This Old Drone has many interesting drones in it, and at reasonable prices too. They also have two new upgrades: Obsolescent, and Obsolete.



These two upgrades are listed in the Standard Upgrades section of those drones which have them. Now, I would like to remind you of the rules for Standard Upgrades:




(emphasis mine)
Now the description of Obsolescent and Obsolete do not mention tools required, skill, or test (they would be up to the GM to determine), but the rules for modifications do say that those standard upgrades can be removed like any others, thereby restoring the drone's Device Rating to something much more respectable.

I have the mental image of someone buying a Predator drone, popping its "hood," removing a black box and tossing it aside, and that Predator's Device Rating jumps up from a 2 to a 5.

DISCLAIMER: What I posted above is absolutely correct and legal, per RAW. This only works because the writers of This Old Drone wrote Obsolescent/Obsolete as Standard Upgrades, and did not create a new category of vehicle trait (they came close in the sidebar) and simply left it as a vehicle's version of a Weakness. This brings back fond memories of fully submersible aircraft carriers and superfreighters.

Our answer was to apply common sense and just say those can't actually be removed. It is certainly a bit of a mess up on the authors part but not insurmountable. I suppose this is what happens when you don't have vehicle creation rules but try to work in traits or qualities or whatever that really properly belong in a vehicle creation system, rather than a vehicle modification system.

Ridiculous.

While it's a funny picture, I'm not sure if it matters at all. At the end of the day, the result is "RAW how hard is to upgrade a Predator depends on the GM" which was the case anyways. Sure it'll be free this way, but the man hours is completely GM's judgement. Thus if the GM's cool with you upgrading the drone, you can do it. If he's not, then he can easily make it nearly impossible or just not worth it by setting the threshold to over 9000 or something.

Anyways, upping the Device Rating isn't the real reason to want to remove obsolete. You want to remove obsolete so you can command rig it*. After you slave it** and command it with your command program, the drone's ratings barely matter (outside the cheap to upgrade sensor rating). Black Knights are amazing if you have a good way to control them. It's a 14 body drone that's the size of a normal large drone. Give it legs and 20 armor/10 smart armor, and it can go a lot of places that a tank/bus can't.

*- You could make the argument that "incompatible with current remote control rigs and AR technology" means that you command rig it in VR. However in SR4A, it's actually referred to Remote Control. You could say that the remote control rig isn't part of remote controlling a drone, but I wouldn't want to make that argument.

**- This is the reason why I find all of the "old drones get the hack!" comments in This Old Drone to be funny. You really ought to be slaving your drones anyways so they can join your tacnet (and for defense). I guess it can get spoofed, but that's always the case with drones.

You're missing the point. The point is that Obsolete/Obsolescent are Standard Upgrades, which means they can be removed and the drone loses their effects, which means you don't have to "upgrade" their Device Ratings - the DR of the drone returns to what it should be because the modification that was altering it is no longer present.

If you want to be funny about it, this is exactly the case. The drones are suffering from a bad case of Planned Obsolescence which means that the manufacturer installed an atomic-decay clock device which steadily degrades the drone's systems as time marches on, to force you to buy a new one. Restoring the drone is as simple as popping the hood, taking this device and heaving it into the sound.

You yourself said that the costs of removing the upgrade would be up to the GM. Removing the Obsolete, or Obsolescent upgrades would, at a minimum, require replacing the drone's Response/Signal modules, and upgrading its system software (System/Firewall). For an Obsolete drone/device, it would likely require a complete overhaul. In any event, the work required would be up to the GM. The books do not give any hard and fast rule for determining this.

No where does it say that you can remove the upgrades, for free or minimal cost, and get a shiny drone with the latest specs, which your post implies.

I certainly agree that this (the idea that these are 'mods' and are removable under *any* circumstances) would be one of the more salient Broken Rules to date, right up there with amphibious ghost aircraft carriers. It's lucky that no one is bound by such rules, unless the GM is nuts.

There is no mentioning of removing a modification for your purposes, so it is an assumption, that you can remove it, but not a rule.



While this certainly implies that standard upgrades can be removed, it does not have to be the case for all of them.

Just because there are rules about how to remove a modification (or upgrade), doesn't mean that all modifications (or upgrades) can be removed.

It is also a pretty big assumption, that something clearly labeled "Vehicle Trait" uses the exact same rules as "Vehicle Modifications", just because it shares the same list ("Standard Upgrades") in the drone's description; especially when the rules about standard upgrades say "In this entry you will find a list of vehicle modifications ..." with no mentioning of "Vehicle Traits". A "Vehicle Trait" is obviously meant to be something different than a "Vehicle Modification", otherwise they would have used the existing terminology here.

But what might that difference be? We are left to guess here...

The rules are hardly as clear as you say and it is up to GM's decision, whether this specific upgrade can be removed or not, and the GM's decision in this case is quite obvious: No!

Bye
Thanee

A more salient argument, along these lines, would be to look at the "Light Than Air" modification.

Adding it to a vehicle reduces accel/speed by half, operation time is dramatically increased, etc. etc.

By this argument, you could remove the Lighter Than Air mod from the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin LZ-2065 and get...a what? A conventional aircraft with accel/speed of 10/20? A ground vehicle with accel/speed 10/20?

More likely a crashed wreck that used to be a zeppelin

A colossal waste of time and energy.

Well, if you take away the gas bags, you end up with a bus powered by frigging huge propellors. Inconspicuous it is not.

It might, however, just be awesome enough to exist, for some reason or another.

Especially if you put it into reverse and drive through a horde of zombies. "My bus slices and dices, what about yours?"

Put on the hovercraft mod: airboat!

The point behind these posts is to bring up a problem in the text of a printed rule.

Of course the GM can fix or clarify it however he wants in his home games. The GM can do anything.

That doesn't mean, however, that there isn't a problem with the printed rule.



-k

And that's what Neraph means when he says there's an opportunity with a printed rule.

Seriously, it is so obvious how this is meant to work, that it really cannot be called a "problem".

Bye
Thanee

No excuse for laziness! Hehe.

Exactly!

When you make rules you need to be aware of the rules. I am simply pointing out what is allowed under the rules that have been printed. By the cut-and-dry-est, most raw RAW, you can remove the Obsolescent/Obsolete modification because of a technicality. If that technicality had not been written (something as easy as making a new "Vehicle Trait" list, similar to what they intended but far away from what occurred) then there would be no issue.

I do not see the problem actually. Yes, it is RAW but I do not think there is a problem with actually being able to remove Obsolescent/Obsolete from a vehicle.

I'm not seeing a problem either. Okay, so you can update an obselete/obselescent drone, given an amount of time set by the GM and a level of tools set by the GM. The problem here is...what, exactly? I mean, it would be nice to have times listed rather than "the GM makes it up," but for a CGL product this barely even qualifies as a mild oversight.

It doesn't really make sense, though. It's not a mod, and 'removing it' entails *adding* things. There should be a way to update old stuff, including time, skill, and cost, but the 'removing a mod' mechanic is just wrong.

This is amazing and I love it.

Worth noting: this same trick can be used to give an iBall back its wheels if you actually want it to use the Speed/Accel its statted for. I like mine with gecko tips.



My friend used this to make a flying tank out of the Patrol-1, by the way.

Hydrofoil doubles the base speed before LTA cuts it down, and a special machinery to arrange it upsidown so it can shoot at the earth.

… Hydrofoil?

Actually no, you can't, as there is no rule that allows it.



I don't really see the difference. The traits are labeled differently. The term "Trait" alone should be enough to make clear that they are not typical modifications, that can be added and removed to/from anything.

Bye
Thanee

Well its a boat before its a blimp, so......

You are a bad person. I'm sure the hydrofoil is fully effective out of water, haha.

Now I'm thinking you could have a freaking huge hybrid ekranoplan/hydrofoil hybrid if you removed LTA from the zepplin. Would be a massively awesome way to zoom cargo up and down the coast, I reckon.

No part of that makes sense. Assuming that it were possible to remove LTA, you'd end up with a little cabin. It could sit there.

I wish I could claim credit for this one. Like I said, my best friend who I roped into being a shadowrun fan came up with 'the airfoil'.

No you wouldn't. Remeber, zepplins are big, huge, rigid frames. So you'd wind up with a tiny cabin underneath a massive metal hull topped with propellers. And it is an air ship, the LTA mod being something you can put on any frame, so it doesn't seem remotely impossible to say that the "base frame" would be a watergoing vessel.

Then you crunch the numbers - this new vessel has 1/10th the operation time of the zepplin, Speed and Acceleration double, Handling improves by 2, but it loses Improved Takeoff and Landing 2. Then you add the hydrofoil capability, doubling Speed and Acceleration again, while cutting operation time in half; so, if you're using the hydrofoil full-time, the operation time on one tank of gas went from 60 hours to three hours, but speed and acceleration quadrupled.

Then you just whack the Improved Economy mod on there to improve the operation time back to six hours per tank of fuel, and slam on something like 12 spare fuel tanks and SunCell to make something that can go for like five days straight without stopping to refuel.

Shazam, you have a hybrid ekranoplan/hydrofoil that can cruise up and down the seas at 144 Kph with a fucking enormous hold of cargo.

It is if you're starting from a zeppelin. You can take a boat and add LTA. You can't remove LTA from something and declare it a boat. Even if you could, that in no way resembles an ekranoplane. If you wanted an ekranoplane (which is of course totally different from a boat with a hydrofoil), you start with one.

That's the whole point of this thread: many things make no sense, which is why you can't just apply the rules blindly. We just did this with the LTA Heimdall a couple days ago.

It has air-propellers as its primary mode of propulsion.

That makes it resemble an ekranoplane. And since this thing will be up on a hydrofoil when it's in motion, it's not remotely a stretch to say that that huge body of its is benefiting from the ground effect, partially as a way to explain how something so damn huge can stand on hydrofoils and move.

Huge stretch. You're literally describing zipping an empty zeppelin around on water (somehow; apparently it's a boat now). Ekranoplanes look (and act) like airplanes. This is just totally different. Vehicle mod jankery (again, with the huge assumption it's even possible) doesn't magically transform things, that's all. Rigger Cocoon doesn't make a Manservant into power armor, Walker Mode doesn't turn a motorcycle into an upright mech, and so on. You can make outlandish modifications, but you have to own the crazy results.

Or it could mean you can remove the Obsolete/Obsolescent upgrade and have non-working old drone.

It frankly doesn't matter what you think of its practical function as an ekranoplane, the fact is that you have a fuckhuge once-zeppelin zooming the ocean around at 144 KPH on hydrofoil stilts, powered by propellers.


If that's not crazy-awesome enough to justify its own existence to you, then you have no room in your soul for coolness.

I just said don't call it an ekranoplane. It's a totally different crazy thing, which is what I just said: *own* the crazy results, don't handwave them into a more 'normal' form. So, de-LTA your zeppelin, add a hydrofoil, (add water sealing! It's a mod.), and enjoy. I'm sure it won't stand out.

Actually, yes, because I've already provided the rules. Here they are again, from my OP:



(emphasis mine)


Except that they aren't. You can give it a descriptive title all you want, but when it follows all the rules for something and is listed in the same category as that other thing, it is actually that other thing. In this case it is a Standard Upgrade. Since no rules were provided for what a Vehicle Trait is, it is a meaningless sequence of letters and does not register at all in the rules. All it would have taken to correct this is for it to read "Vehicle Trait - Vehicle traits are like Standard Upgrades, but cannot be removed." Lacking this, they follow all rules for Standard Upgrades because they are, in fact, Standard Upgrades.


Except that Obsolete/Obsolescent do not determine the Device Rating of the drone, they only modify it. Removing that modification restores the original Device Rating.

And again, you're ignoring the second half of the part you emphasized. Obsolete/Obsolescent lists no costs/tools associated with the modification, thus removing said modification is entirely at the judgement of the GM. You could just as easily argue (with this logic) that you cannot remove them, as there are no tools/costs that exist to be able to remove them.

You're contorting yourself in an attempt to break something that is actually, IMO, fairly reasonable.

Ah, the old 'that's just fluff' argument.

I did not ignore that information - it is in my OP.


When a game has both fluff and crunch, when it comes to rules you need only care about the crunch. When it comes to setting, that's where the fluff comes in. Likewise, when you go in to get a hamburger, it doesn't matter what your shirt says, only that you wear a shirt. You can have a Nike Swish tattoo'd/painted on your chest, but no shirt = no service; alternatively, you can have a plain shirt on and get service. This illustrates the difference between fluff and crunch in simple terms.

My problem wasn't that you're proven is that it's theoretically possible to remove Obsolete/Obsolescent and it would be free to do so. It's that the tools needed and threshold are not listed so it's all GM discretion in practice anyways. That's the same net effect if you did make the mods hard traits and asked the GM "hey can I remove this trait?"

I guess the RAW way the GM is more inclined to let you "upgrade" the vehicle which frankly I don't see the issue. So with GM determined hard work and tools, you can now turn a Predator drone into a more viable combat platform. Since you can just buy a wide variety of military drones (often for cheaper), this isn't even that unbalancing. Also is that really that silly to improve the electronics? Since there's generic "tuning" modifications like Improved Economy and Improved Suspension, the special effect of removing Obsolete isn't that special either since there's no need for a black box doing the effects.

It's odd that it's be free to do this besides the tools and man hour. As rules oversights go though, that's nothing and is vastly different from the submersible aircraft carriers which gave them a crunch ability to sink and drown everyone and then resurface. If Obsolete meant that Predator drones could fly into space or carry 15 people or something, then you'll have a case.

Yes, you did mention it, but you glossed over the importance of it.

RAW has to address two things: what you CAN do, and HOW you do it.

By RAW, it states that yes, you CAN remove those traits/mods.

It does not, however, describe HOW you go about actually removing those mods. There is no guidance for removing these as mods. It leaves it up for the GM to adjudicate.

Which, IMO, is fine with me, as it likely should be resolved on a case-by-case basis.

I'm not getting the whole "this is fluff" counter-argument. I'm not arguing that you can or cannot remove obsolete/obsolescent. I think you should be able to...if you want to upgrade the controls, electronics, software, and firmware of the drone.

I also agree that the mods should have been worded better, to address the ramifications of removing the mod (i.e. the device rating goes to 0, not +1/+2).

I didn't say there wasn't a fluff/crunch distinction. I (pretty obviously, I thought) meant that everyone always uses that distinction for their own advantage. Hence, 'that's just fluff'… when it disagrees with someone. Given that they're not labeled in SR4, deciding what is and isn't crunch represents a significant rules issue.

None of those quotes provide any rule that says, that you can remove them.

The rules for vehicle modification say, that you can remove them to gain back slots (which does not work with Standard Upgrades) and to slim down its appearance.



There is nothing else.


And...



Since Obsolete is no vehicle modification, the rules about standard upgrades cannot apply to them, because the list only contains vehicle modifications (because at the time of writing there was nothing else). And, as I already said, Obsolete is no vehicle modification (which is quite obvious, also, because you cannot modify a vehicle with it... there are no costs, no times, no tools, or whatnot listed for it, because it is not a modification but a trait; and clearly labeled so as well).

And as others have pointed out, there is no modification description, so there is no way to find out what would be needed if you could remove it.




Your argument fails on so many levels, it just doesn't work.

Bye
Thanee

The more fair way to deal with this is to treat it like arsenal, like when they forgot the line entry for some mods, like rocket booster(i think it was)

In short, the lack of more details on these mods is a dev oversight.

The framework for neraph to do what he suggests is all there, but its the writer's fault they didn't include all the necessary details. Whether that was intentional or not, the end result is the same.

Seriously, all you shadowrun fans should be used to picking up the pieces left by the writers yourself.

Erm. No.

What details are missing? What tools you need to add/remove Obsolete? How much time it takes? How much it costs?

That detail isn't missing. That detail isn't there, because there is no such detail.

Obsolete is no vehicle modification, that can be removed (or added, for that matter).

You do not need to know anything else.


The only thing you could call a fault on the writer's part here is that the vehicle traits are also listed under standard upgrades, just like vehicle modifications.

It would have been a bit clearer, if they had added an extra line for vehicle traits.

Bye
Thanee

I see the following conversation:
Player:I'm going to take out the CPU of the old predator. and that should get rid of the obsolescance.
GM:Ok. You now have an airfram, a very old airframe with no controlling mechanism. What are you going to do with it?
PLayer: Fly it around using my commlink.
GM: What is it communicating with in the drone, you took out the comms on the drone?
Player: I'll replace the coms with a new one that is SOTA.
GM: Okay base price of comm is in the book. Second question, what is piloting the drone when you're not piloting it?
Player: I'll buy a pilot program for it.
GM: You can't, you'll need to spend at least (consults book) 3 months programming for a rating 1 pilot for this drone.
PLayer: Mmm, I'll pay some one to do this.
GM: It will take a minimum of 3 months, and you need to find a hacker, your PC thinks it will be about 5K a month. At that point, why don't you just go to your fixer and order a more up to date drone?
Player: Good point.