Just compare the price to a "Wuxing Hussar" combat drone - 7500nY for a body 4, armor 18, pilot 4, sensor 4, Defense 4, Targeting 4, Tacsoft 4 drone with a reinforced turret

At least it's not flying. But yup, *many* prices are way off, which doesn't help the situation.

no, its just a hovercraft

By and large, I think drones are priced disproportionately to their utility.

Don't even get me started on that Drone! (The TacSoft alone is worth 12,000!)

Quite frankly, I'm against putting passengers on most drones except the largest of them. And then probably hit them with the extreme modification penalty mentioned in Arsenal.

Put simply... a drone is designed to carry itself and maybe something lightweight like a weapon. Something like a motorcycle is a lot bigger and purpose designed to carry a passenger.

Also people always seem to forget there IS a modification in Arsenal specifically for adding extra cargo/passenger space to vehicles! And no I don't believe just 'slamming on a rigger coccoon' counts... See the Special Machinery/Storage entry on the chart... I'm not against MODIFYING a drone to be able to take a passenger especially the larger cargo drones... I just believe that either substantial cargo space must already be available or made using the special storage option before any other passenger modifications are apt.


"Though all drones are considered vehicles, the term drone is
generally used to refer to vehicles that are NOT designed to carry passengers
or are specifically designed for remote/unmanned usage."

Since they're not designed to carry a passenger a special storage modification is required to put in a passenger seat.

That's a nice way to handle the extra cost. Adding a seat to your Gaz isn't the same as adding a seat to your Air Supply. I think, for anything beyond "a handle you can grab hold of" or "plate you can stand on," charging for the Special Storage modification is the least a GM can do.

I've always liked using the Ejection Seat modification for this purpose, because its already about the right size/cost/weight/modslot to put a chair for a person in a vehicle.

Its come up when talking about the thundercloud morgan(arsenal), too, which LOOKS like it should totally seat two in front.

That, at least, is a case where the rules clearly state passenger capacity (1+1). Art means nothing, and that's a pretty tiny image anyway.

OK, I'll be the one to say it: Body should indicate how tough something is, not how big something is.

There's a lot of small, tough things out there, and big fragile things.

Sengir mentioned it… for this thread. Stupid 'simplified' stats. Size and weight should be in the fluff text, and Body is toughness. As for mod slots… hard to say. It's a totally arbitrary balance limit anyway, so whatever. All mods should be GM-approval anyway.

That's pretty good, actually. So putting in a new passenger seat in a drone that doesn't already have cargo space would take 1-2 modification slots, possibly 3 to fit a troll. (slots are supposed to be one-quarter of the Body of the cargo being carried) Most likely such a mod would result in a rather obvious passenger pod, as drones that don't inherently have cargo space are not likely to have enough internal elbow room to accommodate the passenger. So like a Steel Lynx would have this large box hanging off the back or something, and probably look a little silly.

Rigger cocoon would be optional, of course, and take up it's own slots.

I would suggest that Extra Entry/Exit Points would also be required, unless you want to have to unbolt part of the chassis every time you wanted to get in or out.



-k

That's assuming it's even possible, of course. GM approval and common sense, please.

Did some quick math. The Air Supply fluff mentions resupplying teams (not platoons) for long patrols, so assuming a typical six-man tactical team needing supplies for two weeks:

3 quarts of water per person per day = 56 gallons, about 7.5 cubic feet
A case of MREs is about 3 cubic feet, containing 12 meals = 63 cubic feet
Clothing/personal gear, say 2 cubic feet per person = 12 cubic feet
Another 5 to 10 cubic feet of ammo, weapon maintenence, etc

Roughly 90 cubic feet of cargo.

Body volume of a person is about 7 cubic feet, say 10 to 12 cubic feet for comfort.

So the Air Supply has substantial cargo space.



-k

It's really just spitballing, because they were so vague. As in, we have literally no idea at all (from This Old Drone): it says 'it is capable of carrying supplies for a team', and that's all. That could be anything up from two loaded magazines and a chocolate bar.

Where's my duct tape?

For example, a Gnome ghoul with full Cybernetic replacement can be 3 feet tall and have a Body stat of 16.

"I SHALL DESTROY YOU!!! ... After my nap."

Well, lets not forget fun times with the vehicle options of "Similar Model" where you can say, increase Body +1 and reduce Armor -1. Then you slap on 21 Armor on that sucker.

Man, if someone dared try that…

At least it isn't space trains.

Nah, Dad was a truck driver.

Well, its not unfeasible. Its just important to reinforce to the player that their model of vehicle is far more easily identifiable than others and spare parts for that model must be custom ordered from Ukraine or Tibet. Give them their bonus if they have a good idea for it but there should be consequenses, very much like picking a rare subrace as a character - it comes with baggage.

Hehe, nice. For me, Body is totally ineligible for Similar Models tweaking (this goes triple for *drones*, which traditionally have very specific Body ratings). You can trade Speed for Armor, fine; the books does say "appropriate" tradeoff.

Which can be a bit hard to describe. Usually if we look at attributes described we have for example Body/Armor or Low/High speed or Walk/Run acceleration. Body versus armor would be fine. I would on the other hand tack on an extra little bit. If you REDUCE a value you also reduce the MAXIMUM possible value. So if you reduce armor by -1 that would mean that I would count the vehicles body at their previous value (large drone with body 6 would still count its old body of 5 for armor maximum.)

Nothing in the rules for that, though. I agree it sounds like a solid house rule to specifically stop the twinkery you first described.

Still, Body for drones is a huge deal; until they fix the Body-equals-everything error, you can't just go changing that. If they want +1 mod slot, let them have that directly. If they want +1 Damage resistance, let them have *that* directly. No reason to ever do +1 Body 'in general'.

Tachikoma!!

Well, congratulations. Now you finally got me to want one a'these for my rigger.
Still have to figure out how to scratch the basic concept all those extra modifications I'd additionally need into a (heavy) drone from the books... We'll see.

Crud someone beat me to it, and such a long time ago.