When jumped in do you use the response of the drone or your commlink?

Edit:

On page 245 of SR20th it says:
"Any tests are made using the rigger’s skills and the drone’s attributes (substituting Response for Agility and Reaction and Sensor for Intuition)."

So I assume that means you substitute the drones response for your agility.

Most people use the response of the drone, as i understand. I myself let the rigger use the response of the comlink. For reasons both regarding balance and realism. Since it isn't really "thinking" anymore. The drone just transmits the sensor-data and biofeedback and is receiving raw commands. All decisions and converting is done by the comlink of the receiving party (rigger). So i find it weird to involve the response of the drone.

its the commlink. True, you're jumped IN to the drone, but what that means is that your icon in VR is particularly engaged with the drone's node

Since your comm's response carries over for most things you do in a node, why wouldn't it carry over for this?

Jumped in, you are the drone. Use Character Skill, plus vehicle/drone response. It's the combination of character skill and the vehicle/drone physical capability. It really doesn't matter what fluff reason we come up with, the rule is stated fairly clearly.

It's also a pretty lame rule.
Why exactly does a rigger have to be amazing at every active skill in the game for his drones to be useful when jumped in?
I'm all for the vehicle/drone response being the limiting factor. Heck it makes sense. But, it seems that someone would have figured out the equvalent of 'gaming skills' for riggers.

A rigger who is super good at drone infiltration, or drone dodge, might actually /suck/ at any such real tests for his own body. I always feel like I /need/ to take skillwire 4 with any rigger I build.

What 'every'? Gunnery, Dodge, Pilot (X), Perception… Infiltration's the only 'odd' one (or Melee defense); the rest you'd always have.

Makes perfect sense. I'm sure you're free, of course, to tell your GM that you learned 'Drone Dodge' instead of real Dodge, but the result is handicapping yourself for no reason. You'd *still* need the active skills, one way or the other.

This is a pretty easy question to solve



Tada!

Its the drone's response because it's how quickly its motors can react to your commands. Your comlink response (aka your RAM) isn't really a factor here. Think about playing Mechwarrior: if the cockpit only swivels to the left at a certain rate, adding more RAM to your box isn't really going to fix that.

Basically that nice drone is about to become even more costly as you have to upgrade it even more

Or use really good pilots with scripted commands

True but even then the drone is limited.

And we all know the only real way to drone is to rig and to rig means upgrading the drone to get the most out of it

But a drone's Response attribute refers to the exact same thing as a commlink's Response attribute. If you want to equate commlink Response to RAM, then the drone's Response is also a measure of how much RAM it has.

The speed of the servo motors is something that would be reflected in the handling score, if anything.

The part that I think is bush league is that the Response score of drones is a very important factor, yet it gets no attention. Sure, there's that table where it finally gives device ratings of 3, 4, and 5 but I think it's a good example of the poor organization of the rules that has plagued Shadowrun from Day 1.

Personally I would go with whichever is rated lower. If the Drones Response is lower than the Commlinks Response then the Drone is the limiting factor. If the Commlinks Response is lower than the Drones Response, then the Commlink is the limiting factor. If they are both of equal rating, then it doesn't matter either way.

Not that it matters, but Response is more like the processor, RAM, cache, etc., all in one, anyway.

It still makes sense for the Drone to be the limiter.

Not for me... IF there is a limiter on the drones side it would be signal, or a value dependings on the handling and other factors as well as the translation/transmitting lag. But since we use "easy" rules and all this doesn't matter: You ARE the drone, true. But you are not THERE. You are "in" your comlink. All your programs run there, all your commands originate from there. The drone response has nothing to do anymore.

And balancing wise: Yes, to have a good rigging drone should be much more costly, but that is covered through all the other upgrades. But if you really use response(drone) as a limiter, that means that rigging itself isn't really attractive anymore. The drone itself with a autosoft can be good enough. (Or just a man who sends commands). Jumping in changes the "Brain" of the drone to get an advantage. I am inclined to give it to him.

But as i said: most people use the response of the drone... but doing that for blindly following rules... meh. I like mine better.

per pg. 247, we use the rigger's initiative when he is jumped in. If you look at the chart it shows everything else the rigger does, the die pools come from drone+rigger's skills. Why wouldn't they put initiative there as response+intuition? Why does it say that when you're jumped in you use the rigger's initiative and not drone response+intuition? What's happening when you're jumped in is one step past what happens when you're in a node in VR in any other way. Most every other time you're manipulating a node from within via VR its your response aka your initiative. You're still manipulating the node in VR when you're jumped in, you're just doing it in a special manner.

But, I also see what you guys are saying, per pg. 245, all tests use the drone's blah blah blah. This is a valid interpretation in my eyes.

finally, I really like Redcrow's idea to use whichever is lower.

Also per the FAQ on the website:

When "jumped in" the rigger has direct control over the drone; the drone uses the rigger's Matrix Initiative and has the same number of IPs as the rigger (Jumping In, p.245, SR4A).

It makes sense to use the rigger's initiative, but all tests are still done with the drone's attributes.

Actually I'd go so far as to say that if a rigger is jumped in before combat starts then he uses the drone's response for his initiative roll!