Have not played ShadowRun since SR3

Lets say I got a Rigger with a com upgraded to all 5's so he can handle 10 open windows. Say this rigger has 6 active drones (and 2 other open windows), how detailed commands can he give to the drones, he say 'circle a building and fire on anyone that leaves it' and then not have to worry about it, or does he have to use a complex action to actually fire? How much monitoring does he have to do?


MatrixRat, Former Otaku
"Silly Decker, The 'Trix is for Kids"

Drones are built to interact with human users, so in general they can understand normal human language commands as long as they fall into their usual range of tasks. And once a drone has its orders, it acts on its own unless it encounters a situation which is not covered by its "common sense".

How far the "common sense" goes is kinda up to the GM, if the orders are too complex or outside of what the drone normally does (like telling your butler drone to shoot people) he can roll Pilot + Response to determine what happens

Sengir has it. You can give them whatever kind of order you want, and they'll follow it to the best of their ability, which is determined by their pilot program rating (and for some reason Response of the drone). You can give a drone as detailed of a command as you want, and generally the more detailed the more likely it is to be properly followed.

Well the drones would do that, anyone that leaves they'd fire upon. Anyone that enters on the other hand...

"Turn your drones off, they're shooting at us and the High Threat Response team is going to be here any second!"
"I can't access them, turn your damn jammer off!"
"I'm trying, but I built it to withstand a bomb, if that guard hadn't gotten a lucky shot on the switch [when I burned a point of edge to not die and the GM broke the jammer in return]..."
"Just throw it out!"
"Bullet-proof glass!"
"Out the door, not the window!"