threshold would have applied if the drone was hiding (Depending upon his Infiltration roll), and the reduced dice pool would be because it is small...

Keep the Faith

This modifier is for concealability, or if you were trying to smuggle the drone in your pocket into a place. The modifiers for finding the drone are visibility and those on the perception test tables.

I would give it a threshold of three which represents a "small" item. After that its all about visibility and situational mods which adjusts dice pools.

The drone would probably get the -2 for not being in the vicinity or even -3 for being far away. Of course there are others that may apply on pg 136 SR4a

If the Pilot of the drone was instructed to be as stealthy as possible, the drone may get an opposing test.

What would you use for that opposing test? I don't have the book in front of me atm.

Pilot+Autosoft. There is an autosoft in Unwired that is used for Infiltration tests. I think it's called Covert Ops. If you don't have an Autosoft its just Pilot.

Hmm, do drones have to Default?

Pretty sure, but I think Fly-Spys come with a 30 day free trial of Mitsuhama "Soft Petal Falling" Covert Ops 3 software.

First of all, I say you did a fine job with the rules and math, easily better than myself.

My question though:

What made this drone suspicious? There are plenty of drones zipping around. Maybe not a surplus in Redmond since gangers and other assorted jackasses like to use them as target practice but what made that drone suspicious? I'm cool with you injecting it to further the story, most of us fudge these things to toss a bit extra into the game, but I'm just curious.

It's not just that it's a drone but a flyspy, which are micro flies fitted with electronics. If you saw it and actualyl distinguished it from a regular fly it is very very suspicious.

Okay, I can dig that.

@ Ayeohx: I love your signature. The ramming rules are crazy.

Thanks Red. I have an older post where I ram several vehicles head on into each other to see what happens. Check out what happens when two buses full of people give each other a love tap.
Oh, and I think 2 Steel Lynx's can head on at full speed for no damage. Wee!

"Fly-Spy" is a brand name. It doesn't describe the shape nor the size of the drone. Besides, the MCT Fly-Spy is a mini-drone not a micro-drone.

According to Arsenal page 102, mini-drones are 10-25 centimeters in length (that's four to ten inches for us Yanks).

Ah my bad for some reason i had it confused with a different drone, maybe even different setting but my point still stands it's the sort of drone used almost entirely for spying.

I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it at the time, but I would guess that I just assumed there wouldn't be a lot of drones hanging out in the vicinity of a (mostly) squatter apartment building on the edge of the "decent" part of Redmond. I figured that one of the things the hacker would be looking for would be other drones, and since he himself is using a MCT Fly-spy, I figured he'd know what to look for.

As to the size of the drone, the description says "large insect." The Dragonfly in Arsenal, also a minidrone, says it's about the same size as the real thing. Yet the little wheeled distraction drone in Arsenal (forgot the name) is labeled a microdrone, but by the picture has got to be bigger than either the Flyspy or the Dragonfly. It's a little frustrating.

My major concern immediately afterward was that I didn't account for the small size of the drone properly. Going with the earlier suggestion of making the rigger be the primary for the teamwork roll is going to cripple my team, since the hacker's Perception is 1. On the other hand, for riggers with a decent Perception DP the teamwork dice are probably going to add a couple of Hits.

Sounds like a gaping hole in the Hacker's Build there... maybe he should work on improving that a little bit... Though I bet his dice pool is a 4 or 5 (Hacker Intuition is typically a 3 or 4 at least)

Keep the Faith

I wouldn't say that it should be a major concern. You handled it very well and missing a detail or two is standard. Hell, I miss details all the time and the gamers don't worry because the game's a-flowin.