So, at the character creation session on Saturday, one of my players asked me if he could ride around on the back of a transforming drone. I have no particular problem with the idea, I just don't know how to do it mechanically. Is there some existing vehicle mod, or do I need to homebrew something?

That depends.

By the strict passenger-limit rules in the Core Book Sidebar, drones have no passenger slots.

Yet in Arsenal, some drones are CLEARLY designed to carry people around - The Robot Wheelchair(steed) the Walking Medibed(Orderly) or the Rolling Medibed(Crashcart autodoc).

The Kludge version involves using the Mod Size Rules to put a Rigger Cocoon on a drone of sufficient size to take the mod. I believe rigger coccon is a Standard size mod(as opposed to micro, mini, or all.)

My preffered middle ground method is to use the size/cost/threshold for the Ejection Seat mod, because its about the right price/diffuculty to install a bloody seat on something.

The easiest method is to have his 'transforming drone' really actually be a 'refluffed motorbike'. Large Drones go up to body 4, Cycles start at body 4, or just use that overlap/comparison as a basis for judgement on whatever you end up deciding.

But yes, this is a pretty doable thing, the only question is how much annoying fiddly rules drek you want to involve.
My advice: You're the GM, make something up, and use existing similiar-but-not-quite mechanics as a meterstick for whatever you come up with: A motorized buttcushion is a pretty reasonable request, especially when such drones exist already.

If it helps, the Special Machinery/Storage option suggests a mod slot size of a quarter the Body of the thing you're trying to put into the vehicle, presumably rounded up.



-k

........I must never let my rigger player see this post....lol

I'll have to talk to my player about how far he wants to take the "transformer" part of the concept. If it's just fluff, that's fine. If he wants radically different capabilities for the "vehicle" and "robot" forms, I might have to put my foot down.

For a 'transforming' robot, the best compromise I've seen is a Walker Mode mod that can be turned on/off. Its a fairly simple stat adjustment, much like suspension/tire mods. Basically kind of similiar to the Hovercraft Mod that allows you to use both.

Its also fairly similiar to how the Steel Lynx works, I think - there was one drone in shadowrun my GM told me about, which was a wheeled gunbot with the wheels mounted on extended legs. So it could both drive around, or put the brakes on and clomp around if it has to deal with stairs.

If you tell me what your players WANTS I can probabably stat it for you.

i am thinking T-Bob now O.o
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Bob
Simply have a manservant and give him retractable wheels?

I had a 1st edition character that was paraplegic, had a seat stuck on the back of Steel Lynx replacing the turret, as a wheelchair.

That required a ton of houserules, yes.




-k

A player in our game (who ditched the character in favor of a different one) wanted a similar thing that basically operated as the motorcycle/robot from "Rideback" Ref link.

He took a Contrail from Arsenal (10 mod slots) and kitted it out with 2 arms, smart tires, gyro, and walker mode (and a couple of other things I believe). With the type of die pool handling bonus he'll get from all that his lack of speed shouldn't be much of an issue in a chase and you can keep the transformation as fluff.

Yes, you definitely see that kind of setup in threads. I wouldn't call it a transformer at all, but you do end up with a big vehicle with arms and legs.

maybe not with a Drone ,but what about the Horseman Catterpillar. If You add a walking Modus to the wheels and the Option with the two Robot Arms you have a kind of Transformer Car--->Bot

HokaHey
Medicineman

Yup, my thoughts exactly.

Its described to be the size of a motorcycle in 'road' mode and 'slightly taller' than a human.

So, say about 1-1,5 meters wide and about 2 meters long?

Walker Mode


So, it could look like a Fuchikoma with multiple legs with small wheels in order to handle stairs. YES!
It does become rather slow though. We counter this by saying that this is a similar model to the Horseman called the Fuchikoma (Japanese Import) that has 1 point lower armor but +20% base speed.

2 points for legs
1 point for Ruthenium Polymer Coating
1 FREE POINT
2 points for 10 points of concealed armor

Depending on the GM we could also include SMG cyberguns in each Mechanical arm as the rules suggests it can be done:


We skip a winch and add one grapple gun to each arm as well.

How small do you want to go with the vehicle? Adding rigger adaptation to any vehicle will make it a full drone. Any vehicle with a pilot rating (i.e. any vehicle in the books) can be controlled remotely or by command. The rigger adaptation is only needed to jump in.

Transforming capabilities are not really supported by the rules. Contrary to the hovercraft mod, the vehicle with the walker mod cannot keep its normal form of movement. You will be in hoserule territory.

Unfortunately yes.

Transforming technology creates a hybrid which means it should have some definitive weakness if it could actually change form since it is not as optimized for its role as say a car as compared to a amphibious vehicle.

Perhaps loose an X amount of modification slots? 1/2 the amount of normal slots since there is extra equipment that actually makes the vehicle change its freaking shape (well, in this case I imagine Optimus Prime level of transformation).

I know I'm being silly, but how vital is the 'transformer' aspect here? Because it's just wacky and not SR; I'm not saying you can't houserule something (anything) into the game, but not everything necessarily belongs there. When importing things from incompatible canons, this is almost always the case.

That said, obviously do whatever is fun if the the answer to that question *is* 'vital'.

I dont think the transforming aspect is very viable but a vehicle/drone with multiple travel modes can be very versatile.

Still, what would the MINIMUM size have to be to carry someone?

It appears that a BOD 3 drone can carry up to 300KG of troll since all you need is metahuman customization to it. But what if you make a FLYING drone? I'd say you require a large drone if you want to fly as they need the power to lift themselves AND you.

Yeah, the SR4 rules famously avoid any questions like that (occupancy, cargo, … hell, *size*; also weight/weight cap of anything). I doubt I'd allow Meta Customization to do *that* (TANSTAAFL and all that).

The 'can I ride a flying drone' question has been answered several times, but it usually breaks down to a) 'the rules don't say I can't and screw you!; and b) 'no, that's ridiculous and stop making zoom noises with your mouth'. At best, certain drones seem capable of carrying people as *cargo*, but not as passengers. And not all drones are cargo-capable, so you should assume that their performance stats are based on *not* carrying heavy cargo. For non-drone vehicles, it seems appropriate to allow trolls without necessarily changing anything (maybe Meta Customized, for seats and doors, etc.), but common sense should reign: you can't have the same number of 300kg trolls as you could have had of 80kg humans.

I've been toying with the idea of using Armor rules for carrying weight on vehicles.

Vehicle BOD X2 = Maximum BOD carrying weight. Since there are few natural BOD 10 trolls (that is base attribute not modified by ware or magic) should mean that most people can be carried by a drone.

So, the following:

MIN Size: Small Drone
Max 'weight': BOD X 2

Each point of BOD above the maximum allowed reduce vehicle Acceleration, Speed and operation time by 10%.

Yes, exactly as I was thinking. Because SR4 doesn't care about this stuff, it's probably a bit of a kluge and will required manual tweaking. Cargo-bearing vehicles would likely have somewhat different stats (perhaps '+X Body for the purpose of weight capacity', kind of thing?), but it's probably good enough to handwave a bit.

These kind of details aren't necessarily important for SR4 in normal cases (there's a reason we don't track the weight of guns and things), but when people start getting silly with their personal transformer mecha (sigh)… it's nice to have some fallback plans.

Exactly, it more useful when it comes to the plausability(?) of a piece of equipment or an action.

Perhaps one can do the same thing to guns?

Cannot carry gun more than BOD X 2 damage value before +1 recoil per body point affects firing. Prevents BOD 2 Pixies from hauling around Panther Cannons (sure, they can always levitate them...)

0,5 square meter of space taken per 1 point of BOD? Ok, BOD 10 troll would take up 5 square meters of space, well, perhaps if he stands up and spins around with his arms flailing...

Careful. It is not impossible to create a gnome-ghoul with a body stat of 11, possibly higher with the use of magic and/or Bioware.
Personally I think that the body stat doesn't indicate the height, but rather how tough something really is.

I've tried to build a drone with the capacity to carry someone, but nothing really satisfying came out of it...

The same, unfortunately, goes for vehicles and things as well. There simply is no good size/weight stat, so Body *does* get pressed (however awkwardly) into that role (Movement, drone 'sizes', Special Equip size, etc.).

Yep, you're right. I always envisioned this more as a guideline, though, as vague as it is...

I did write unaugmented body value (that is without bio/cyber/magic) and it will be a stretch to get BOD 11 gnome with just starting attribute + qualities.

Meh, ghoul, count him as a fat dwarf then and buy a bigger drone to sit in.

Giants on the other hand...

Maybe make it BOD+STR instead of BOD*2. Muscle is also a significant part of the overall mass. You should also decide whether to use natural or augmented attributes. Depending on the source of the augmentation there is reason for either.

Okay. Still, without the genware and the ghoul, you can still get up to a natural attribute of 9 with Surge and Exceptional Attribute. Yes, this is more of a mathematical example than an actual character.
My point being: Dwarfes (and Gnomes, for that matter) are significantly shorter than humans or elves and still get a bonus to Body.
I'm okay with most suggestions here, I just wanted to point out that this seems a bit off:

Or maybe I just didn't get your point.

We better get back to the topic

That's still not great, Dakka Dakka. You could be a big fat guy, Bod 1/Str 1. I'm saying that Body (and anything else) are *bad* choices for size/weight. Possibly worse than nothing. :/

In that case i'd make it simple:

Small Drone= Normal Sized Metahuman
Medium Drone= Orc Metatypes
Large Drones= Troll sized

An orc in a small drone would have a -20% to top speed and acceleration
A troll in a small drone would have a -40% to top speed and acceleration

Minimum size would be small drone since the other are far to tiny.

For flying drones I say up everything one size (no, drones cannot carry trolls, not even heavy drones)
So minimum flying size to carry a person would be a medium drone

What do you think?

Agreed: best to just go with very generalized body size categories. Sounds like a good rule of thumb to me, though I might honestly bump all the sizes *down* (e.g., orc=large drone).

Well, i used the small drone as an example since there is already a small drone wheelchair so the size seemed apt.

What gets me about the whole mess is this. Under Bone Density Augment and Bone Laceing they both state that it ups the weight, but doesnt give a clear factor...so, yeah, your Ares step Van is fine for carrying a few trolls, but what happens when one of those trolls has Bone Density 4? a 300kg troll suddenly is a bit heavier than that, no?

Do you want to replace the list given in "Arsenal", p. 102?
This list, of course, doesn't account for the Transys Steed, the small drone wheelchair. It would have been easier to add in a "special machinery" modification to enable it to carry a metahuman.

Yeah, The Jopp, but I was going with the idea that such a drone has the secret mod 'Passenger Capacity' and/or 'Cargo Capacity' (I mentioned it earlier, but quietly). So, I'd say that small wheelchair has an effective +1 Size as part of its design?