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JoelHalpern
Suppose one has a humaniform drone with an itnerchangeable tool kit on the end of its arm. (If you can do this with a cyberarm, it would seem you could do it with a drone.)
Now, suppose one has a hacker with plenty of skills, but confined to a PMV.
1) Could he use the drone to perform build/repair actions (using mechanic, armory, etc skills the hacker has)?
2) If so, presumably his roll to do so by remote control is "Command" + skill? And to do so jumped in would be response + skill?
2a)And if he is in VR, he adds VR bonuses? And control rig bonus if he has that?
3) Does this mean that even a hacker with low IQ can be just as good at repairing things, under those limited circumstances?
4) Are there skills you can't use this way? Presumably you can't use resonance or magic skills this way. It would also seem that you can not use pure matrix skills (the cracking group or the electronics group outside of hardware?)

Thank you,
Joel


DireRadiant
See Chart on P. 247 SR4A

Jumped IN you get Drone Response + Rigger Skill + VR bonueses
Remote Controlled you get Command Program Rating + Rigger Skill + AR/VR bonuses
Autonomous(Drone acting under Rigger issued Command) you use Drone Pilot + Autosoft Program
Ascalaphus
Hmm, it does look like this is a workaround for Logic yeah. Mind, that's not always an advantage. A Logic of 8 is within reach of a hacker/rigger without breaking the bank, and useful for a lot of things. But replacing the Logic with a drone is pretty cheap, true.

I'm not sure if there are RAW reasons for why you couldn't use Command+Software to write code if you had a drone do it, but it definitely seems wrong. It might make sense to restrict Command to jobs on the physical plane (let's call the matrix a digital plane..)
Johnny Hammersticks
I remember some sidebar, I think from SR4A saying that if you wanted to put attributes back into matrix actions, you could use the character's linked attribute as a success cap for checks like this.

JoelHalpern
There are several different optional rules in sidebars that would change the situation. I was asking whether it worked by the base as written. I appreciate the comments.

One of the things I found strange is that as written, even if the hacker has good Logic, he is probably better of using the drone and ignoring his logic, since a command 6 optimize 3 program is cheap, and he gets VR bonuses on top of that.

Yours,
Joel
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