The van with 11 dobermans with guns discussion had me wondering about this.

What is the penalty for NOT having a drone rack for your drone. Can you just keep a doberman drone in a large box? Do they need to be plugged in? The rules seem clear about what effects they have, but I haven't found the rules explaining what happens when you don't have a rack for your drone.

You could pile all of your guns in the back of the van, but a gunrack allows everyone to grab the right weapon at the right time without hassle.

You could pile all of your drones in the back of the van, but a dronerack allows for you to activate the right drone at the right time without hassle.

It would suck to need a certain rotodrone and have to move around a few boxes to get at the box he is in, then unpack him, then send him on his way and restack boxes.

Chainsaw has it right. It's largely going to be a case of ease of mobility. The drones are going to have trouble getting in and out of a van, and packing 11 of them into a van is going to be a tight fit. They're all, what? Large dog size? Weigh maybe 2-300 pounds? Trying to get them into the van will be really difficult unless you're talking a delivery van as opposed to the 'drive around for club activities' van.

Also, yeah, they won't have power access in the van, so their run time is going to be severely reduced or your going to have them requiring a few turns to start up, by which time the point at which they were needed could have come and gone.

It is true that drone rack is one of those 'no one really notices if you don't have it' sort of things. Kind of like metahuman customization on weapons. Technically all weapons should have that, yet very few metahumans that need it actually get that mod, if only because it doesn't occur to them that the option exists.

Drone racks are nice because you can just take a complex action to deploy them, and recover them if they're Landing racks.

Otherwise, each drone is going to have to take an action to get out of the van, and its going to take up passenger space. (since its also using an action to get out, as a vehicle, it needs to spend one complex action each turn controlling itself too)

There aren't really hard rules for 'run time' and recharging, so I wouldn't worry about it. Maybe they hook into the cigarette lighters. Drone Racks are a convenience, but there's no reason to penalize not having them.

Except the hard rule of run time in Arsenal?

Oh? I thought they basically said 'eh, ballpark it'. *checks* Yup, as I recalled: a rule of thumb with huge inherent variability.

Says you!

Hehe. What I mean is that it's not generally fair or advisable to invent new penalties, when the existing equipment already confers benefits. 11 Dobermans in a van (does that even fit?), that player might need some house rules to start coming out; normal situations, probably not.

He's got them lashed to the side of the van, banging around like the pots and pans on the side of a covered wagon.

So he has like an hour of setup time whenever he wants to use them or pack them up. Sounds like a drone rack would be an advantage.

Psh, those aren't drones then. They're smart firing platforms without the benefit of recoil reduction and with the penalty of 'firing from moving vehicle'.

From the inside of a moving vehicle

That penalty assuredly applies if you're hanging on to the side/back/front, standing on the top, or clinging underneath. It's the 'moving' part.

I'd say the benefit is kinda like having a crate full of Stingers, vs having a autonomous missile rack full of Stingers.

Right, I'm just saying they're going to have trouble aiming at anything from inside the vehicle. I guess if someone tries to steal the van by opening the back door they'll be in for a surprise...

Haha, okay.

If the drones are at least as fast than the vehicle and not some kind of monstrous engine of destruction, then it is a waste of time for runners: why transport them on site when they can deploy and retreat on their own? There might be military applications where the drone's operation time alone would not be enough, though.

Under what circumstances would any drone be as fast as the mothership *and* "not some kind of monstrous engine of destruction"? ;D

I guess a Steel Lynx passes the first circumstance, but runs smack into the second one, hehe.

I tell riggers in my game that if you don't have a drone rack, you have to stop the carrier vehicle, get out and physically put the drone on the ground. And as a rough rule of thumb, I'd say it takes at least 2 combat turns per point of the drone's Body.

My thinking is that if you have a doberman in a van, you can't just drive it out the back. You have to detach it from the van (you wouldn't want it slide around back there), and you have to put up some kind of ramp for it drive off the back of the van. For big ground drones you need a fairly sturdy ramp. And this isn't something you can set up while you are moving at 100 kph. If you have a high strength, you might be able to just pick up the Doberman, but we're talking troll-like strength.

Obviously, some of the really small drones, like the Crawler are a lot easier to deal with - but you aren't just going to toss it out of a moving car. The little fliers could fly out a window, but you still would have to unhook them from the shelf (or whatever).

So... You turn the Van into the Weapon's Truck from Knight Rider?

I think that alone would sell players. "Dude, I just found out that I have Mini-KITT!"

Maybe drone racks are useful for transporting drones with specific movement systems, i.e. storing a doberman on a sub for rapid deployment on the shore/pier.

Drone racks are useful if you want to carry the drones ready for action, deploy them fast and still be able to perform the kind of vehicular stuff that is the hallmark of many rigger.

Just tossing a few 200 kg, armored beasties in the back of a van with the rest of your stuff then doing some car chase ? Forget it. The damn things are going to bang back and forth, right and left, ruining your handling with huge mass shifts, leaving dents everywhere and happily trashing whatever is stashed with them - for exemple lighter recon drones filled with expensive electronics or that medkit you will need later - unless it is rather heavily armored.

Anchoring them sturdily to the frame or releasing them takes time, time you may not be able to afford if the run goes south. A drone rack, while using up some space and costing money, neatly takes care of this specific hurdle and keep all the members of your mechanical horde safely together.

Heck you can probably design it as a removable modification so you can convert the vehicule from drone carrier to utility and back more easily.

Beat me to it

Although that van with the 11 drones, would use up 11 mod slots for drone racks.

And 11 weapon mount slots, which is a bit harder to come by.

People tend to notice when you drive 4 drones armed with machine guns through downtown Seattle on the way to a run, while they wouldn't look twice at a nondescript van doing the same thing.

drone racks in arsenal don't take up weapon mount slots
Where do you get that?

Again, I don't think it's a good idea to invent penalties. A drone shouldn't be a more problematic passenger than a metahuman, in terms of anchoring, interior damage, loading/unloading (subject to movement systems), whatever.

It's in the description of Drone Racks. "A drone rack has the same space requirements as a weapon mount (p. 146), which means that each drone rack reduces a vehicle or drone’s maximum number of weapon mounts" (Arsenal, p.134)

so your average van can have 4 drone racks, since weapon mounts is body/3 round down

Seems fair. And again, they're not required. The multilaunch has enough features to almost seem worth it, but I can't imagine bothering with a mini, for example. At least it's only 1 slot.

Generally metahuman users of a vehicule have a little extra when compared to a drone stuffed in the cargo area : seats and seatbelts, which helps a lot to protect you and your surroundings during a rough ride.

Non-seated passengers in a vehicule should IMHO be exposed to similar hazards, particularly if sharing the area with heavy/hard things.

Imagine riding in the back of a van going cross country at 40 mph, with no seats, just trying to brace yourself in what is mostly a bare, somewhat slippery and empty metal box, how would you feel after a 15 min ride ?

Now figure doing the same ride in company of a quad that is not fastened to the floor but simply relying on the friction of it's tires on the metal floor to stay in place... Ouch.

Worse, imagine cohabiting with the same quad, both of you relying only on your gripping capabilities in the back of an airplane, helicopter or T-Bird doing aerobatics... BIG ouch.

Definitively a situation where a few gecko-gripped straps - or even a gecko floor that can be switcehd on/off by sections - can come handy to fasten/unfasten things both safely and quickly.

Imagine?

Memory.

I agree, Dahrken. I think it's fair to assume the van has reinforced eyelets, straps, partial seating, etc. in the case of metahumans *or* drones. I'm not saying ignore all thinking, but I am saying not to get overzealous punishing people for not having a special rack unit.

I mean, who doesn't have a cargo strap or net for their car; how hard was it to buy that? Now it's 2070, and we have gecko tape, or magnet systems, or any of the old-fashioned options to boot.

I agree that vehicles will have all the eyelets, tie-down points and cargo straps you need - and any decent drone rigger aught to be able to fabricate them if they aren't there. In real life, anybody can (try) and carry an ATV in the back of a van, pickup or flatbed truck. Only an idiot doesn't tie them down with straps and restraints - the idiots that don't end up with ATV bits scattered along the road. I'm assuming any competent rigger can do this, no problem, but undoing those straps takes a few minutes, and so does securing them. A drone rack does it all automatically - the ATV drives up, docks, and is automatically restrained. Launching is the same way.

Hence why I think it should take a couple of turns to launch or recover drones without a dronerack. It's not penalizing people for not having a dronerack - it's using common sense. If I, as a GM, say that it takes 10 minutes to change a tire, I'm not going to have a whole lot of sympathy with a player saying I'm penalizing him because the rules don't say it takes 10 minutes.

Yeah, but in 2070, those straps are quick-release and wireless-enabled. Yes, it definitely takes an action or two to launch drones, but same with the racks. Re-loading them (without the loading racks) takes time, for both.

I still want my Ghetto Cyberpunk Knight Rider Weapon's Truck.

In "Urban Cammo", or, more precisely, lots of graffiti.