I want to create a rigger (both drone and jumped in) but I’m torn between an adept ‘hacker type’ and a technomancer ‘drone whisperer’. As far as I can tell there are advantages and disadvantages to both and as this character is for a ‘milspec’ game I want to have a bundle of cash too so points will be spread thin and I’d like the character to be effective…(Would rather not go the pure hacker route as I still haven’t got to grips with the matrix rules properly)?!?
Thoughts so far:
AR Adepts get bonus to skills and with improved reflexes should be ‘fast’ in the meat world too. Not so good jumped in as their magic won’t work (?)…
TMs get machine sprites which make drones better - replace pilot rt with sprite rt (??) and ‘free’ autosofts and no real disadvantages to getting a vehicle control rig(?)
Anything else to consider in choosing between them?
I also need to get my head around drones/sensors and tacnets!
As far as I can tell sensor packages (SR4 p334) for various drones will have full capacity on installed sensors and at 1 capacity per sensor (on average) this means that this will be the number of channels for a tacnet (eg 6 for a med drone) is that right?!?
I put this together to try and fathom standard sensor loads, trying to be as non-specialist as possible. Is this reasonable or is there a RAW table that shows this somewhere? Does the player get to choose this all? Should I choose different sensors as standard?
Micro - Cap 1 - Typical Package: Camera
Handheld/Minidrone - Cap 3 - Typical Package: Lowlight Camera, Microphone
Mounted/Small Drone - Cap 5 - Typical Package: Lowlight & Thermo Camera, Microphone, Laser Range Finder
Medium Drone - Cap 6 - Typical Package: Lowlight & Thermo Camera, Rear Camera, Microphone, Laser Range Finder
Large Drone - Cap 8 - Typical Package: Lowlight & Thermo Camera, Rear Camera, Microphone, Laser Range Finder, 2 cap spare…
Vehicle - Cap 12 - Typical Package: Lowlight, Thermo & Vision Mag Camera, Rear Camera, Microphone, Laser Range Finder, Radar (8 channels as radar is 5 cap...)
Sensor ratings are in the vehicle / drone stats to start so to upgrade I just buy better sensor ratings for the packages listed above? Can a micro drone have a rating 6 camera in it? Are there other restrictions?
Lots of questions here, so thanks in advance for your thoughts/comments and help!