We've been playing SR4/A for seven months. Most of the group are SR novices alltogether, some have played SR2 before, but SR4 is new to us all. We have been slowly getting the grasp of wireless matrix, but up till now we haven't really dealt with riggers and rigging at all.

We've had a new player join the game a couple weeks ago (also new to SR4, but familiar with SR3), who he has a min-maxed TM rigger with plenty of drones, and remembers only the rules that are in favour of his character (don't all players?).

I, as the GM, am really struggling with it at the moment. The game is turning into "the rigger has drones all over the place, they hear everything and see everything and follow everyone through the crowdiest places, and are untraceable", which is taking the fun away from the other players and from me as well.

When this was voiced, the rigger player told me that I am free to tell him the drones don't see/hear/follow the person in question whenever I feel like it, and that he is OK with it. Well, I am not. I don't really like screwing the PC's options because I cannot handle the situation, and I do believe in predictability of the world.

But at the moment, I am not really sure what are the limitations of a rigger using drones. I am looking both for in-game options and rules mechanics that I might have missed. I don't have a copy of Unwired, can't get hold of the SR3 rulebook Rigger (or how it was called - I've seen several people mentioning it on DS as good source for riggers even in SR4), so if there is something there that would greatly help us, please paraphrase instead of pointing me to a page number.

For a starter, after last game (when the rigger was trying to use a drone with facial recognition program to spot the target entering an office building in the very center of Downtown, with his drone 5 kilometers above ground so he'd avoid the KE routine check of drones in air), I've come with the following:

1) weather limitations - can't see through clouds, so if it is cloudy, drones need to keep low
2) signal - at 5,000 meters, the only way to communicate with the drone is satelite up-link, which costs extra
3) angle - if you want the drone to be able to recognize faces, it needs to be low, because otherwise you will get a nice view of everybody's hats
4) sensors - to recognize anybody, the drone must make a Sensor + Clearsight (vs. possibly Infiltration + Agility) test, so even at lvl3 sensors the drone has little chance to spot somebody who is evading it? Does distance factor in that?

Any input is welcome. I need to get the feel what the drones can and cannot do - I don't want to screw the rigger, but I don't want him to dominate the game just because I am not familiar with the rules and the players sees them in his favour.

Signal Rating Table: (Pg 222 in my book). What's the path to the drones?

Jumped in / Remote Control/ or Pilot? Who is driving the drones?

Response is required for System. System is required for Software. If he's not Jumped in or Remote Controlling the drone, how good is the software that's doing it?

How much is all of this costing and why isn't anyone trying to steal any of it?

Definately not everything, but that's a starting point.

1) This is a good one.
2) Signal - check the signal rating table on page 222 SR4a, Signal 5 would be 4k, so as long as his drone had signal 4 rating he would be okay at just under 5000m. If he had a singal 6 commlink he'd be okay at 10km
3) Angle - this is perfectly valid
4) actually would it not be sensor+facial recognition software vs (disguise+intuition)
5) drones have 'Operation time' based on their power cells, etc. (just like vehicles)
6) what sensor enhancements has he added. If he hasn't upgraded with visual enhancement, and visual magnification, he needs to be within reasonable eye sight limits.
7) Hackers looking for a joy ride on a suspicious drone
Can his Fly Spy really fly up 2 miles in the air?

Riggers are awesome. but I think he's over doing it.

I think points 1-5 will limit this kind of behavior

The signal bit is huge, because if an enemy Hacker notices the signal they can try to crash programs and autosofts or any number of interesting options. If he is rigged in, they won't be able to issue commands, but otherwise a good hacker has a lot of leeway.

Other than that, some situations are harder to take full squads of drones into. If he then goes into MCT fly spies, you might want to consider Dragonfly drones, which eat up other microdrones. Remember, whatever he can do others can too. As a Shadowrunner, he will probably be better than many he encounters, but another Rigger might make things challenging on him.

Oh, and don't forget jammers. If a ton of Drones step into a building, it is entirely feasible for someone to think of using a jammer to cut signals.

Beyond that, the cost of the drones will hold him back a bit. Don't completely undercut him or anything: just use what tools are available and have the world adjust to his actions. If he becomes more famous, then people might find ways to hurt his drones, then he would have to be more careful with his expensive toys.

Jammers are cheap.

Drones aren't invisible, it's just that most people don't look up. When you do look for Drones they are easy to find.

I confess that I tend to use drones (especially the smaller ones) as my own personal watcher team, but as noted by others, drones aren't the solution to all problems.

One thing I've liked to consider over the years is 'whatever you can come up with, so can other people'. Jammers are the simplest way to deal with transmissions, and a nice cheap solution. Also, I would posit that as you enter into higher level of security zones, it becomes more likely security riggers or security measures in general are setup to catch the 'bright ideas' stuff PCs come up with.

Why wouldn't a security sector turn its sensors upwards from time to time? Or setup their own external perimeter nets of drones or stationary sensors to monitor traffic?

Granted, not every site will pull it off, as it can cost resources in time and cash and equipment to keep an eye on things, but PCs that operate under the assumption that no one knows how to counter their idea cause no one has done it before, are operating in dangerous waters.

1) Wireless negating wallpaper on run buildings.

2) Unless he has everything slaved to his bio-node, they can be hacked like anything else. If they are, other TMs can hack it anyways.

3) Have simultaneous things happen to different drones all at the same time; he has to split his attention. In any event, pay attention to what subscriptions he's using. For instance, I had a rigger with 11 drones all in the same suubscription with SnS pistols. He snuck up on a guard that was watching an AR trid program, and he went to pop the guard with one SnS shot, but he gave an order for the drone subscription to shoot once. The guard was consequently shot 11 times, reducing 99S(E) damage heroically down to 77S(E).

4) Physical Mask and Improved Invisibility still work againts drones. Well too.

5) Have a random bird attack one of his fly spies, mistaking it for a real insect.

6) Pay attention to fuel limits. 6 hours is the standard operational time.

7) Remember - drones are stupid. They'll interpret orders literally, and they can't handle things outside of their orders very well. For example, when told to go check something, a drone will go check it. He won't report back with the information until prompted to again. If the drone is told to watch for hostiles with firearms, and he sees a hostile casting indirect spells, he'll ignore it (it's not a firearm).

also, don't forget that sensors have a signal rating also, which determines their range (ie the range they can detect at). micro sensors have signal 2 (100 m), mini have sensor 3 (400 m), and all other drones have 4 (1 km). full vehicles do have sensor 5 (4 km) though.

also, especially don't forget that sensor packages have *capacity* limitations. the standard loadout on a vehicle may be 12 capacity worth of sensors, but as you steadily decrease the size of the vehicle, the variety of sensors they have is going to be reduced also. so if your microdrones navigate using radar, they won't be doing any facial recognition at all, and you may or may not even be able to tell much about a given person at all.

also, don't forget about signature modifiers on sensor tests. humans are -3.

also, ground-based radar sensor arrays (such as the ones that are most likely used by airports to monitor air traffic) can detect stuff that is hundreds of miles away. in fact, we have radars today that can track all kinds of tiny debris in orbit; i don't think a flyspy at 5 km up (even if it *could* detect stuff from that high) is going to escape notice... especially with the increased need for monitoring air traffic now that there are likely to be hundreds, thousands, or possibly even hundreds of thousands of flying vehicles of assorted sizes.

once you've got all that figured out, and start letting people make perception tests to notice the drone (for the record, i'm *really* confused why you think people wouldn't at least get a *chance* to notice the drone if it's close), then comes the biggest factor in keeping a rigger in check; cost. losing even a single heavily modified drone on a given run can mean that the entire run was a net loss for the rigger. even losing one or more small drones can be a pretty big loss, all things considered.

You have earned my first post on these forums-- I've been judiciously waiting to lay it down, and this seems like the proper place.

I'm not going to start rule-dropping here, because frankly I'm not much of a fan of RAW vs. RAI in terms of working out character min-maxing. For a start, since my games force players to push character over stats, I don't allow min-maxing. Everything on a sheet must be explained (within reason) before the game begins, and as a general rule we outlaw things that the group as a whole (especially the GM) is unfamiliar with until they ARE familiar with it. Just things to keep in mind for the future.

But that doesn't solve your problem, does it? Not one bit. So instead, allow one of the more deranged minds in modern gaming give you some suggestions. First off, it was mentioned above that "whatever the players can come up with, so can others". That's of course perfectly true-- but it's not just a matter of foiling the PC's plans with careful disruption of their equipment, it's also throwing their own good ideas back in their faces.

Remember that in the world of Shadowrun, Big Brother isn't just always watching-- he's participating. For every little fish drone roaming throughout the city, there are five big fish drones monitoring what those smaller drones are doing. Corp drones especially barely need a roll to intercept what's going on, so turn his min-maxing superplan into a failing. Have him draw the ire/admiration of a spider from a nearby corp hangout, base, warehouse, or whatever.

You've got a jealous spider, pissed that he didn't think of the idea first. Now, he wants to sabotage/steal/etc. the plans of the rigger in question. He knows what he's looking for, so the rigger's drones are actually a hindrance to him now. A signature. He could be hunted and pinned down by his own drones, realistically. At the same time, the group is now on a non-paying gig-- running from an angry spider who's better than your rigger, and bitterly jealous. It will make him think twice before sending out a battalion of drones. Think trace viruses, a spider planting corp data into a drone to make it look like they've been stealing, and then ordering a corp security team to hunt down and kill the 'invading' runners who stole them them.

Now this is just one idea, and it's one off the top of my head-- don't always worry about the rules, just think like your players. Screw them with their own creativity, and do it in a way that becomes fun for everyone.

Clarification: Pg 334 of the Anniversary Edition has microdrones having a Sensor Capacity of "1" and a signal of "2". Don't expect radar or sonar. Don't even expect a camera AND a microphone without an improved sensor array.

Yeah, sometimes its a little more expensive, but if you're not going the improved array, you set up a 'squad' of micro drones, perhaps some with overlap, but in other cases, 1 has the camera, 1 has a microphone, etc.

The problem there is that you're not jumped into or remote controlling both of them. You're depending on a device rating 3, pilot 3, microdrone with only a microphone to fly itself and not run into anything. (Unless you want to try to fly the microphone only rig by RC or jumping into it.) Do you really want a set of dog brains whose only sensor input is a microphone to try and fly? Sure, you can add a tacnet and a couple Stormclouds with improved arrays for overhead coverage and eventually the rigger has 20,000 worth of gear flying around undefended and controlled by Dog Brains. Meanwhile, either it's hidden and some hacker is going to realize that no one is going to report the theft of a drone running in hidden mode or local security is going to realize that there's more flying drones in the air then are showing up registered. Either way, it's complications.

Pft. Machine sprites cost you nothing but time as a TM. Much better than dogbrains.

Assuming you have the time to set them up.

Machine Sprites count as Agents, not Pilots. They have an Autosoft but no ability to use it. Let him RAW his way around that!

If I had a player who was discourteous to others by hogging the spotlight I'd ask him after a game to not hog the spotlight. No need to cat and mouse a sportsmanship issue.

My experience with playing and GMing drone riggers is that the biggest balancing factor is money: drones are expensive, fragile and when the bullets start flying, they are priority number 2 (number 1, of course, being the mage).

Some other modifiers to consider: he can't run anything over rating 3 or 4 on the drone because of the effective commlink system rating.

Plus, there's just some "real world" stuff to consider. At 5 klicks up, you are looking down through an awful lot of smog and thermal distortion. A little drone is not going to have adaptive optics, particularly since those involve sending a laser beam out along your optical path. A little drone is going to have a little camera and a little lens - diffraction limiting is going to be a real issue. I'd blanket say that unless he spends a fortune on an uber advanced optical package, he just can't get the resolution he wants to do facial recognition from 5k up. Now, 500 meters...that's a lot more reasonable, but also easier to detect.

I would imagine that one of the things a good security detail or site security team does is maintain a running list of drones spotted in the vicinity. If one shows up more often than it should, they start looking at it very carefully. And, toss in a bit of recording and they have a good idea of where those drones came from and went to. And if the target is a corp, they have access to scads of security hackers to violate your drone rigger's network. And they can take their time and the rigger would never know...

Don't get me wrong - I'm a firm believer in the awesomeness of the drone rigger. But in 2070, I don't think you can float aerial drones out for extended periods without people noticing. People like the FAA that get really upset when things violate commercial air traffic corridors.

Uh-oh! Have I got some bad news for your boy!

As Jaid pointed out, 5km is flight-path territory. That means that the Rating 9 Flight radar, and the professional behind it, (assume perception 4 + attn co-processor R3) is going to be throwing a hefty diceload to spot your high-flier there. Once it has been identified as a drone object, they will attempt to Trace it and verify its ownership. Unless your TM purchased a separate Stealth program for the drone, it won't be very difficult at all for them to try and grab the Matrix ID off the bird. If said bird does not respond due to being slaved or too hard to track, then, they pass the info over to the Military who gets a hardon just thinking about shooting stuff straight out of the sky.

From the corp side of things, if that drone is broadcasting a signal from 5km up, then they can find it. An extended scan is super easy. 15 hits on a Scan + Electronic Warfare extended test will build a wireless node map which shows every Hidden or Broadcasting node in the area. An outlier signal, like one hovering in restricted airspace, will be the first thing a corp spider notices. A satlink should bypass the signal range issue though, and the TM could have just sent the drone up with orders to fly silent (no signal) until it spots the target or nears the end of its operations time.

As to dogbrain issues, they can be overcome with machine sprites, so if you want to press the issue of how dumb drones are on their own, the player has a solution which shouldn't be too inconvenient or shut him out of his concept altogether.

Also, Telematics Infrastructure software is a quite awesome. I found it recently in unwired, and should be a staple of any runner's software package, right next to a tacnet.

I tend to use drones as dumb tools as well, in the sense that I use them in the same way I'd use a no-agent-no-pilot-nobrain camera or microphone setup, just in this case, the camera and microphone can move on their own to the locations I want them to stoop at, without me having to physically climb around and place them.

Id prefer to have the drone input routed back to me, and me, or my heftier agent do the analysis/information sorting.

Though back to the topic at hand, I'd also think in the tighter urban sprawl of 2070+ cities, you're going to have more physical clutter and breaks in line of sight the higher up you go. Unless for some reason you've got a clear top down shot of a compound, which would probably have its own countermeasures cause they know actual things like satellites with dedicated sensors are going to be peeking down on them.

Run a scenario in which the runners are hired to guard a place against an NPC drone rigger. Take careful note of any creative tactics they come up with to deal with the drones.

That is an especially fun option if the Johnson who hired them is someone they hit in the past and who sells the information to other companies as a "security consultant". All these things would be thought of in the Sixth World, but this makes it more a consequence of actions and the player influence on the world. More fun.

This sounds like purposefully misunderstanding the intention of the orders. I seriously advise against it. It will only antagonize the player, and depending on his programming skill may even result in him just handing in scripts for the drones to cover all eventualities.

@Signal: This should normally be no problem. The two nodes which want to communicate with each other don't have to be in mutual signal range. They can bounce their signal of any node in their range, which in turn bounces it off again to the next node and so on until it reaches the intended node.

Thank you everybody for your replies and input! I'll print this all for later reference (no time to carefully study it at the moment, due to work deadlines).

On a similar note, how would you avoid being followed by a drone, if you suspected there was one?

1) jammer, as already mentioned. Not viable in "better locations" (I don't think it is a good idea walking around with a jammer through Downtown...)
2) avoiding high-flying drones while driving: would have hard time following the target through underground tunnels, also places that have more than one exit (like big underground parkings) can be a challenge. Cars that can change colour. And of course, changing cars in locations not visible from above.
3) avoiding minidrones and microdrones: their speed is really low. They can't really follow you around. You can lose them in areas with high people traffic (malls and streets during rush hours)?

I like it. And the same strategy would be effective against mages and hackers

It does. Each sensor package has a signal rating, which determines the range just like it does for commlinks, and even large drones just have Signal 4 (-> 1km). Additionally you can slap on any of the normal modifiers for perception tests (target far away, interference, bad weather...).

Take any public transportation that goes under ground. (Subway, Taxi on Lower Wacker Drive, etc). At that point you're playing havok with camera range, signal range, and piloting ability. (The camera can't pay attention to me AND it's surroundings enough pilot well in a confined busy area. I still don't understand how a drone with only a microphone can even pilot safely. Even blind people use a sense of touch as well as hearing.)

Note that if I'm worried about being followed by a drone, I'm really just worried about being followed, period. I'd want to go through some high security areas and take advantage of their scannning for threats as well as some lower security areas (or anywhere I can simply turn off my comlink or have it's signal cut off). Anywhere where I blend in is great.

even minidrones have radar.

Can you show me where that's coming from? I'm seeing radar as a capacity 5 sensor. (pg 59-60 arsenal). Pg 105 of Arsenal describes the sensor package that can fit in a vehicle (12 capacity) which includes radar. According to the sensor package table in SR4, you could fit radar (and only radar) in a small drone (capacity 5). Minidrones only have a sensor capacity of 3 without being modified.

Okay you're right.

Although that makes absolutely no sense
I guess one way of doing it it the drone mode, enhanced sensor package.
Then your mini drone would have a 5 capacity so you could fit a radar in it (and nothing else)

Why do Radars not have ratings?
Why is there 1 mention of radar on page 60 of Arsenal and nowhere else.

GAH the drone rules are so frustrating once you start actually digging into them.

Not to completely derail this conversation, but a mini (or micro) drone can have both a microphone and camera as a 1 capacity item. use a Trideo camera rather than simply a video camera. According to SR4 p 325 a Trideo camera is capable of recording both video and audio and is capable of taking on additional enhancements (low-light, etc).

-D

Computers do not look for the intent of an order. They read the order and comply. It is the simplest and easiest way to make sure your rigger is telling his drones what he actually wants them to do and not just sending them out expecting them to do something. This applies to spirits as well.

Note that this will only work for a short amount of time before the rigger will adapt - but that's okay. This is only designed to make them think more about what they are telling their drones to do and the problems of linking many drones under the same subscription.


Actually, Pilot programs are simply specialized Agent programs. They are RAW one and the same.

1) Actually, SR4 jammers run on magic (apparently), and can target particular things and jam only them. So it is entirely possible to use a max rating jammer in the middle of downtown and only take out the drone that is following you.
2)That works well. Also remember that the drone is going to need to make a shadowing test to follow the target in the first place. Also remember that just turning a corner might put you out of sight for a bit as long as the drone isn't directly overhead as some building blocks the drone's view.
3) Once again, shadowing rolls need to be made to keep track of the target, especially in a crowded area. Also consider that micro drones are really small. Double back and try stepping on it

You could also break out the camera disrupter thing from arsenal and have it blind the drone.

Hacking into the drone is also an option, or if it is being rigged directly, trace back to the rigger controlling it. Now you know who is following you, and they don't even know that you know. Depending on who is being tracked, the Rigger may find himself in jail (Or some corporate holding cell) when he finally gets out of his fly-spy or whatever.

Drones are powerful tools, but they aren't all powerful. One of the main things to keep in mind is that drones don't automatically succeed at everything. They still need to make shadowing rolls to tail people, infiltration rolls to not get spotted, perhaps the occasional dodge roll to not get stepped on. They need perception checks to be able to see stuff that isn't obvious (And even at 50x magnification, tracking someone through a crowd from 5km away is tricky stuff, facial recognition software definitely isn't going to get anything from that distance. It might manage male/female on a good day). And of course they have serious suseptability to things like hackers and jammers.

I'd be willing to bet money that the team of scientists who invented the Whirlwind computer (which was the first computer capable of operating in real-time and came online in 1951) would have similar feelings about iPhones and the Internet.

I'm not calling you out specifically, I'm just tired of people making "factual" arguments about technology 62 years in the future (not to mention in a timeline radically different than our own)...especially in a game that had to radically change the way that technology worked in the most recent edition because the predictions they made *15* years earlier were woefully incorrect.

If "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." (Arthur C. Clarke) then "runs on magic" is a reasonably clear way to say that the device doesn't work in the manner current similar devices work. It makes it clear that while it appears on the surface to be similar to the item we know by that name, it isn't. It's different in very important ways.

Exactly.

I don't disagree with the sentiment; I just don't think that the description of SR4 jammers as "running on magic" was intended to reflect that stance.

:shrug:

EDIT: I stand corrected, based on the response directly above this one.

Since when can jammers do that though?
There's AREA jammer,s that hit everything
and there's directional ones, that hit everyting in a narrow cone.

It's not possible to jam just 1 drone.

Sure, you hit it with a Paintball Gun that has Singal 0 Nanojammers.

One drone jammed. Rather expensively.

I remember once having some fun with a Rigger PC that liked to stay safely inside his van while sending out his little drones to do all the dirty work. I simply had an NPC sneak up to the van and conceal an area jammer on the undercarriage. The poor Rigger drove all over the place trying to get out of the jammers range; to no avail.

Which may or may not work to take out just a drone and nothing else, but...

A smart jammer can certainly manage it.

Edit: I thought there was something else about being able to not jam particular nods, but I can't find it. It might be an update in 4a, which I don't have.

"You start a jamming device. You may choose any number of known devices to be excluded from the jamming when you initiate the jamming, and may change the list with another Jam Signals action." (SR4A, p.231; emphasis mine)

This was a change in SR4A that I wasn't very pleased with (mostly because my character had forked out for a Smart Area Jammer, of course). I'd like to point out that you can only exclude devices that you *know* about, so there might be interesting interactions with hidden nodes that you don't know about. (It might be an interesting security setup to have a series of hidden nodes that trigger an alarm if any of them "disappear" from the network because of someone using a jammer in the area, for example).

But do jammers really have the range required to be effective? I thought they lost about a point of effective Rating every 5m?

Also, jammers tend to be illegal, and their use is obvious by nature. So a bit tricky to use on the streets..

I wonder if you couldn't just file harassment charges against drones following you or something?

So every single of those dog brain drones got 3 nethits on their attack tests, that seems highly unlikely.

My 2 cents to conversation about jammers. 4G mobile networks are if i recall correctly implemented in software. So that when phone send data, it's signal isn't in band it just sends data in many channels and base station knows formula what to listen. Thats why 4G networks have soft degenaration in quality, instead of hard limit like GSM systems have (which have something like 10 or so channels per cell). Magical Jammer could be explained that it just scrambles one "formula" channel.

Pilot: 3
Targeting: 6 (Optimization +3)
Smartgun: 2

Dicepool: 11D6

Should be able to manage 3 Hits average.

Regardless they might have managed only 1 hit and still zapped him good.

Okay Smart Jammers are magic..
Got it.

Good thing autosofts only go up to rating 4

Still, 11 drones are going to take out a guard no problem.
Edit: I mean, it's like telling a story about how you took out an ant with a tactical nuke or something. Of course you killed it.

Camera Neutralizer would be fairly common.

I'm sure you could this them up to only target sensors in certain areas (say ignoring cars on a street or the site's own sensors)

Camera Neutralizer: This system uses infrared lasers and photo-detecting transistors to scan an area for the reflectivity and shape of the image-producing sensors used in digital cameras. Once a camera is located, the system points a laser directly into the camera, overloading it with white light and rendering images, video, and trideo useless. Celebrities often use this system to defeat paparazzi, as do some secure installations that hope to defeat surveillance measures.

Not neccessarily. Smart Jammers are informed of what, well I'm going to use the term "Frequency" for lack of a better term, are being used by the known devices you don't want jammed, and then doesn't slam static into that particular "Frequency".

Anyhow, "Any sufficiently advanced technology..." and all that.

To save time I had him roll once for all drones. Plus I think there was a TacNet setup too. 3 hits is average for 9 dice or so, although not guarenteed.