Greetings,

I am working up an AI character and I am looking at having an anthroform drone to physically accompany the team. I am thinking that I would like to use an anthroform drone that would carry the commlink node in a hidden compartment inside it. The drone would be able to take the place of the ever so useful meatbod. My problem is that there are only three anthroform drones that I could find, the Otomo, Akiyama, and Manservant. The Otomo is too expensive and too high availability. The Akiyama is like the Otomo only moreso. The Manservant is hobbled by the speed, lack of agility and fighting ability, and body and armor issues.

Does anybody know of more examples of anthroform drones? What I am looking for is basically a manservant with armor, the ability to move at a decent pace and engage in melee combat.

Any help would be appreciated.

Well there is also the Tomino, but those are the size of a troll in military armor. Definitely sub-optimal if you're going for subtlety...

use a crawler, be a dober-man

SR4 doesn't have the ability to make vehicles from scratch, unlike rigger 3. What you're going to want to do is take a vehicle around the right size and capability - and put arms, legs, and looks-like-a-human mod on it.

For comparison, the Akiyama, a childsize drone has a body of 4. The Otomo, a metahuman replica cyborg has a body of six. The tomino, a troll-sized combat deathrobot has a body of ten. So that gives you a ballpark for what to shoot for.


Full Mechanical Arm - 4000, 2 slots(facility)
Walker Mode - Bodyx500, 2 slots(shop) (Overmodded. Penalty: Metahuman movement rates. 15/30/90)
Rigger Adaptation: 2500, 1 slots(Kit! hah.)(Overmod if you can. Seriously, if a pokeball sized microdrone can have it for free, so should a car or bike)
OR cyborg Adaptation(facility), your AI probably doesn't need to pay for the CCU, though, but the cyborg adaptation technically doesn't require it.
Touch Sensors: Bodyx500, 1 slot.(shop). (Again, overmod if you can. Its pretty much the one last common cyborg traid/mod)
Maybe Pimped Ride(looks like a human) or Mimic System to get the human looks.
Overmodify as much of that as your GM will let you to get a finished human-like walker drone. You'll need 4-8 slots, depending on how lenient your Gm is. Slap that all on a cheap vehicle with about the right body. I like motorcycles for that, because you can adjust the body with Sidecars to basically add mass and get what you want, but you could use a drone for the free rigger adaptation that comes with all drones.

Now add stuff to the cyberlimb capacity on your cyberlimbs. Armor to taste, and a commlink, and you're good to go.

Here's an example, taking advantage of the contrails extra modslots, using the standard limit of availability 12
Thundercloud Contrail: 5000
Handling: 1 Accel: 20/40 Speed: 180 Pilot 1 Body 6, armor 4, sensor 1.
Walker mode: 3000. Half speec/accel, handling +1
Touch Sensor: 3000. +1 sensor/perception. +1 handling.
Full Mechanical Limb 4000. Cyberlimb Armor Enhancement 2 (600, Avail10, 4 capacity each), smartlink: 1000(avail10, 3 capacity)
Full Mechanical Limb 4000. Cyberlimb Armor Enhancement 2 x2(600, Avail10, 4 capacity each), Commlink 2000+commlink(2 capacity)
Rigger Adaptation: 2500.
Mimic Modification 1: 5000.(like a human dude. Now you even have an excuse to share meals with the team)
Adjusted Stats:
Handling: 1(3) Accel: 10/20 Speed: 90 Pilot 1 Body 6, armor 4(, sensor 1(Mess around with custom sensor loadouts yourself! Its a Vehicle. Enjoy signal5/capacity12)
Slots used:2+1+2+2+1+20=10, 0 remaining
Total cost: 30700+commlink

And thats roughly how it does. A slightly more elegant solution to the commlink problem involves upgrading the vehicle with a new Response chip and System/Firewall to go with it, possibly using the Modular Electronics mod from 4th anniversary's changelog.

Arise, thread! Let all see the majesty of Udoshi's creation!

http://toyroom.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/motodesign.jpg

This one obviously doesn't have the Mimic option.

(This is a vehicle / powered armor extension called a Motoslave from an anime called Bubblegum Crisis, in case anyone was wondering.)

Build a Nexus into the vehicle?
That might be a way to get around the commlink issues