One of our players has been getting fairly creative with his drone weaponry.

So we've used drop bombs, lasers, the usual machine gun mounted war machines, etc. But we're talking about getting more creative. Someone mentioned K-10 which makes me giggle but we've also talked about using dumb aerial "Fire-n-Forget" drones loaded up with C-12, chameleon coating or even the Concealment power from spirits too.

I'm curious what other types of drone loaded/controlled uber death machines you guys have come up with?

- J.

I had a bus.

Oooooh, I'm sensing a good story there. Please, share?




As for drones, one of my players related a tale of a prior game to me.

They had a blimp drone. Not a huge drone, one of thousands like it puttering their way constantly through the Seattle skyline, stealth up to the gills. You know, perfect for recon duty.

It also had an anti-materiel rifle built in, concealed in the belly and also bearing stealth coating.

We're developing an SR version of the War Wagon, as used by Griselda Blanco in Miami during the 80s. Probably then loading it up with gangers armed for bear as well as drones.

- J.

I decided to introduce a NPC into the group that was a member of the IRAiE (IRA in Exile), an Elf Fixer for the Terrorist Group/Freedom Fighters that played with explosives as a hobby.

To tell you how bad ass he was, well, he's an elf in a very anti-elven group, and the IRISH MAD BOMBERS were scared of his bus!

But nooooooooooooooooooo, that wasn't enough deterrent to my group, they had to use the damned thing!

What did the bus do?! I mean, context clues and all, but I just gotta know!

Well, it was air sealed, designed to drive on a pre-planned route only, and had a couple of propane tanks that spit out exactly the right amount of propane-to-air mixture to...

Propane and propane accessories, huh? Turned the whole goddamn bus into a bomb without using any conventional explosives?

Or was it more along the lines of driving the bus down a road, flipping a switch and suddenly everything in the vicinity of the bus is on fire?

One of my character has custom LoneStar iBalls fitted with:
- A thermographic smoke grenade
- A holo projector
- Speakers
When faced with a heavy opposition, the iBalls scatter around him and start releasing the smoke and projecting images of the character (or spirits), faking the sound with the speakers. In the heat of the battle most people won't spend the simple action to observe in detail and realize they're only holos and will think they're spirits or something like that.

Medicineman mentioned this on the SR4 board:

Rigger with a assassin use modded bust a move,

Ruth coating for going all predator with gecko tips and upgraded matrix stats and a upgraded sensor array. Cost a packet considering but could sneak in a lot of places and hide high up before dropping down and using its heart of C4 to take out the target.

Nothing says painful like a headhugging exploding drone bear

Fuel-Air Explosive the size of a city bus.

Now that's a big boom! *does back of notepad calculations* A bus is at least 36 feet long... let's call it 15 meters by 3 meters by 4 meters of cubic space, for a total of 180 cubic meters. Assuming it's sealed against up to, say, 4 atmospheres of overpressure so you can pack more boom in there and he includes oxygen in the mix with the fuel... and it's propane, not anything more exotic... and propane, when properly combusted, gives off about 50 megajoules per kilogram, 91 megajoules per normal cubic meter... and the explosive limit is 9.5%... so, packing the bus full of about 60 cubic meters of propane and then overpressurizing with oxygen to 4 atmospheres will get you... about 1.3 to 1.7 tons of TNT-equivalent boom. so, about 1/6 as powerful as the MOAB... but alot cheaper.

You, Sir, Are a Math Geek. Fortunately, the world loves those of you who take pleasure in such endeavors.

But yes, a very big boom, for very little outlay.

Me, a Math Geek? Base Slander, Sir, I must protest! If I am any kind of Geek, it is a SCIENCE Geek! (still has trouble internally conceptualizing any math more abstract than calculus)

Also, bomb would be about 1.3 to 1.7 times more powerful than this.

Well, okay, I can accept Science Geek.
Calculus Sucks (Well, Advanced Calculus does anyways), but no more so than Discret Math does. Hated them both.

I wasn't able to do the math, but I knew it was big enough that people were going to ask, "IS THAT A NUKE???"

Well, it would certainly have a mushroom cloud (albeit a small one)...

*shrugs*
who needs math in cases like these?
'splosives come only in one quantity:
not enuff.

edit: hmm, the murdercycle made me think . .
Voice from off screen:"oh god! run, run you fools!"
Kamikaze-Drones.
Flyers. Damage is based on Speed of vehicle.
Basically, you build up drones into cheap cruise missles.

There's just one formula needed for RPG explosives: P=Plenty.

Player at my table has a rotodrone with a grenade launcher...it can mess things up quickly.

Of course, this is also the player who in the past blew up entire multi-story buildings when the objectives were 'destroy a lab' and 'prevent security from coming up the elevator'...

I'm dreading the day when he starts to play with FAEs

I once had an NPC take off the top five floors of a skyscraper as a distraction... (The PCs ask the little dwarven pyro and infiltrator for something "spectacular, that'll get the guards running to the other side of the facility")

They have that already, it is called a Heimdall Missile Drone. Moves at 3000 M/Turn AND carries a Warhead.

Is 1 ton the explosive payload or the total bomb weight?

Yah, but my idea was to use the fucked up ramming rules for this, not the explosives ^^

it would be equal in explosive power to somewhere between 1.3 and 1.7 tons of TNT.

The most creative thing I've done recently was to put a Taser - specifically a wired taser )on a pair of non-lethally armed dobermen. Also equipped with a winch and gecko grips, the idea was to gecko-dart things and then kind of wrassle them around like a net. The gm though it reasonable to have sticky-darts - or, in this case, buying super stickier darts.

The asshole factor came in when I had modslots left over for Additional Clip, and enough monowire to replace the secondary clip's taserstrings with monowire.

The hacker running the drones was actually a pacifist, but the instant-tripwire-trap nature the drone presented was used to great effect inflicting property damage on things that weren't people. Like cars, and tires, and things low to the ground.
The biggest thing that ended up happening was two such drones sticking each other with darts so that monowire strung between them, and dropping a building lobby by each going to one end, outside the pillars(think matrix lobby scene) that were helping hold the roof up, and running across the lobby.
Rolled well enough that they all dropped.

Also, this is really on topic: , but I'm apologizing in advance because the guy telling the story of the squirtgun wars has a very rambling and roundabout way of telling a story.

In my opinion it wouldn't have worked : the pillar lead effort straight downward, which means that unless there's some extra force (stong wind, and explosion, whatever), the two parts will sit one over another and nothing wil happen.

Make a cut that's 45% from the horiztonal and you may have the top sliding on the bottom, but even them, depending onthe building and pillar, it might simply settle at a lower level with the building still standing.

I also find it quite hypocrite to be reluctant to shoot people with bullets while being perfectly willing to drop a building on their head - which is hardly whaty I'd call a discriminating attack. Depending on the building and the hour, you can score a good number of jaitors, cleaning staff, scretaries, office drones and customers along with the intende target(s). What was the body count on that one ?

What TNT-equivalent does the bomb exploding in the video have? (I get how bombs work (duh), I just don´t know much about them. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity! )

Ostensibly 1 ton.

Doesn't Everyone?
The Explosives are just the icing on the cake...

Zero, actaully. Without going into too much detail, it was a bit of a Shadow Game or a Runner-Off competition.
Normally that kind of attack WOULD have a lot of collateral damage. But in this one specific case, we knew there wouldn't be any complications of this nature.
To clarify: The character is fine with destroying property, but squeemish about hurting people.

Also, they got all of the pillars. Not one of them. All of them. In both rows. Across the entire lobby. That's how good the test ended up being once edge was accounted for. So it wasn't just one section of the ceiling not having as much support, it was a pretty large area losing most of it.

It's not a matter of how many pillars were cut but how they were cut : without an horizontal force to displace the pillars, the weight is still transmitted down without a hitch - hence my comment about a 45° cut to generate that sort of horizontal effort. The monowire cutting thorugh the whole pilar isn't going to produce a significant effort compares with probably several tons of building resting on each pillar.

A similar example would be a pile of crate : the crates aren't linked with each other, but weight and friction is enough to keep the pile standing. You'll need some horizontal force to tumble the pile.

Grenade Launcher. So many wonderful options for ammo.

Flashbang, pepper-punch, flash-pak, thermographic smoke, in a repeating sequence. Full automatic.

The "Oh god I don't feel like living" disorientation package.

DMSO/Hallucinogenic Combo.

That'll do you, all right, but you'll have a fine time getting answers out of someone who's utterly convinced that his eyeballs are insects and he is now literally in fire, brimstones and imp-pitchfork-soddomy Hell.

... ... ... Answers? I was planning on doing that for dreks and giggles at the local Humanis Hangout.

SR3 had this REALLY icky stuff . . HYPER . .
EVERYTHING even the SLIGHTEST TOUCH feels like a punch to a nerve cluster to you . .
And THEN you get hit with Pepper-Punch or a screech or flashbang . .

Awesome idea. If you do it right, the drone isn't even affected. Just navigate using that ultrawideband sensor...
Has anybody ever used RC cars with wifi-enabled grenades taped onto them?
A way to overcome the Manservant's innate inability for hand-to-hand combat: Shock gloves.

And electrical ruffles . . schockrüschen in german, no idea what their name is in english . . all over the manservant.
Do you WANT to touch the thing that shocks you on contact?

Those would be shock frills.
If you really want to shock people, you can always repurpose the Anti-Theft modification from "Arsenal". It's maybe not intended to be used in close combat, but still delivers a nice 10 S (e) damage. Just check with your GM first, it seems very debatable to me.

Ah, right, there was that thing.
Why would that be debatable?
It's a vehicle. You are getting shocked when you touch that vehicle.
You are touching that vehicle. You are now getting shocked.

I have used the electro-shock anti-theft mod on my rigger's van as an offensive weapon.

"We're being swarmed by devil rats!"

"Really?" <click> <BZZZZZZT>




-k

I've just heard people saying "But no, it's an Anti-Theft system, it's for not getting your car stolen, not for shocking an opponent in melee every IP!"
I'd still use it, and allow it altogether
You'd actually use two of the drone's slots, which is huge compared to the four available... I think it's somewhat balanced, thinking about it again.

I like the way you think. I'll help.

You know what makes a bad trip worse? Being surrounded by smoke, deafening bangs and explosions, and rapidly strobing lights.

I was thinking of heavy pipe hittin' trogs once the gas clears, but that works as well.

While cathartic, that hands the Humanis pukes a propaganda victory at the same time you hand them a physical and psychological defeat.

Whereas if everybody who does this one looks human (or is human,) it looks like they just got trolled. Also, I forgot: a small drone with a very loud speaker, like a Stonebrook Smokecloud. The only thing to make a bad trip aggrevated by flash-bangs, thermographic smoke, pepper punch and strobing lights worse is the impression that you've come under heavy fire set to the tune of Rick Astley.


Pharmaphysiopsychological Warfare at its finest.

Sounds like a regular saturday night at several clubs I've been to. Even with CanRay's pipe hittin' trogs...

Ah yes, DMSO/Hyper/Pepper Punch spray grenades and capsule rounds, usually followed up with Mass Agony.
(For the non-lethal type of missions. Stunball usually caused the npcs to stroke out)

Now, you might want to toss in Deepweed and a bunch of watcher spirits to dick people off


-Tir.

PS: Don't add Jazz or MAO to the DMSO/Hyper/Pepper Punch cocktail.
Old-timers can remember the combination of effects