So in my never ending quest for crazy combat hacker toys, i now find myself contemplating the combination of Gecko Grip and Limping Propulsion.

Basically what i am wondering is if the gecko grip can be used to slap the gun to a wall or some cover, and have the limping system provide aiming?

This so that the hacker can then slip back behind cover and either used command and gunnery skill, or just designate targets via drone sensors.

The latter in particular would allow a hacker to have a man portable drone in a concealable package that can still allow him to be somewhat effective in combat situations would going quasi-samurai.

hell, he may even slap the gun on the back of his arm or around the shoulder area and go "kill that guard, gun".

Hm hm... i would allow it. It would look a bit silly, of course and the propulsion/Gecko part would needed to be installed in a weird way (some kind of articulated arm) but sure, why not. Also i would require a prefect recoil-compensation or it might fall off when firing.

With the slapping "turrets" onto people or other things: Also sure, why not. But always give penalties for not being REAL turrets: encumbarence/interference with the hosts movement, aim penalties for the gun.

Yeah: possible, with limitations and penalties.

It's not all that different from the idea of outfitting a smart platform with gecko tips, so in my opinion not much of a problem. It's even more expensive...

Actually, now I have the image for the crawling drone from this upcoming game.

Well that setup would be more bulky then say a machinepistol with gecko and limping. The smart firing platform is after all a full tripod.

I am looking into stuff that one can grab and go or deploy using a single hand and operate via AR commands. Basically something a Hacker can bag or pocket when it is time to bug out of a situation.

I made a similar thing for a character...a limping grenade launcher (the pistol sized one) to fire off stun, gas and smoke grenades (I was going through a 40K harlequin moment...!)

Figured recoil etc wasn't that much of an issue seeing as scatter meant that there was bugger all chance of them being on target anyway

A gun with a propulsion system needs a Pilot, so is a drone, so suffers no recoil. Go HVAR!

Dangerous thinking. It can't take vehicle mods, therefore it's NOT a drone.

*ahem*


Which, of course, makes them both subject to lack of recoil (Facepalm worthiness of some cases of this notwithstanding. Thankfully Arsenal also suggested vehicle weapon RC=Body) and able to receive any and all upgrades that can apply to respectively minidrones and small drones.

Curiously, only pistols and longarms are explained. What happens to my Vindicator, my Vigorous, my Vögeljager?

Almost. This holds true, oddly, up until you apply the Movement modification.

Then mysteriously the drone weapon loses all ability to accept vehicle modifications.




-k

Gah. Yay for a clear set of rules eh?

indeed...

So add in the movement last?

Hrm. I'm wondering, with the gun becoming a drone through Pilot Upgrade, is it actually still eligible for weapon mods? 0_o

Now THAT is a good question . .
Basically, if you give it the pilot mod, which it needs for movement, then it is a drone and thus can't accept the weapon mod, because it's now a drone/vehicle and no longer can take WEAPON mods . . but it could take vehicle mods, so LTA Guns?

Well mostly i am playing around with creating a pocket sized drone/weapon that the hacker can command to attack targets rather then have the skill and such himself. Problem is that the really small drones can not take weapon mounts, and turning weapons into drones are "inefficient" (and bulky once one go above limping).

Thing is, of course, the drone has no speed/acceleration, and no vehicle mod gives it one, just transforming the ratings a vehicle has. OTOH, that Walther 2100 has never been that alluring. Killer miniblimp for under 10k? Yes please.

But hey hobgoblin? Weaponised minidrones are all the rage. Sure they can have a single weapon mount. One mount for each point of Body, rounded up.

iirc, the smallest drone that can take a weapon mount is small drones. micro and mini drones are outside of the "standard" modifications scope. And the SR4 rule (if one ignore Arsenal) is body divided by 3, rounded down. So 1 mount pr 3 body (oddly, Arsenal round up. But then again the modification class, standard, trumps that rule imo).

Definitely round down. Anything else is silly, RAW-arguable or not!

I'd rather round up, as "arsenal" introduces far more rules concerning modification and, most improtant, slots. If you want to modify a small drone with even more than a standard weapon mount, there's not much room for anything else in there. Also, in there's the new rule for recoil on vehicles/drones. Not too overpowered in my opinion... the rules even allow you to build a valkyrie module into a small drone.
All this based on the opinion that specific sourcebooks overwrite the generic standard rules...

*shrug* It just doesn't make sense to slap a Barrett into these tiny things, and who cares about recoil? Even with other guns, you can mod *them*.

SR4A is post-Arsenal, though.

That is one of the tricky things about SR4A. While it came out later then Arsenal and the rest, those still supposedly expand on the rules in SR4A. All in all, SR4A is more of a new print run of SR4 then a new edition, no matter how much some refer to it as 4.5 and similar *sigh*...

It incorporates and assumes parts of Arsenal, but yes, one possibility is that 'round down' is a 'basic rule' and 'round up' is the 'advanced rule'. I don't believe that, but I don't think it's a crazy argument. I just think that, argument or not, it doesn't make sense.

Thing is that round down works fine for basic "no weapon mounts on tiny drones", as they will likely all be body 0-2. But Arsenal introduces more fine grained mount rules, and so rounding up works ok as the smaller drones fall outside the "standard" category of vehicles (Arsenal sorts the various mods into microdrone, minidrone, standard and all).

That's true, and rightly so. However, there are those couple places where the loopholes form. That, and rounding down means fewer/smaller guns on Body 4-5 drones/vehicles—a Good Thing™.

I always looked on it as "round down if you're JUST using the SR4A. Round up if you're using Arsenal."



-k

damn it, there was a bugger hiding out in War of all places!

Nice and cheap, but the availability was downright insane tho

Bah, just noticed it is body 2. So it is a small drone, not a mini.

Yeah, the Arachne drone.

Which is less of a drone and more of a set of crawler legs you attach to the gun. The book text even comment that the gun is often larger than the drone.

In theory, you should be able to use the firearm normally, with the drone legs folded out of the way, and drop it to operate as a instant turret if needed.

As for the availability, a good Face should be able to score them in less than two weeks.

Then again, a good negotiator under SR4 rules can often get anything regardless of Availability, since it so easy to boost that Negotiate roll and it's an extended test. It's just a matter of time.



-k

Kinda makes you wonder why they bothered. We already have the smart firing platform.

*nods*
i knew we forgot something.

Well the Aracne can walk. Not that it makes any more sense, as it seems to be a Aztech Crawler with a turret and the pricetag and availability switched around (much lower price then a modded Crawler, but much harder to get).

Still, i find myself wondering how hard it would be to get in and out of a messenger bag or similar.

The idea came from this: http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Military-Dog...b_ts/1304626850

You'd think they'd err on the side of more expensive, sigh. I like the idea of a walking smart firing platform; my point was simply, 'why didn't they make it an upgraded version of the smart firing platform?'

It *is* weird that they appear to rely on Avail to keep runners from getting things, despite the total insanity of that. That's literally what price is for, and *it* actually works.

Price never works. Eventually, the character will have enough Nuyen to buy whatever they want. May take a while, but there you go.

The availability 20+ is quite obviously for "you can't get this at chargen".
Pretty much all of the avails seem to be mostly about whether or not you can get them at chargen(and whether or not you need Restricted Gear for that) and only little about making it take longer to get something in game.

I'd love to see someone buy that Aesir satellite from War! and load it up with a Thor shot.

Well, you need to get into arms dealing on a bigger scale, then you can do it.

And right about 1.4 billion nuyen.

Why buy it when you can attempt to hack it?

I don't see how 'eventually' is a problem. It's 'now' that's the issue (because any Avail can be achieved in a short time, vastly shorter than getting cash).

Well, this is often true, to be sure...

Yeah, you can pretty much create a character that straight from chargen can hit nearly any Availability test in the game.



-k