Okay my GM and I have been butting head for most of the day now and so I'm going here to post my idea here and see what everyone else thinks.

So I'm building a hacker (propriety system) and I've decided to do something completely out there.

I'm taking his two cyberarms and turning them into drones effectively.

What I did was install a cyberarm gun slide, and have a firearm with an internal smart-link. That's two peripheral nodes right, not enough to run a pilot or an agent really, so what I then did was take the two and make them into a clustered node (Unwired Pg 55.)

From there slap an pilot/agent with the appropriate softs and viola! Instant dual-wielding gunman. There are a few setbacks though.

First one, hacking. Simple enough to solve. Since the hardware is wired to my runners body I simple installed touch-links and turned off wireless capability, problem solved.

Next problem, thinking about it I thought that just having the camera in the smart-link wouldn't be enough so I proceeded to add a tailored sensor package to the cyberarms installing a few cameras in there so that the pilot program could have "eyes in the back of his head" in a sense.

Now this is where the head butting comes in.

Currently I am walking around with three standard nodes. The one in my commlink, and the two in my cyberarms. Reading through Unwired I came across the the TacNet software (Unwired pg. 124) and thought, "Hey I should have eyes in the back of my head too." After a small headache I figure that I could slave the two nodes to mine and create and centralized network while the arms were in what I called "Trick Shot" mode. From there boot up the TacNet software and there you go.

Issues my GM had

I1. Drones and Agents have dog-brains, so they can't use TacNet soft.
A1. It says right there in Unwired pg 125 that drones may run TacNet on their systems, and when you think about it. All TacNet does is take information from all available sources and determines the best courses of action, and then sends that info to those subscribed to it. How can a dog-brain with which all its descriptions is based of the info it has not benefits from it?

I2. The Cyberarms are part of you, so they would count towards your sensors.
A2. Normally yes, but the metahuman brain can't all that sensory input at once. Its literally like trying to look at fifteen things at once, so thats like splitting a perception pool fifteen ways. But that's why they agents are in the arms/drones. They can receive the information from their sensors and relay it over the TacNet creating a better overview of the situation.

I3. The TacNet wouldn't work because you are in such close proximity to each other.
A3. Well that's true...things like indirect fire, infiltration, piloting and all those tests wouldn't be possible because we wouldn't have the distance covered, but what I am looking for is a more spatial awareness. With this "Personal TacNet" I could still get bonuses from things like firearms, dodge, close combat, perception, surprise tests since they will be dealing with my runner directly.


Anyway ,that's my spill. Please leave comments, questions, answers , idea below. I'm looking for other opinions besides my GM so I can reinforce what I believe to be plausible here. If you are somewhat confused here, please reference Unwired about Slaving Nodes, Cluster Nodes, Peripheral and Standard Nodes, and the TacNet software. Then leave a question here.

Thank you for the help.

And please no flaming or trolling.

You know with all that talking I wonder if I actually said anything...

It's just too ridiculous. Your arms aren't drones, and they *are* part of you. Pilot isn't Agent, either.

But why couldn't I turn them into drones? Although you are right about the agent/pilot things. It would have to be a pilot program.

Because they're not drones, they're cyberlimbs. Drones are vehicles with a Pilot (and probably Rigger Adaptation), or Critters with Goad/CAST/Stirrup; you can also modify firearms into Drones, if they have mod slots, and the Smart Platform is a special immobile 'vehicle' drone. That's basically it. You can't turn a commlink into a drone, or a credstick, or a toothbrush… or a cyberlimb.

Even if you did, they'd be part of your body, like the cybereye iBall drone. Until it's undocked from your head, it's a cybereye, *not* a drone. It's part of you (in a fundamental, Essence-based way), and can't be a TacNet member. Neither can handheld sensors velcro'd to your vest be members of a TacNet; they're *your* sensors.

Finally, you'd need a bunch of sensor channels, *and* the smallest TacNet group is more than 3, isn't it?

Well yes generally you can't a cyberlimb doesn't have a enough power. Thats why one would have to add a processor to the cyberarm and make a clustered node (Which only requires two peripheral nodes) with another object like a smartlinked gun. Then the arm and gun would have a standerd node, which can be ran by a pilot program built around using that cyberarm. Then the cyberarm would require two modes. A "passive" mode where the pilot isn't active and you can use your arm as you wish and an "active" mode where the Pilot is in control and you are effectively cut off from your own limb. It is only in "active" mode that the TacNet would work cause at that point my comm isn't receiving the data, it the pilot program.

And its easy to add sensors to a cyberlimb, it just take up it capacity as does everything else.

When you think about it, a drone is nothing but a mess of plasteel, wires, and circuits, with a few special bits here and there to give it purpose. A cyberlimb is the same thing. A drone uses a pilot program, or is jumping into by a rigger. A human uses it brains. If a human can jump into drones, why can't a pilot jump into human machinery?

It's skinlink, not touch link. I find it puzzling how many people make this mistake. If you look up touch link, it actually states it provides tactile information. That's it. It goes along with the image link and sound link ware, all part of building an AR experience without a sim module.

Oh...well another mistake on my part then. Its always the little details too...

just because there are no rules for it specifically written down doesnt mean it cant be done. Its actually a big deal in shadowrun, because its set in the future u can pretty much always find a techie with the ability to build a drone that does just what you want.

i have a feeling what u thematically want ur character to do is essentially the same as skillsofts, or maybe im wrong

In a sense it is like skillwires, but this mostly came about looking for a minimize the penalties for dual-wielding tee heh <3. But in the end trying to make someone who can still fight back while hacking, unconscious, or otherwise busy.

its a pretty cool idea. Like if u had an entire exosuit which is all a drone, u strap urself in and go limp, then u use all the drones stats as ur own while still being with it. It would be great for those runs where the GM forces the whimpy hacker to leave his armored step van and get into the thick of it otherwise its probably better to just stay away altogether, you would have to be a pretty bad hacker if u went limp somewhere u could get ganked.

Well I wouldn't take it that far.

While the mechanical answer is that arms (at least, docked arms) simply can't be drones, period, the other answers are also valid. That is, they're part of you, so they're just your senses, and they're on of your body, so they're not really a tactical network.

It sounds like you're only talking about 'sensory awareness', which is just your Perception roll; buff that (*so* many ways). For dual-wielding, just increase the Agility of your limbs: instant +DP to those Fire tests, to compensate. The problem is that you're trying to make things do what they don't, to make something else do what it doesn't, all for a really minor (and inappropriate) bonus.

It'd be much simpler and wholly within the rules to get a few little fly-spy drones to follow you around. With enough sensor upgrades, you might be able to set up a very small TacNet.

Well he could just make the guns drines with the modification rules in Arsenal and then slave his arm to those drones control, couldn't he.

He could
That would make eating really amusing.

No, I thought about that, but the cyberweapons can't be modded like that, AFAIK. but he could just *carry* two drone-modded guns in his hands, after all. He has some semi-legitimate options here, without making really large new rules.

I think it's an interesting attempt to achieve Ambidexterity through augmentations though, that's not bad.

Why can't he drone the arms? and relinquish control?
Lets say that his arms were replaced with droned cyber arms that are /not/ linked into his neural net.
He has to control them exactly like drones. He can never use them like regular arms, except via the command program or 'jumping in." which would be funny cause then the rest of his body would go slack.

Also, I really believe that a single person running tacnet soft should get /some/ benefit.
It's highlighting bad guys in your field of vision, giving you suggested optimal targets and zones. Prioritizing who is a bigger threat at any given moment.

Course, there should be a tacnet skill that lets you handle all the extra information, and how to use it.

He doesnt have cyberweapons, he has guns in cyberarm-slides.

If a player wanted both his arms, attached to his body, to be independent firing platforms I'd let him do it. Then I'd slap him with a -2 penalty per arm and require Athletics checks to maintain his balance while his arms tried to kill people while he was trying to walk.

I don't see why not. He's not controlling them -- he's like Doc Oc when the arms go crazy and start attacking on their own. Hmm... new character idea... that cyberarm that you can attack to your chest, what if I had four of them, extensible, attached to my back... but I digress. I don't see why he can't make his arms drones and relinquish control. He'd have to point the guns in the "general" direction or else he'd have a penalty to athletics checks because it'd essentially be like trying to carry a large squirming monkey while your hands are strapped to your pants, but as long as he points them in about the right direction so that the arms aren't whipping around him then he should be good.

Let's go back to the beginning here. Do you really want to have this degree of a fight with your GM? You've gotten a lot of posts with what is potentially wrong with this based on RAW, but the fundamental question is about your relationship with your GM.

-M&P

Actually this seems pretty well thought out and in the realm of possibility to -me-, and additionally sounds pretty cool, along with having its own complications that could be amusing as anything.

I agree with this, after all it's in Unwired.

I'd say it's feasible, but you're going to run into problems:

1) Your arms must be either clustered (in order to run the Pilot program), or slaved (when you're using them as arms). Clustering, IIRC, isn't instantaneous, and requires a skill check (Logic + Hard/Software?) When not clustered, what happens to the Pilot program?

2) Where are you getting the Pilot program from? Pilot programs are specific to the vehicle/drone/device they are running. I doubt any have been written for cyberarms, let alone two of them.

3) Even clustered, it's not going to have great stats. Odds are it'll still be Response 1 (I believe that's the default for cyberware), so your pilot rating would be limited to Pilot 1. Likewise your Targeting autosoft. Even upgrading the response chip would only boost it to Response 3 (+2 limit), so you'd be limited, at most, to Pilot 3 + Targeting 3, or 6 DP per gun. You could do a whole lot better with skills/abilities for dual weilding.

My problem with that is:
If he wants a 0 penalty then he has to use command to get the arms to follow his directions and I would give him a initiative penalty for the arms.

If he wants the arms to cut loose, then I would give him an athletics test with the threshold being the agility of the independent arms.

Personally this seems a terrible setup.
I'd rather just buy 2 independent platforms with ingram X's and White Knights, and a couple of fly-spies with upgraded sensor packages and pilots.

Making them Alphaware solves that problem, as alphaware has a device rating 4.

Thank you Max, I forgot that they weren't cyberguns.

Again, it is this simple: cyberarms are not drones, and none of the ones in the books can be drones. There's no 'I don't see why not' about it, because that's the bottom line. Some of you are suggesting 'drone arms' that he happens to wear attached to his body: fine, but those aren't cyberarms, and they don't exist until you house-rule them in.

The rules for controlling cyberlimbs are unclear; they talk about hacking people, but there's never really anything about remote-controlling your own limbs, for example (that I recall, maybe I missed it :/ ). As this applies to slaving cyberarms to drone-modded guns, I don't think it matters, because the drone-guns wouldn't know how to control the arms (certainly not at a useful speed, anyway). Even with their nodes modded up to the +2 limit and with special softs, I really think he'll end up with much worse penalties than the original off-hand one he's doing all this to avoid.

So, we've got a few things here:

1) Drone-guns involved somehow; this is bad because they'll either be bad guns (mod slots wasted), bad drones (low stats), or both.
2) Slaved/commanded cyberarms; assuming this is possible (very unclear), then you're spending Complex Actions for each shot, and it's Gunnery, and the DPs are likely worse than just -2 off-hand.
3) Drone-arms; they don't exist, so you'd have to house-rule that straight off the top, and same drawbacks as above.
4) TacNet itself; if you somehow get 2 buddy drones, and mod up their sensors (possibly a lot), then this is the easiest argument (srsly? ), because the rules don't really care if you're near or far from TacNet clients. … after all that, you can get a maximum of +1. As I said at the beginning, you can literally replace this whole mess with arm AGI upgrades, and maybe a Muscle Toner, or even (maybe) Enhanced Articulation instead of the arms in the first place.

Regarding the OP...

If you manage to swing the drone arms deal, please, please, please install a laser eye or kneecap grenade launcher or SOMETHING so the you-you can get in on the action too...

Oral Gun.

Eye laser.

I understand the OP's want to have the hacker not be a sitting duck when jacked in. And no-one likes playing babysitter for the drooling hacker.

It's an interesting concept, yes. But, I would rule that the arms would have a serious initiative lag, due to their dog-brains assessing the situation. And I would personally rule that the hacker would have to spend the time to personally code the software for this. I'm sure there are better ways to go about letting the hacker get a piece of the action.

But, this seems like an unnecessarily complicated way to go about it. I have a PC playing a rigger who wanted to spend thousands of nuyen customizing the equivalent of an RC toy helicopter into what would have amounted to a very inferior (in armor, sensors, piloting, etc) drone. Cool concept, yes. But, would it really be that useful? Not enough to justify customizing the toy as opposed to just buying a drone. And it feels like a very similar argument.

If you've been butting heads with your GM over this for days, I'd personally say to let it go and work with your GM on finding a different way to go about it. Messing up the relationship with your GM is not worth house-ruled in drone arms. But, that's just my two nuyen.

I understand that being a techomage is not the universal answer, but if you has a TM who submerged twice with Biowire and then Mesh Reality, I think you could achieve this.

Could also slap a penalty anytime he wants to do anything related to your normal "Activities of Daily Living".

-M&P

This is Shadowrun; 'Activities of Daily Living' is what we're talking about! ;D

Start Program: Make a Sammich

Roll to make sure the pilot program doesn't fling strawberry jelly all over the place.

Why not use the external weapon mount on your cyberarm? They act as Smart Firing Platforms, which are equipped with a Pilot. Mount an SMG modified for drum feed and then just have it suppress areas of the battlefield while you do other things.

And if the program is "Pee in Toilet" or "Wipe Ass" and you miss the roll?

-M&P

Or the Articulated Weapon Arm. That's really its exact function, after all.

What source book is that listed in?

While you can't turn your arms into drones...

You can run a Tacnet 1 on any Smartgun. What? It has a camera and a laser rangefinger. Thats 2 channels. The smartgun itself is device rating 3, which can handle a rating 1 program easy.

So put some smartguns in your cyberarm slides, and network it.

Tacnet 1: 2 channels required, minimum members: 3
Node1: Left arm smartgun
Node2: right arm smartgun
node3: Yourself. Get some cybereyes or something for sensor requirements.
Now subscribe your arms(via skinlinks) to your smartlinks, and get a pair of Agent 3 with Command 6, Optimized 3, and slap those on your smartlinks.
Viola. Done.

You should also check out the Gunsel Karcist, a technomancer based around this concept, in Ancient History's PACKS file.

Also, well, actually, you -can- turn your arms into drones. Cyberlimb guns can't take -accessories-. Modifications are not accessories, so you could Pilot Upgrade them. However, arm slides are superior - because you can use actual gun models. Cyberimplant weapons are very generic.


As to your GM's points:
1: Drones have Device Ratings, dependent on what type of drone they are. Yes, they can run tacnets, because tacnets are programs, and they have both response, system, processor limits, and all that fun stuff. Just take care to not run too many autosofts, because response hits suck for drones(initiative, some dice pools)
1: So does cyberware, depending on your grade. It starts at 3, 4 for alpha, and goes up from there.
3: While all the fancy benefits of a tacnet may not apply, the tacnet still does tie a bunch of different information together - if you put a hat, with a microcam in it, and tie it into the tacnet, the tacnet will tell you if you're being shot from behind.

Augmentation has the External Mount and the Articulated Weapon Arm.

Can a peripheral node run TacNet? I say no. It says "They are only able to run a single persona and can only run programs they are designed to use." I could see some corp designing 'TacGuns', designed to run Tacsofts and including Smartlink/sensors/etc., but I wouldn't rule that normal guns are 'designed' to run Tacsofts. A centralized TacNet might get around that, but even then I'd rule that they're your personal sensors, not separate TacNet clients.

I'm pretty leery of using Modifications on cyberguns. It's my impression that they can't, *especially* Drone conversion.

This appears to be the limitations of current technology:




I love you idea, though!

While I've been reading that all up and down that you just CAN'T turn cyberarms into drones, I don't think that anyone has actually given a plascrete reason why you can't other than "their a part of you". What difference does that make really? Why can't I install a program on a MACHINE that is attached to my torso. There is muscle and blood running through the thing, there are servos and electrical signals. Sure usually someone just saying "Well the book doesn't say you can't!" is just someone being a douchewaffle, but this is the bleeding future, 2072! Why couldn't a person sit down on day and go, "Hmm I want my cyberarms to have some automony in combat." He then sits down and does it. He would have to build a program and a custom pilot program to do it but yes it can be done. He could build a processor and install it in the cyberarm but yes it can be done. It a world that most of us only dream of.

He is a guy that tends to make loads of houserules and for the most part I'm fine with them. He was the one who told me that I could cluster the gun and arm in install a pilot program.

In the game, cyberarms aren't and can't be drones. There is no reason, just like there's no 'reason' for anything in the game.

You asked about the *game*, though. Obviously, if you're ignoring the rules, you can do literally anything.

In addition, we've pointed out several things that *are* in the game to do what you've asked for. :/

Oh yes an weapon arm that is only 24F availablity is totally able to get at character creation...

But all that aside, I showed this to my GM and we talked about it. We came to the agreement while mechanic ally this is possible, the fluff from 2072 doesn't allow something so sophisticated to be produced yet. And since SR4 doesn't have a Rigger book in where you can building things like cars and drones from scratch with they did before, can't really build one with real crunch.

So thanks to all those who offer constructive advice and opinions and humor (Start Program:Make a Sammich) and all those who offered impossiblen options and were nothing more than nay-sayers. Shame...shame on you all.

Thank you.

You could just wear a doctor ocotopus outfit if the 'cyberarms' deal is really a problem. Then the arms are independant drones.

I would argue that, yes, in a world where smartguns are dirt-common, pushed by megacorps(ares, anyone), and have a host of attachments for them(advanced safeties, rangefinders, safe target systems, ammo skip systems, pilot upgrades, sniper rifles with facial-id softs) that, yes, a piece of software that lets smartguns talk to other smartguns is right up that 'peripheral nodes' alley. After all, using tacnet-enabled information targeting is pretty much exactly what smartguns are for: Point smartgun at target, call in artillery. No need for fancy target designators.

If your GM's still anal about having a gun computer run 'shoot people better' software, then just slap on a weapon commlink accessory, or use a centralized tacnet. Whether or not the smartgun itself can run the tacnet by itself, out of the box, really isn't an issue - you can solve that by throwing nuyen at it.

While cyberguns can't take accessories, modifications are totally doable. Should be, makes sense, and the rules are three entirely different things. Besides, if the devs wanted to rule out Mods, they'd have updated the cybergun descriptions for 4thA.(you know, after arsenal and mods came out) Modifying cyberguns isn't that big of a deal - its a way to bridge the gap from being unable to, say, stick an ares crusader in your hand. (and i'm pretty sure you used to be able to do this in 3rd, which is kind of lame that you can't in 4th. Correct me if I'm wrong.) Personally, i really don't have a problem with modifying cyberguns. Slapping a flashlight on a gun in your hand(what? where does it go? how does it fit?) vs changing the gun's firing pin and chamber(electronic firing) - well, its all taking place inside the gun. Thats what modslots represent - how much room there is to expand stuff.

Its also worth noting that the definition of exactly what a smartgun can do changed between Arsenal(148,smart or not) and Unwired(48, sample peripheral nodes). So, uh, thats another 'thanks a lot catalyst' moment, for the devs not talking to each other.