With the unveiling already done, any tidbits about riggers?
As rigging was my first love in SR1 and it has continued to this day as my primary source of getting my geek on in Shadowrun, I would like to hear some of the changes made.
With the lowering of prices for cyber, do drones receive a similair reduction in price?
How does VCR affect pool and threshhold?
any thing else?

not much at all outside of them merging with deckers to become hackers.
basicly the hacker profession is the single biggest change happening in sr4 and therefor not much have been said about them...

This has been said, to the best of my knowledge:

- there still are VCRs, as they have said that the VCR retains massive boni, even though any computer kid can pilot a drone now.
- computers has been split into several skills
- riggers and deckers supposedly are now more encourage to go in with the rest of the team
- the hacker rule are described as smooth and well done even by playtester dropouts who hate the new system as a whole.

So, how is the replacement of the entire world's infrastructure of cables going to be addressed, seeing that 5 years would result in only a small portion of them to be replaced with wireless equipment?

WMI. Also, SR already has a worldwide wireless network for cellphones and the likes. It won't pop up out of the blue. But ... well, it might still seem a bit abrupt. Depends on how well te authors manage to write this up.

True. I guess keeping some old-school matrix hacking around isn't going to happen though, for when the runners end up in some backwater hole still running with wires.

Or a secure location that knows having wireless broadcasts is just asking for more trouble.

Whether or not riggers are physically with the group, for me, doesn't matter. It's the consciousness that matters. Riggers are not a play problem (like deckers are) for me because they act in the same time frame as normal characters. If the PC replaces his character's presence with say a hovering drone, and the team can talk to him via radio or the drone's sensors, then the player is still part of the action even is his character isn't technically present. Being part of the action is all the really matters.

I feel that is true. Maybe now though, riggers will not only be part of the action but also play by the same rules (or more similar). The rigger is there doing his turn under current rules, but you have to change rulesets when his turn comes up.

Not meaningfully more than when the mage's turn comes up, or the melee character.

~J

What constitutes a 'meaningful' difference may be debated.

The movement=acceleration rule fills me with rage every time I encounter it.

~J

the positioning rules are pretty meaningful.

i think, what i'd like to see, (and maybe my rules fu is so weak it's poosible to do this in SR3 but) i would like to see some way, without a VCR, remotely call or control a single vehicle. Not like a subscriber list, that you can rotate through, but only being able to have a single vehicle on that list. Maybe even require some sort of (artifical) limit to what can do it, such as some sort of "special" transponder, than can only be installed on certain vehicles.

Datajack+L1 remote-control deck+vehicle with L1 drone pilot and remote-control adaptation.

~J

You don't even need that. Level 2 autonav plus car phone, and possibly gridlink. You call it and give it an address, it drives itself there. IMO, that's one of the best uses for autonavs.

I use that on my rigger character's "clean" car. it has several routes pre-programmed so it drives to a spot, then leaves after a ertain time to the next spot. When I'm ready for it, I call it and it comes to the place I designate.

I hope that the designers create some new vehicles. i got tired of seeing the same ol' vehicles reused over and over. Example: the mitsubishi nightsky limo it was intro in the original Shadowrun book back in 1988. then in the rigger 3 book nothing changed. Whats up wit dat!!!

Actually, with just Trodes and preconfigured commands, you could easily have normal security guards command the drones on a site.

Like, Lynx 1-4, perform sweep 5, then return to main entrance. Sweep 5 might even be a different route for each of the drones.

Basically, anything you could get a guard dog to do, you can definately also get a drone to do, without anything fancy.

Think of butler drones, bartenders and such. They are inexpensive, and I bet Mrs. Johnson don't wear 'trodes when she asks "James" to fetch the coffee and biscuits.

A Rigger is just obscenely good at controlling a vehicle. That doesn't exclude that most drones do fine without direct control.

Well, I do suppose they put out new models every few years ("Johnson drove to the meet in his '64 Nightsky ..."), like with all cars.

Good point. How long have Cadillac and Lincoln put out the same model limos modified every few years? Or, Jesus, the Corvette or the Taurus or the Camry, or... You get the idea.