hmmm... well now, this is interesting. i can find it in my old SR rulebook on page 239

"Arm/Disarm a Weapon System (Free)
A rigger may order a single drone to arm or disarm one of
its weapon systems. A drone may have only one weapon system
armed at any one time. Switching weapon systems, however,
only requires one Free Action."

but i haven't been able to find any equivalent text in SR4A. yet another unmentioned change? (albeit a very welcome one; not being able to use multiple weapons on a vehicle with different controllers was stupid)

[edit]edit: to clarify, i'm not saying this *is* an update, merely that i cannot find the rule in the latest version. but i would certainly welcome it being an update if it is one... it would allow for dual-wielding riggers as well as for autonomous turrets, though technically i'm not sure you can have multiple pilots control individual elements of a vehicle... it's a bit of a empty space in the rules [/edit]

@ neraph: sure, but i would have to assume that if you can turn on 'one weapon system' at a time only, then you're going to have that one weapon system fired by one person, not controlled by multiple separate characters/agents/pilot programs/AIs/sprites/etc... assuming you can even define what a weapon system is, which is not clearly stated anywhere that i know of.

and on a side note, the drone rack thing is technically not a house rule. the drones are in a rack, ready for launch. nothing indicates those drones are inside the vehicle, so the drones can be outside (and indeed, must logically have access to the outside of the vehicle at some point to launch). furthermore, the drones can be active (nothing states otherwise, and the normal rule is that they can be active, so the general rule prevails), so while it is definitely a rules kludge, it is actually a legal use of the rules to use small drone racks for that purpose (albeit a fairly non-standard one, i'm sure). so in fact, my method doesn't leave the RAW at all, and should be usable (unless they house rule against it) in the missions campaign, for example (mind you, it would be an exceptionally bad idea to drive an openly combat-oriented vehicle down the streets in the current missions setting, as i understand it, but it would be RAW to have such a vehicle possible)

what might be a slightly more interesting variation would be to have the drone rack store the drone internally, and have a roof-mounted track for the track drones that looks like something as innocent as the racks for assorted random sporting equipment you see on many cars today for the drones to launch to. obviously this would require a special equipment mod, and you'd want a drone rack that can both launch and recover your drones, but it would be pretty nifty however, such a device might not technically leave the RAW in the sense that there is a special equipment mod which could cover this, but it would definitely be a GM's call and would therefore not be something you could use in missions i suspect.

Honestly, even if that rule were still there, it doesn't say 'one weapon active per vehicle' to me. It says the *drone* Pilot can only use one at a time.

I agree: it's a very ugly RAW situation to have drones active in racks. However, my point was that a drone incapable of leaving the rack (Sentinel) has no business ever being put into the rack; it shouldn't be possible.

Eh, if the vehicle is large enough, stick a sentinal rail on it as "special machinery" and the sentinals can come along for the ride

I think you mean Sentinel? But yeah, I said earlier that things like ocean-going vessels could totally have drone rails, and it would be awesome.

You could go a lot smaller than ocean going vessel. A curtainsided van or semi-trailer, for example, could have a looped track inside with a dozen sentinels...

That seems excessive. Why would they even need a track in such a small space? And a *dozen*?

The track is for power, and secure communication.

The number may be excessive, but - I refer you to the thread title

More robots, more power.

Touché, Mayhem.

I can see someone using the drone launch to literally launch the drones, like toast from a toaster (I know it doesn't actually do that, but we all know the imagery).

EDIT: Also for conceptual imagery, the Sentinals are the auto-guns that pop out of all over the place in the 5th Element when the guy hit the window.

See, I think that's just a concealed turret, if it were on a vehicle. In a building, maybe, but Sentinels are still rail-mounted; it'd be a version of them.