Let me see if I understand everything correctly.

Pilot is basically a special System thing for Drones.

System is capped by Response.

Response counts as 3 for drones.

Hardware can only be upped by 2 points from the base.

3+2=5

5<6

Pilot 6 is meaningless


I want to say this is wrong but it follows based on my knowledge of the rules. Can somebody set me straight?

Combat drones are device level 4, so at the very least any of those can hit 6.
Then of course there's the modular electronics mod, don't remember if it's unwired or arsenal. Either way, it allows you to upgrade or downgrade signal and system to whatever level you want. Costs 1000Y I believe, remember it being just enough that using it to turn a cheap comlink into a 6 response/signal beast is just as expensive as grabbing the already rating 4 one.


Edit: Sorry, it is infact in the 4a changes doc, http://shadowrun4.com/resources/sr4a/sr4a_changes.pdf

After reading through Arsenal regarding device rating it seems to cut up a device into the following:

System
Response
Firewall
Pilot
Signal

Everything except pilot can be upgraded easily but pilot rating must be purchased as a new "pilot"

Also, Any vehicle designated as a "Security" would have Response, Firewall , System & Signal 4 and military would be 5. Pilot would still be 3.

This makes the system a lot more flexible as i can have Response 6 / Firewall 6 drone with pilot 3 that can run a multitude of programs/autosofts.

Program options can also be added to autosofts so that one can ensure that they run at a higher rating.

So is Pilot capped by Response the way conventional System is?

Also, does Pilot cap Autosofts?

The way I read it "Pilot" is now more or less the "Attribute" of the Drone very much like reaction is used for driving tests.

Response & System will cap Pilot and Autosoft. Pilot does not cap autosoft as Pilot rating would be the same as attribute on a metahuman.

I might be wrong as Arsenal says that pilot is not part of a device rating at all. Since it is not clarified in Arsenal I would say that Pilot is still limited to Response and System since Pilot does no longer seem to be the actual OS anymore but more of an extra attribute describing the level of individual decision making of the drone.

Human: Reaction+Piloting Skill
Drone: Pilot+Autosoft

jopp, pilot and system is one and the same for drones.

That's what i thought - Until i read Arsenal

The problem is that when they describe device rating for drones and vehicles they separate System and Pilot when talking about upgrading. By that I read it that they have actually changed that with Arsenal.

They explicitly say that pilot rating is not part of device rating. Device rating is Response, System, Firewall and Signal.

Thus you can change them individually.

This would mean that you can have a drone with pilot of 3 and system of 6. The pilot isn't any better at performing the task but have a more hardware and software to run more autosofts and program without hampering it's progress.

now thats wacky weird. Do note however that device rating is a catch all single number for when the GM cant be bothered to set all 4 numbers for every joe wagesalve comlink or similar that the hacker or tm at the table feels like exploiting. And based on that device rating have some "issue" (like say that a cred stick had better broadcast range then your average comlink, at lesser cost).

and to add to the confusion, AR4a carries forward the concept that pilot replaces system for drones.

all in all, i find that bit in arsenal verry weird. But then i would have loved it if arsenal introed a definite device rating for each vehicle, rather then having us guess about them being normal, security or military grade...

but then, SR4 was the book that claimed only dones had pilot, only to later present the reader with a vehicle list where just about every vehicle had a pilot rating.

sadly, it seems riggers got the leftovers from the matrix refresh, and noone seems willing to step up and really get the ducks in a row (except maybe trollman, but thats another story).

Yes and no.

Giving a pilot the same attribute for system/firewall/response/signal actually gives us more problems since vehicle security is rather moot as all regular vehicles have a pilot rating of 1.

So how do we explain this when regular vehicles have a device rating of 3 but a pilot of 1?

Hell, security vehicles have a device rating of 4 but a pilot rating of 1?

This would mean that they have a high response, signal and firewall but a system rating of 1. So 99% of our vehicles cannot run higher autosofts than rating 1 and rolls 2D6 +/1 handling (Pilot + autosoft).
They cannot have any software higher than rating 1 unless running optimized software.

Making pilot attributes more flexible makes perfect sense to me so I'll go with Arsenal rules.

The "pilot" is basically the dogbrain, the attribute of the drone - that little piece of core programming in how it controls a vehicle.
System on the other hand is the total resources the drone have in the way of how well it can run programs

the weirdness comes with SR4A contradicting arsenal again, as one would expect that if arsenal was the way they wanted it to be, SR4A would echo the split of system and pilot.

also, the way drone pilots are written, they are basically agent programs that control a hardware shell. And given that a agents pilot rating put a limit on the rating of any programs it uses, it makes sense that the same is how it works for drone pilots.

also, my view on autosofts is that they give a boost to various tasks, not that a drone is incapable of doing something without a matching autosoft.

still, it would have been much better if the arsenal bit about ratings where written such that response and firewall started out equal to pilot rating for a given vehicle, and that signal was equal to sensor rating.