I'm trying to digest the drone modification rules, and I'd appreciate any examples that have worked well in your games.

Examples of PC craftiness, or examples of corporate "best practices", or even interesting experiments gone awry.

Thanks, -- N

Uggg... Just the drones?

Pest Control Drone.

My take on a 2070 Tow truck/ Highway assistance vehicle.

Fizzy Pop Vending machine

Lone Star Patrol Car Mk.II (Coyote Hunter)

The Egress. A specialized drone for making high rise getaways.

Dodge Personal Escape Craft. A scooter/Blimp for when your craft is going down.(Its the 4th post down)

I think that is most of them. The last 2 are the best for seeing how to make drones. Long conversations.

Heh, what is with all the Drone threads lately?



-k

Don't forget my guide.

Weird how subjects seem to come in waves huh? I think it is because someone sees another thread on a similar subject and it jogs their minds, but instead of posting in that thread, they make their own. Or they made a tangent from another thread on the same subject. We had TMs recently, which lead to a Programs 12+ thread, which lead to a rigger thread, which seems to have spawned some other rigger threads. I was expecting a 'magic is overpowered' thread in there somewhere. I'm currently expecting some street sam stuff to come up soon. (Why do I feel like a meteorologist?)

I'm currently working on something that should spawn a thread like that.

You missed it, a street sam thread came back.

Here

This is the home of my Drone AI (HK Minidrone) who controls a hive of about 10 drones of varying sizes.

I’m using the “Similar Models” rules and depending on GM all vehicles are used (-20% initial cost) with a corresponding decrease in various attributes, mostly engine speed or acceleration due to model and/or being old.

Also depending on GM I’ve replaced some standard equipment to gain the modification slots used.

GTS Tower Hive [Armadillo Class]

GTS Tower [BOD 5 ARM 1]
Response Improvement [5]
Firewall Improvement [6]
Spoof Chip
Drone Squatter Lifestyle
Chameleon Coating
Drone Workshop [Drone maintenance area]
Mini Drone Rack [AI Drone Module]
Interior Cameras [For Drone hangars and maintenance area monitoring]
Standard Armor [15]
Special Machinery [Multiple (6) Holo projectors]

Since it is a (very) large drone it will be rather easy to lock on sensors but with the chameleon coating and the holo projectors the main problem would be regular radar lock.

It has space for sensors and a weapons mount.

Modified Ferret Fuel Tankers
The Ferrets have been extensively modified for the Tower to act as tankers similar to tanker planes on carriers.

Ferret X2
Spoof Chip
Multifuel Engine [Replaced Improved Sensor Array]
Chameleon Coating
Special machinery - Gridlink Upgrade [Not Usually Available to Minidrones]
Special machinery – High Capacity Batteries X5 [+30H fuel for drones – Count as Fuel Tanks]
Lighter Than Air

Modified Ferret Carryall
Like the tanker the carryall is a maintenance and cargo carrier for the tower.

Ferret X2
Spoof Chip
Aeronautics Toolkit [Replaced Improved Sensor Array]
Chameleon Coating
Lighter Than Air
Mechanical Arms (grapple) X4
Gecko Tips [Gecko Tipped Mechanical Arms]
Standard Winch

HK Saboteur Team
Like the AI the Saboteur team are made up of HK drones.

HK Killer Drone (Anti Vehicle) X4
Spoof Chip
Chameleon Coating
Mechanical Arms (Grapple X2)
Special Equipment - Hardware Toolkit

Additional Support
Heavily armoured Dalmatian with LTA capability and an LMG [Body 5]
Heavily armoured Kull with LTA capability [Body 4]

The latter is extremely useful for long missions where it can be used as a large cargo carrier for the hive.

I don't know, but given I'm starting a game this week with a Dronomancer and a rigger, I'm very appreciative

I noticed that just after I did my post

And there was a 'mages are overpowered' thread in there with the 'thought control' thread.

Apparently I'm part TM and can read the flow of the forum to predict future threads.

What is this drone?

The Dragonfly. Although I don't understand how they fulfill their fluff (hurt vehicles, attack in swarms). Are there rules for that?

That's what I thought it was, but when I looked over it just now I guess I missed the paragraph that names it a "hunter-killer." My Hunter-Killer would be a much more dangerous thing. As it is, a 2.5k grenade is much more expensive than it's worth, in my opinion.

Not the explosive one, the AV one. Although, I really know see how any of the variants except the grenade work (on things 'larger than themselves').

I tend to agree. Yes, they're self-guiding, and you might argue that an 'attached' HK-grenade-drone gets the 'halved Armor' bonus of attached demolitions, but it's still expensive.

Well, it is intended to be used to hunt smaller drones, not larger people/vehicles.

Ahh, for some reason I was thinking that it was an AV grenade or something on the drone. Man I've been tired today.

No, Karoline. I'm specifically talking about the second part of the description.

The part where it isn't effective against humans, or the part where it can, in swarms, damage vehicles or the part where some people stuff it with explosives instead of using it as intended?

Heh. Per my post, the part where it says they can hurt larger vehicles in swarms. I guess it's technically the third paragraph, but it's the second one about how it actually functions. Also, the bit about 'slowly eating their way through' doesn't match any crunch I'm aware of, either, unless they're using the barrier rules?

I don't see a problem.

By 'slowly eat through' it might mean that once every 3 rounds it does damage. If you have the drone attached to the vehicle (DV 3 AP -1) and you're going up against a GAZ P-179 (Bod 14, Armor 6). Now, the drone is rolling 8 dice (4 pilot, 4 autosoft) for attack, and the vehicle isn't rolling any for defense. Now, on average that is about 3 hits, which is DV 6, AP -1. That means the vehicle has 19 dice, which means that on average it won't take damage. But, if the drone does a bit above average, or the vehicle does a bit below average, it takes damage. So maybe that happens once in every 4 attacks. The drone gets 2 attacks a combat turn, which means it deals about 1 damage to the vehicle every 6 seconds. That certainly sounds like 'slowly eating their way through' the vehicle.

And of course if you have 10 of them on the vehicle at once...

Pilot 3, actually.

If they're allowed to latch on, then they can sometimes do a tiny bit of damage, yes. It doesn't seem very effective. If the vehicle is much smaller, it does look better, of course. I guess it depends a little on how big a 'swarm' is.

So what are the latch-on rules? Simple Attack test? Works on metal, plas, flesh? No chance to be shaken loose? If you want to slap them, I assume they're unable to dodge, and auto-die. Hmm. If Smart Armor is deployed, they should auto-die, too.

Well, still works with pilot 3.

And I purposefully picked a fairly robust vehicle. It said that it could take down drones and vehicles larger than itself, not that they were anti-tank drones.

And actually, if you want to throw in called shots for +4 damage, they could work over even bigger vehicles.

As for latch-on rules, there aren't any, just like there aren't any for a drone landing on something. You wouldn't be able to destroy them with your bare hands (adepts and bone laced people not withstanding), but yeah, you'd like be able to slap them without much trouble.

They really aren't designed for attacking people though, so I wouldn't count on them being able to latch onto humans as easily.

Honestly, I think you'd be required to use a Called Shot (no bonus) just to latch on to a suitably vulnerable spot in the first place, and that a roll you dodge (or parry, or both, etc.). So, that's what I meant: they only work if you invent extra rules, and the fluff writes checks the crunch can't cash. It says they're 'suitable' for attacking metahumans, just inefficient.

I like their other uses (still requiring extra rules, though), like poison-bearing assassins of sleeping people, etc.

I don't see poison-bearing assassins requiring extra rules, and I also don't see them landing on a vehicle requiring any rules.

And yeah, they can attack unarmored metahumans quite well. You have to remember, some stuff isn't designed with trolls in heavy milspec armor in mind.

Oh? What's the rule for the poison-delivery system on the HK? You have to make it up. Yes, it's 'Special Machinery', but that doesn't mean you don't have to invent it.

What's the rule for them landing on a vehicle and latching on to a weak spot? Does their little Pilot 3 brain know what a weak spot is on hundreds of different vehicles?

What is 'quite well'? Against a metahuman, they do DV 1, AP +1. By the crunch, they can't even really pull off the 'slit a sleeping man's throat' fluff.

I think they're a cool, classic little concept that should work. It's just that you have to make them work, probably by handwaving.

Heck, even Special Machinery is a catch-all for "GM-Invented Rules."

Poison-delivery, you give them a needle that injects venom. No rules needed, just like a nurse doesn't need rules to give you a shot.

Sure, no reason their pilot 3 brain wouldn't be able to recognize a weak spot on a vehicle. I mean, first off it could just have a datasoft of all vehicles produced and their weak spots, and second, even a pilot 3 has some deductive ability, it could look at a vehicle and figure out the spots that are likely to be weak (represented by its attack roll)

And against a metahuman, if we're talking about Joe Average, we're looking at 3 reaction, with 0 melee skill, which mean 1 die on defense against the drone's 7 dice. 3DV against 3 body means 2 damage on average, which is fairly decent.

How do you get 1 die, incidentally? Personally, I'd give the +1 AP just for being clothed at all, but that's not even necessary. It's 3 against 7 (DV 2), and 4 to resist (maybe 1 box). And then, as an insect-sized Body 1 drone, it dies as soon as it's instantly swatted (because it's stuck to the skin).

Now, make it 'Joe Street'. Reaction 3, Body 3, Unarmed or Dodge 1, and 4 Impact armor. 4 against 7 (same), and DV 2 against 8. No one's talking about troll tanks.

The attack roll is hitting a target, not deducing weak spots. And you just invented the rule that they have a 'weak spot datasoft'. See?

Should I create a RL thread linked to this one and title it "Info Sortilage" along with all the RL cyber threads we've got going?

Back to the drones topic, as I mentioned in another, even for a non-rigger, a doberman with LMG and 2 rotodrones with SMGs and good autosofts is a good start and great for both helping the character in combat and working as a bit of overt surveillance. For more covert surveillance, use some of the smaller drones, mini and micro.

Or ubiquitous, as in a MCT-Nissan Roto Drone or Ferret.

0 unarmed/dodge skill on a reaction + unarmed/dodge test, 0 skill is pure stat and -2 penalty, meaning 1 die on defense. And armored clothing provides no impact AP, so even if you want the +1 to apply to lack of armor, it is still only 4 dice on DV 3, so about 2 damage like I said. And thanks to drones being immune to stun damage, a human (or even a troll) can't swat it for any amount of damage unless they have killing hands or bone augmentation of some kind.

Okay, so it does 1 damage about 1/3rd of the time. Get a swarm of 10-20 of them and they are a serious threat. Like I said, fluff is often designed around joe average, not joe street. It isn't like they are suggested to go after armored human targets. And basically the entire entry keeps talking about them being used in swarms. Yeah, one alone isn't much of a threat, but numbers is where their advantage lies, especially if they can take advantage of tacsoft (not many sensor channels, but even an extra die could be helpful)

If attack roll was simply hitting, and not attempting to hit a weak/vulnerable spot, then net hits wouldn't cause extra damage, because it isn't like you're hitting them somewhere that it hurts more, right? And I didn't invent a rule about a weak spot datasoft, I'm just providing alternates since you seem to like to ignore the things that are already presented in the game and things that simply don't need crunch.

@sleep Feel free

Uh oh, it's becoming multi-layered. There is no way that you actually have a lower melee defense test than ranged, from a 'default' penalty. The universe would explode. And again, that's assuming that someone with zero skill is a relevant example.

They have about 1 sensor channel, and how many is a swarm? 25000¥? 50000¥ Even having a listed 0 in Impact should count as something to add that +1 to. No one is an unarmored target, so it's silly to even talk about it.

Actually, one sentence of the whole entry talks about swarms. Is that 'basically the entire entry'?

Yes, you did invent the datasoft. The entry says nothing about a database of weak spots; you're inventing the rule that they have them. There's nothing wrong with that, but my point is that the HK requires many different fill-in-the-blanks rulings to actually do what the fluff claims it can do.

There is no logical reason for net hits to cause extra damage and you know it. It's a purely crunch thing. A minute ago, you were arguing that an attached HK would get increased DV from an unopposed attack roll: what weak spot could it be hitting (or failing to hit) then? It's attached, probably to an armor plate.

Oops. I was thinking of Body 0 drones, not Body 1. As long as we're inventing rules (because it's unavoidable), I still think anyone could slap their hand over the little bugger and squeeze, possibly smack it against a hard surface.

So: if you do invent the many minor rules necessary for the HK to function, it can sorta pull some of things the fluff claims.

Oh? Why is that? Does it say somewhere in the rules (since you're so fixated on a rule for everything) that there is no default penalty for melee combat defense?

About 1 sensor channel, as in actually 2 sensor channels?

I conceded a 0 impact armor as adding the +1, though it seems silly as the entire point of most things with + AP on them is that they should be used against unarmored targets.

[edit]As for the swarm, it is an imprecise number. I don't see why you feel a need to quantify it.[/edit]

Given that it is talking about their use on targets larger than themselves, yes it is for any purpose in which we are talking about a target larger than a dragonfly.
Sure, I did invent the datasoft, but only as a possibility, not as a fact. The actual fact is that I don't know how it works, or why it works, just that it works. Kind of like I don't know how or why many sports are so popular, but I know that they are popular, and my lack of knowledge about the how or why doesn't change the fact that they are popular. So, I don't know how or why a dragonfly can pick out weak points, I just know that it can because that is what the description says.
Okay, that lacks a point really. Unless it is that I'm using crunch to try and prove to you (Who requested crunch proof) that HK drones can do what they say they can do in fluff. By crunch I've proven that they operate as intended, and by fluff they automatically operate as fluff says they operate. I don't see a problem here.
Even body 0 drones couldn't be crushed with bare hands by the rules. Weird, I know, but those are the rules. Unless I missed something special about body 0 drones being susceptible to stun damage. And so far, no, no rules have been invented yet.

Like I said, no invented rules, unless you want to count landing on things as an invented rule (It isn't), or things which aren't moving in relationship to you not getting a defense roll as an invented rule (It isn't). I mean, is breathing an invented rule? Because breathing isn't actually in the rules anywhere. Holding your breath is, but breathing is not.

SR4B P. 247 Intuition+Body(2) must be rolled for every 10 minutes of game time or your character suddenly forgets how to breathe and drowning rules take effect until your character remembers how to breathe, which requires another Intuition+Body roll, with an increased threshold of 4.

Don't even Body 0 drones still have 8+(Body/2) boxes in their condition monitor?

Another crunchy problem with the HK Drones is that they're likely to do only Stun damage against most combat drones, because their modified-damage vs. modified armor isn't that great. So the damage would be reduced to Stun and ignored by the prey drone.

I like the idea of HK drones, but they do need some special rules. For example:
- Latching on (similar to Grappling?)
- Armor penetration (drill?)
- Injecting something damaging beneath the target's armor casing(nanites, industrial acid?)

For anti-personnel HKs:
- Latching on
- Armor penetration ("Needle/Drill")
- Subdual method (taser, poison, nanites)

That would actually be a really scary threat to Tank Trolls heavily armored enemies.

HKs need some special rules, but there is similar technology to look to for inspiration. They can have quite powerful stuff, but they're limited by their specialization, or they wouldn't be as small.

As for the "sensitive body part" software, isn't that what Targeting autosoft is for?

A rating 6 vehicle blueprint is 60Y and can be copied and distributed. A HK drone with detailed schematics of a common vehicle would easily be able to get inside the vehicle on the underside and starting to cut cables and get a modifier to their attack test due to intricate knowledge of the vehicle.

We also have teamwork tests and an attack test against a vehicle when you have LANDED on it would be a target that cannot move.

This would essentially be a MELEE attack and an infiltrating drone, in the undercarriage on the vehicle exposing sensitive components.

Attacker Superior Position +2
Defender Prone (well, I have his guts exposed) +3
Called Shot +1 minimum

OR we go by ranged rules

Smartgun Link +2
Called Shot +1 minimum

Do armored vehicles really have open undercarriages?

Also, once you've latched on to a vehicle, and are basically crawling around on something that can't affect you, are melee rules really appropriate?

Well, even if they had an armored undercarriage they still need access for the suspension, wheels, brakes and other pieces.

I can imagine a small drone latch on and weld a hole and crawl inside the vehicle.

Just to keep it straight I'm the one who's fixated on a rule for everything, most of the time.

And for swarms, any number of these that share the same subscription should be considered a swarm.

Maybe.. I'd expect military drone designers to be trying to come up with defenses against that though.

Well, most uses for HK drones would be smaller drones with less body and less armor.

Most anti-vehicle uses for runners would be against modified regular vehicles and not military vehicles.

I agree: I guess there's *another* invented rule that the HK drones automatically don't get their attack staged down to Stun and *utterly ignored*.

The size of the swarm absolutely matters, because we're specifically talking about how effective these things are. I didn't say it had to be rigidly defined, I said we need to consider how many we're talking about: 6 is a lot different from 20, while a real 'swarm' of insects could be hundreds or more. Everything depends on this, because a hundred of these guys (250,000¥) could do some real damage.

Smacked against a hard surface is the same as a weapon: P damage. Dead tiny drone. It's just an example, and (as I clearly said) it's made up. It's not like it could get out of your hand, anyway.

Karoline, you simply haven't proven anyway at all. You gave an example of the thing maybe scratching the weakest possible metahuman target, and not hurting a truck (with invented rules).

I'm not arguing that the HK shouldn't work, only that the fluff describes things that you have to handwave into working. They certainly can fulfill their primary purpose: killing Body 0 and Body 1 surveillance drones.

OK, now that I have a few can someone explain the problems people are having? It looks like a whole lot of rules wrangling over something that looks to be really easy to design and build without all this mess and fuss.

Looks like these are the the design criteria:
1) Built to RAW
2) Be Micro-drone sized.


My questions:

1) Does it have to be reusable or can it be a one shot?
2) Cost? I'm assuming 500 for disposable and 1,000 for reusable.
3) Anti-personnel, drones or vehicle?

Hell give me your particulars and I'll drown you in RAW drones.

RAW, you can't design or build drones.

RAW you can. You just have to modify existing designs.

Except that drone still has 8 health boxes, no matter how small it is...



That's the only thing they're really good for, and even that takes them several rounds of chewing. Sad, because the fluff is neat.

That's not what I said, that's 'modify'. I just want my Rigger 4.

What are you asking about, anyway? The HK already exists.

No, Ascalaphus, I'm sure Body 0 drones auto-die if hit. Where's that rule… Anyway, that's what I was talking about.

In the common sense holding area, where they keep the rules about drugging vehicles and spirits?

Bust-A-Move:
0 3/10 10 2 1 0 1 - 350NY
TerminationL: Self Destruct - 1000NY



Smuggling Compartment at 1500 NY, and then packing it with c4 is of course, another option.

Heh, no. Maybe I imagined it, or it's SR3. *shrug*