My current character rarley carries a gun and when he does it is a Narcoject gun, not very good against drones. I was just talking to my GM and he stated that since the groups rigger has decided to start collecting combat drones he will be addign mor opposition rigger to the games. Generally this would not bother me. I just started thinking what are some good and cheap ways of taking out drones.

One option I thought of, was froma game we recently played were I was on a second floor balcony looking down as a roto-drone come creeping in. I just hought what would the damage be if say I dropped a ball of rope/net down on it, or say I took a long metal rod, say re-bar and dropped intot he blades? I have no idea how this would be settled.

What about creating a Physical Barries spell next to the drone in the path of the blades?

Say I have said length of re-bar and a Vectored-Thrust UAV is hovering over head. What would the damage be if I jammed the rod throught exhuast into the turbines? I was thinking of that the other day watching "mythbusters" when they were shooting chickens into an airplane. If a bird can take down a jumbo-jet, could a piece of re-bar jammed in it stop it?

How easy is it to trip an anthroform, what would the damage be of it falling down a flight of stairs?

Can anyone else think of ceap and easy ways to destroy drones? I would like to keep magic means out of this a much as possible, because well, it has been discussed to death already.

Building Firehoses would work pretty good, ramming one with a car would work, Crowbars might be fairly effective, at least to get to the sparky goodies inside, smoke and other sensor blocking things would probably be ideal, then you can create a battle plan against a type of drone.

Since you mention magic, levitate is quite useful since no ground based drone makes a very good UAV, and depending on how much fine control the GM will give you, you can always dump them upside down if sufficient altitude for dropping them is a problem. Also, the Confusion and Accident spirit powers can make short work of even the most powerful MBTs, let alone drones.

If you're mundane of course, I think net guns are about you're only option, at the very least you're going to force a crash test and inhibit turret movement, but the modifiers it should add to that crash test - especially if the drone is running on it's own pilot should be enough in many cases to completely disable it.

Don't forget power lines... if you can get access to a power socket, you can send some happy volts into any drone with a peice of wire... the higher the voltage/amperage the better!

just be careful not to Zot yourself at the same time!

-Mike R.

There are very few reliable cheap and easy ways to take down drones. Also, you would NOT (NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT) want to be holding onto a piece of rebar while it goes into a turbine.

~J

I know that, they were shooting at a Piper Cherrokee, but the fact is airports spend millions of dollars every year to make sure there are no birds in flight paths. They use everything from plastic owls and scarecrows, guys on trucks driving around to scare them away, and including hawks and handlers trained to hunt other birds in the area. A flock of geese has been credit for taking down a jumbo jet in the past. Birds do and can knock planes out of the sky.

I know also that you do not want to hold on to the bar when jammed into the turbine. I was thinking more of a javelin toss.

There's a decent chance it'd screw up the turbine something fierce. There's also a nonzero chance that it'd do very little, though. If it was effective, you wouldn't want to be in the area; bits of turbine would probably be spraying around at high velocities.

Firehoses can work well against lighter drones. One good trick is to string a firehose down a stairwell and then turn it on when pursuers get near, but that's not so much of an anti-drone trick.

~J

The power line idea is a good one, if you can pull it off. Keep in mind that electricity can cause serious damage to a rigger if he's jumped into the targeted drone. I'm afraid I can't recall if this applies in Captain's Chair as well, though.

rant
One thing that irritates me about vector thrust drones is that gm's typically do not seem to consider that those nozzels are JET ENGINES. Such drones are not just benignly floating around they are blowing out thousand degree air at hundreds of miles an hour. Anything within 10 feet below the drone should immediately burst into flame, the thing should be incredibly loud, standing directly underneath one should be rapidly fatal.
/rant

That's very true. Mmm, T-Birds...

~J

A vector thrust design could be made that uses directed airflow without the jet engine inferno. The output (acceleration, load) would be significantly less than the jet variety, but it would have the benefit of not burning the carpet.

Yeah, maybe you are right. I have never heard of a vector thrust today that works without geting most of its thrust from direct jet blast, but 60 years in the future.... Still there needs to be a very hot exhaust port someplace and it should be incredibly loud.

Actually, no. A ducted fan arrangement could easily be used in a vectored thrust drone, such a layout would be both very quiet and would not necessarily have hot exhausts since an electric motors could easily be used.

Also, the small jet engines found in model aircraft today aren't actually that loud, and really aren't that dangerous to stand behind so long as you're a couple of feet away. They don't get nearly as hot as 'full sized' engines, and sure as hell wont have afterburners, so you wouldn't have flames shooting out the back either. On the whole, unless you're getting proper buzzed by one, I wouldn't bother with any real damaging side effects aside from descriptive.

EFC vector thrust vehicles would not have as severe of heat problems. Any time you push that much air around, it will make noise.

another option for VTA would be halon, or some other gass in large enough quantities will starve any combustion of air enough to put it out, so a fire extinguisher might work if it was rated for chemical, anything that can stop the combustion. or the airflow, enclose it in a tight room with no airflow and it will either run out of O2 or cook itself.

molitav cocktails are another good weapon against targets in the open, so are well disguised pits for walkers, and Steel cables for flying drones...

just brainstorming so some of these ideas may be Bunk.

-Mike R.

edit advantage would be your freindly rigger might be able to resurrect them for your side if you can keep them intact but disabled.

You throw a cat into a drone and I will hunt you down.

~J

Best way to mess with drones , your rigger. It's his fault the gm's adding more drones ;) let him handle the drones.

Other than that You a mage ? Wreck vechicle Not a mage ? Tasers are a nice choice.

The biggest issue with killing a is drone is its armor rember if you can get thru that it dosen't take much . You would be surprised how little armor is on some of these things. A Body 2 rotor drone with no armor can pretty much be disabled with a baseball bat.

Mutie's got a point. If you really want to help out, get a RCD and a few drones and slap on a 'trode rig if you don't have a datajack (though that costs).

~J

I can't let the rigger take on all the trouble, mainly because I need a ride, I don't own a car either. Yes I am a mage, Snake shaman to be exact. I lose spell dice when I fight and the character is a slight pacifist because of his totem. So I look for ways to do things before I go throwing spells around. Magic is a very powerful edge best served to the unexpecting. He is building his masking up to hide a foci or 2 but generally tries to look like he is no body important. It has worked well in the past, people just don't pay attention to him since the rest of the group is a troll wired to hell, a slutty street Sam (played by a girl so calm down) and the rigger who has foot in mouth disease ( he lokes to speak before thinking sometimes) I can usually keep quite and pretend not to be with them and can get to a lot of security places talking a good game and not carring anything illegal or out of place. He almost never wears armor and rarly carries a weapon, other then a Leatherman tool. Also dressing like Joe Everyday no one pays me much attention, being clean cut with no scars or tattoos, some of the players forget my character is a shadowrunner. I usually only use magic as a last ditch thing (even thought I have a vast array of spells and metamagics), I do this to avoid the "Geek the Mage First" unwritten rule. I hold actions to avoid moving fast like a SAM, especially canners will show I have no ware. I hold attacks to make it look like I am just lucky diving out of the way of things or blocking an attack or something. I do help in combat, just in a sneaky way. Last time we were in a stand up shoot out, my character screamed like a school girl and dove for cover. Everyone laughed including the GM, saying the enemies pay me no mind, then I started throwing concusion grenades at their feet from under the car. Acting like a bitch or a normal citizen can let you get the drop on the enemy, even during a shot out, mainly in crowded places.

So in short I am looking for ways to take care of drones with out resorting to magic, if at all possible.

My character still improves his sneaking skills and athletics skills for climbing and such. It is sort of like the Jedi train of thought, build a solid base of skills and only use the force when absolutely nessecery. And no this guy is not a Jedi wanna be.

mono whips are nice slicey dicey, but might be too pricey for you to handle. steel cable, katanas, crowbars, firehose, pit traps, Tasers/raw voltage. Fire Extinguishers, shooting out/breaking out it's sensor systems.

magically: wreck, illusion spells, lightning spells, levitate, invisibility, silence, and a rust spell would be cool

Speaking of brainstorming, and maybe I've played too much battletech, but since you already have the narcoject pistol, what would be the feasability of loading a narcoject round with some sort of incendiary (gasoline?), and replacing the needle with some sort of "On-impact-shatter-and-ignite-round" device?

(RE: The battle tech reference, I'm thinking of the gooey payload of inferno missiles...)

Considering that a narcojet dart probably is less that 1/4cc It wouldnt be useful for anything except a chemical delivery system, where you only need a small amount of something to be useful. It's not shooting water balloons at the target after all.

Actually a taser would do nicely to a drone. excess voltage + electronics = need to buy new toys usually. They can also transmit that damage directly to a rigger when he's jumped into the drone. Also, while direct attack magic may be tough for you, what about the various indirect manipulations, like ice sheet to play with the ground pounders and wind for the flying ones?

Chemical foam fire extinguishers should work pretty damm well Id guess. If they didnt crash a flying drone, they would certinly blind the sucker...

Man & Machine: Cyberware, p. 112.

Line a coat/blanket with foil or metal threads and you might convince your GM to let you use it as a Faraday cage to block the rigger's control signal(s). Of course, then you have to be able to "net" the drones, but I can't think of everything.

For anyone out there that really knows electronics, mainly the ones in cars. How suseptable to electric shock are they? Electronics are usually in insulated and isolated, meaning not much electricity should get to them. I wouldn't think a Taser could get through to fry the electronics, maybe a high voltage power line that feeds your house, but a little taser?

I maybe wrong but doesn't a Faraday cage need to be grounded?

If you can grab the antenna, you've got a conductive line straight to the electronics. That's one heck of a called shot, though.

As for Faraday cages, it depends on the power of the incoming signal. Even an ungrounded cage can hold off a certain amount of EM.

police use shock devices to kill fleeing cars today.

they are fairly suseptible if they have Electronics, otherwise, you might make it skip a few beats, but it would keep running, unless you burned out the wiring, but that takes a lot of voltage to do.

big capaciters, can deliver massive amounts of power over a short time, they may just have a long recharge.

-Mike R.

I believe those cop things lay on the ground and touch the bottom of the car's engine, throwing the timing and alternator and such thinks in to a fit, stalling the car. I would think if it does not do enough damage to fry the car a smart get away man would throw the car into park re-start and go on. Most people panic whent the car stalls and try to get it started again with it in drive. You have to put it in park then re-start a car will not start in drive, at least none of mine do.

And the antenna would really only go to the cars radio, why would it go to their electronic ignition or electronic fuel injectors? Tasering the antenna migh piss of the rigger becuase he can't hear his favorite station now, but I doubt it would do anything worse.

most of todays IRL cars have enough computers running stuff like fuel injection and such that they can get totally fragged by one of these ground zappers. it does in fact sit underneath and zap the engine or frame, though it matter not much, as the voltage difference it causes is enough to fry any electronics that are grounded to the frame.

but older cars that have a timing chain and a carbeurator, are almost un-affected by these, as the only thing to get any damage is the alternator, and you can drive a long way without an alternator. often it won't even stall the car.

-Mike R.

Actually, I was thinking of the antenna on the drone. Y'know, the one being remote controlled by the rigger? Should go straight to the control circuitry.

Hey, if it's a slimline drone with a surface antenna, that called shot with the taser may not be so bad.

I know nothing about aerodynamics, but it seems to me that a turbo prop engine would have a few edges over a ducted fan. Mainly the fact that a turbo prop such as in a C-130 or a Tu-95 blows the air over the wings, causing additional lift -- how significant that effect is, I have no idea. And then there's the fact that a ducted fan will be quite limited in diameter, while the propellers of conventional turbo props are quite a lot bigger -- again, I have no idea whether that makes any real difference.

Digression Alert.

Sorry the whole chicken vs. windshield test reminded me of an old joke/urban legend.

Supposedly some while ago NASA built a cannon which was designed to fire chicken carcases at speeds similar to the high end capability of a jet fighter/space shuttle. The idea being that if they could simulate an impact with some sort of airborne fowl they'd know whether their windshields would survive the impact or not. Regardless another country caught wind of this cannon and asked to borrow it so they could test the windshields on their high speed trains.

NASA being ever generous agreed to lend the cannon and it was shipped over to the other country where they proceeded to run a series of tests. When the chicken was fired at the windshield of the train it not only punched straight through the glass, it snapped the pilots chair in two and embedded itself in the rear wall of the cabin. Horrified the country, which had borrowed the cannon, contacted NASA and after passing on the details of the test asked what could be done to fix the design flaw.

NASA responded with a single comment:

.

.

.

"Defrost the chicken first."

TBO

So what would the Power of a frozen chicken be as compared to an unfrozen one?

~J