Can I upgrade a drone's response the same way I would a commlink?

i would say yes, just note that SR4a have a max upgrade limit of 2 above what it comes with or something like that.

That still lets you get to 5 for most drones and 6 for security/military drones (basically anything that has a gun).

Or you could just make your own chips and replace them entirely...

Upgrades can only take you so far, Custom Design is the way to go...

Keep the Faith

I don't want to jack the thread but I figured asking this here would be better than making a new thread about it. I'm looking into crossing into rigger territory but I can't find things like what determines drone Response and stuff. Can I get pointed the right way please?

Pg 222 SR4a. Most drone are rating 3 devices. Military and security are rating 4 devices. The rating determines base hardware stats for a drone and the pilot determines the firewall and system.

And then they can be upgraded from that as usual, by slapping the right response chip in, or installing a system/firewall/pilot program.

Keep in mind, though, that the usual limits apply - reponse limits system, system limits program rating.

I think 'custom designing' a chip still counts as an upgrade.

unless i missed something, pilot have no say about firewall.

Well, Firewall's a program, System limits programs, Pilot is System. And, of course, Response limits System (>Pilot=System>Firewall).

firewall is a special kind of program tho, that cant be cashed or shut down. And its rating is independent if the system rating.

Ah. Well, then I can't help explain. Maybe he meant that they *start* with Firewall equal to Pilot, but I didn't see that in the book either.

Incidentally, what's the page reference for 'Firewall is special'? I want to mark it for reference.

The way it is listed... It is an Attribute, not a Program (at least not a program that is impinged upon by System or Response Attributes)...

And as for Creating your own Response Chips, Signal Hardware, and Firewall/System Software... I classify them as Custom Architecture, whereas the "Standard" upgrades are just that... Upgrades... Yes, I know that any increase could be called an Upgrade, but I tend to see them as two very different things however (May be Semantics, but there you go)...

Keep the Faith

*shrug* It's software, so you'd think 'program', but I was just wondering if there was a specific place where it says 'Firewall's special'. Pilot, for example, is explicitly a program, right? Except it is also explicitly a 'special System software'. It's all very muddy.

I guess that's a house rule, then. You wouldn't really think Hardware would cover *designing* and fabbing your own chips, but I never really understood where the 'upgrade +2' rule came from anyway.

Actually, The Design portion I would port over to a Knowledge Skill... Electrical Engineering comes immediately to mind, or something Similar... The Hardware Skill becomes your Build/Repair Skill for actual Production. As for the Naming COnventions.. They are a bit wierd.

As for the Upgrade +2 Rule... I believe that it was to stop someone from buying the absolute cheapest Comlink and upgrading it to Rating 6 for less than actually buying the Best (Fairlight) and then upgrading to Rating 6... Generally cheaper to go the first route...

Keep the Faith

Yeah, but that's another house rule. Knowledge skills don't actually do things. :/

Well, I'd say you have to replace the chip to upgrade it, so you're paying about the same costs. That's how retail works: different models are pre-configured and you pay for that. As it is, you'd never buy the Caliban, because the two lower models are nearly identical.

Sorry for the confusion. Yes firewall starts at the base drone rating.

Actually it is not a houserule... Knowledge Skills do let you do things... You would need a functional schematic, and that design would be produced with the Electrical Engineering Knowledge Skill... once you have that, you would use that schematic and the Hardware Active Skill to build the hardware for the drone/comlink/whatever...

Just because it is not an Active Skill does not mean that it is useless, or does absolutely nothing...

Keep the Faith

I meant that there aren't rules (AFAIK?) for the use of Knowledges in that way; what's the threshold for a given design, etc. It's a house rule in that the GM has to make a ruling.

Okay, I see where you are coming from... but there are a ton of instances where a GM has to make a ruling... Doesn't actually make it a houserule though... Shadorun requires a bit of GM intervention regardless of the style of game you run... so I guess that I do not see that as making a rule... I just see it as clarifying/codifying what the Player is looking for within the frameworks of the rules... as long as the standards remain the same, I have no qualms with it...

keep the Faith

Odds are good the average character has several house rules in it (for example, your contacts, who are likely not canon characters). Odds are even better that any given gaming session has numerous house rules being used, and you don't even notice it.

just because it's a house rule to come up with the exact difficulties of the task, doesn't make it any less valid of a point that you would use a knowledge skill to design a new response chip.

Sure. And just to reiterate, doing so wouldn't count as 'not an upgrade'. *That* would certainly be a house rule.

Let me see if I have all this right.

Normally a vehicle or drone's matrix attributes would equal its device rating of 3, so Response, Signal, System and Firewall would all be 3 (SR4A p222). Security vehicles gets Device rating 4, and military vehicles get Device rating 5.

Except that if a vehicle or drone has a Pilot program (and they always do), it uses Pilot instead of System (SR4A p245). Since programs run on a device can't have a higher rating than the device's System rating (SR4A p222 again), than means that Firewall is also dropped down to the Pilot rating. This makes most vehicles far more readily hackable than their device rating would indicate, though drones have Pilot 3 so they are not hosed by their Pilot.

There is a rule that says a "device" can't have its ratings improved by more than 2 (SR4A p222). Upgrading a normal vehicle or drone to Pilot/System/Firewall/Response/Signal 5 is allowed, and for security or military vehicles, it could go as high as 6 or 7 respectively.

Personally, I think these rules don't make too much sense in combination. Credsticks start at Device rating 6. Credsticks. You could upgrade your credstick, which cost you 25 nuyen to buy, to run at Response 8. Your Fairlight Caliban? That's capped at Response 6.

A credstick is a peripheral node, not a commlink. Besides, you'd still be paying the full cost of the 7 or 8 upgrade, *if* you managed the availability.

People have told me that Firewall is excepted from the System limitation, and there are (some) gear examples in Unwired and SR4A that support that.

Allright, after some more poring over rules, I guess there's no upgrading a credstick to Response 8 since the highest you can go is 6 (or at least the chart on p. 222 in SR4A doesn't go higher than 6). Also, SR4A p221 seems to indicate that a credstick, as a peripheral node, can't run a persona, so you can't use it to log onto the matrix. That is good, since it would be goofy if a credstick were more awesome than a Caliban. I had these disturbing images in my head of hackers with fancy upgraded commlinks crying because they got owned in cybercombat by some guy with a credstick slotted into his datajack!

Still, I have trouble imagining why a credstick could be rated at 6 when, say, a Steel Lynx is capped at 5. I mean other than, "because that's what the rulebook says." I also can't find an example in SR4A where Firewall is higher than System, and I don't have Unwired, so if there really is no limit for Firewall based on Pilot, that's great! Would have been nice if that exception were listed in the basic rules, but oh well. Does that mean that Response (and therefore System/Pilot) going lower due to too many programs running on the node doesn't reduce the Firewall rating?

I assume because credsticks are supposed to be hard to hack.

There definitely are such examples in Unwired; I must have been mistaken about SR4A. Like I said, I've been *told* Firewall isn't capped, but never actually shown a rule in the book for that argument.

The credstick thing is more about the firewall and such I believe as they are supposed to be hard to hack. Its abit of a streach to believe that everyone with a cred stick is walking around with a rating six signal producing item in their pocket.

Back to the Drones

In some ways I liek the fact that drones are so changeable but on the other hand the cost can get silly

Upgrading a R3 drone to a R5 drone costs up to 22.5k
System upgrade R5 = 2500
Firewall upgrade R5 = 2500
Response upgrade R5 = 4000
Signal upgrade R5 = 1000
Pilot upgrade R5 = 12500
Total cost= 22.5k

Granted alot of thats the pilot which if your going to rig you might not need.
If you have a security drone and putting that up to R6 the extra cost isnt really that bad at 32k (15k of which is the R6 pilot)

ok if your going for a massivly upgraded drone the next bit your going to look at is the sensors and you can drop a fair amount of cash on that one too

Credsticks don't have signal 6. Their stats are in Unwired ('Example Peripheral Nodes'), and they have high 'defensive' stats.

Considering how important the 'sensor' rating on a drone is. I find it rediculous that the rules for upgrading said sensor rating are seriously hidden, and make absolutely no sense.

I dunno. You just add whatever sensors you want, within the capacity limits in the book. If you want to use the shorthand 'Sensor' rating, average them.

But you have to use the sensor rating when you're 'jumped in' as your intuition for perception checks.
Your attack tests are sensor+gunnery

The 'sensor' rating is incredibly important.

Firewall is not limited by System.

Programs are limited by Pilot, only because the Pilot program is acting like an Agent-soft, and any programs run by an Agent are limited by the Agent rating. So a rigger or hacker logged in to a drone can run software up to the device rating, but anything the Pilot runs is limited by the Pilot's rating (which in turn is limited by the System rating, in turn limited by Response...got all that?).

Did they change that in Unwired from how it is in SR4A? Or is Firewall not a program? I'm not trying to be combative, I'm just reading my book and it seems to indicate that a low Pilot rating cascades all the way to limiting Firewall. Here are the relevant bits of rule text:






How you explained it is how I think it should work, but the text from the book seems to support a less desirable conclusion.

From the FAQ:



From the same FAQ, it seems to expand upon the Pilot/System issue. Apparently a Pilot program actually replaces the System software (meaning something with a Pilot program installed cannot run a Persona; i.e. a rigger can't use their drone as a commlink). So yes, apparently the Pilot *does* replace the System...which has the same effect as what I described before: any programs run via the pilot are of course limited by the Pilot's rating. And the Pilot would be restricted by the Response of the device.

To-Huge C

Firewall never has been a program if I'm correct. it's a matrix attribute, therefore isn't limited by the System rating. (Or in this case Pilot rating)

Ok, thanks guys, that is good! Slowly, slowly, I begin to grasp things.

is the SR rules really that hard to understand? On drones, pilot replaces system for all intents and purposes, so any program running on the drone be it started by the pilot or by a rigger, will be limited by the pilot(system) rating.

also, the device rating is a short hand so that one do not need to come up with 4+ numbers for every random device out there. Just stay that its device rating 1 to 6 and then roll with/against that depending on the tests made. Once any one of the parts (response, system, signal, firewall) changes, the device rating goes out the window, and the individual ratings are used. At that time any unchanged ratings will be the same as the device rating was.

sabs, I'd roll Gunnery + *relevant* sensor rating if I had custom sensors. Like I said, the 'Sensor' score is simply a shorthand average if you don't care for the detailed approach; upgrading it is the same as upgrading individual parts.