It might have been a previous edition, but I thought I'd seen a drone adapatation or maybe some software that makes a vehicle into a drone. Am I just imaginging things?

Drones are vehicles that cannot carry passengers. You can add a rigger adaptation to a vehicle if you want to jump into it (SR4A 350).

Any modern vehicle has a Pilot, so is a drone in most respects.
Any specific reason you're asking?

Arsenal has a "rigger adaptation" vehicle mod, basically just a black box you put in the vehicle so you can jump into it in VR.

We're discussing the disparity between drones and vehicles in terms of armor and Body. Drones are a lot checper but nowhere near as resilient as their size would indicate (especially heavy drones). But if there's a way to mount guns on an SUV and then give it commands without having to rig it yourself then you've basically got a much more expensive but much more frightening drone.

I know about rigger adaptation, I'm more interested in a drone's ability to at autonomously in a firefight and to be slaved together so you can tell 4 of them "shoot that guy."

You can upgrade their (that is, any modern vehicle's) Pilot and add autosofts as normal.

Honestly, it's kind of odd that all drones even come with Rigger Adaptation by default. You'd think there'd be plenty of demand for drones that you can only run autonomous, Command, and Remote Control. Jumping In isn't vital, though nifty.

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Yeah, James McMurray, that's basically any vehicle. Have Pilot, will travel (and shoot people). The type of weapon mount does matter, but that's easy enough to figure out.

Slaving isn't even required to command multiple Pilots (and devices of almost any kind) to do something.

I think it's a relic of previous editions of Shadowrun, where the distinction meant much more.

Actually, drones offensive capabilities far exceed their defensive. This is for a few reasons.

Basically, drones are limited to body 4 - they just don't get bigger than that for some reason. The armor mod rules are such that basic(non concealed, non smart) can go up to twice body or three times body for drones. This means a Lynx or Crimson Samurai(arsenal) can have at most 12 armor and 10 physical damage boxes. (8+1/2 body). Its pretty easy to beat that with a simple BattleVan.

However, their offensive side is a bit different. No matter the control method, there's about a limit of 6 dice on the first half of the dice pool - Whether its Sensor(max 6, and pilots can still use sensor targeting), Pilot(max 6), Command(usually max 6), response(usually max 6).
the point being, that no matter how you control a given drone, half the dice pool is going to be capped at 6 or so. The other half is either Gunnery(max 6) or Targeting(max 4). Its pretty easy to push Sensor to 6 with cheap cameras, so the right setup can save you a ton of cash - so about 10 to 12 dice, +/- Specs, optimized autosofts, or hotsim/control rig bonuses.

Drone are also vehicles, and weapons mounts can take LMGs. Depending on your GM's interpretation of the rules, they either ignore recoil completely, or use the much more sane Recoil Compensation = Body rule in arsenal(every game I've played in uses this). Which means that with a simple 200Y gas vent, that steel lynx can fire Long Wide Bursts all day a no penalty. Thats effectively 5 more dice on the attack role. With a bit of effective spending(like a White Knight) you can pretty easily trick out a drone to handle Full Bursts a no penalty.

Even if your drone buddy gets one net hit on the attack, it forces the target to defend, which racks up the successive defense penalty. This is important to keep in mind, because a single drone can pretty easily hit a group of enemies with Suppressive Fire(its important to note that this explicitly ignores recoil, so if you plan on using it, miniguns work wonders, since you don't even need to bother with the 15 dice of recoil.).

Drones are far from useless. Its just that making an effective (and cost effective) setup is a huge pain in the ass. If you're interested in drones, the best advice i can give you is this:
Get the arsenal errata, it shows you how to recalculate Sensor Rating if you change your sensor loadouts.
Re-read the Modification Sizes in arsenal - whether a mod is Minidrone, Microdrone, Standard or All makes a huge difference in your theorycrafting(no anti-theft on spyflies, sorry!)
Copy down the Sensor Package Size table in Anniversary Edition(it changed slightly from 4th, i think either Medium or Large got bigger)
Understand that all Modification Slot, Sensor Capacity and Accesssories ALL apply, and that you can't cross the streams. Yes, you may put weapon mods on your armed drones gun, as well as thermal/smartlink/ultrasound on its Camera - try to keep them all straight!

There really isn't a big difference. All drone are vehicles... not all vehicles are drones.

Case in point... you could take a motorcycle... mod it w/ rigger adaptation, armor, weaponry etc... and it would be hard to tell from a steel lynx in either size or effectiveness.

All vehicles w/ a pilot rating you can control via 'captains chair'. tell th autopilot to drive to the corner of 5th an maple...
Use a 'command' program to drive it yourself as if you were playing a video game. (that's how I view the command program the ultimate first person shooter/simulation).

Only with a rigger adaptation (which all drones have already by RAW), can you jump into and become the drone w/ the rigger module's +2 bonuses. But you can add it to any vehicle as a 1 slot modification.

Thanks everyone. I got it now.