I'm a little confused as to the rules for combining a mortar and a target designator.

The weapon is mounted on a drone which has been modified to be able to carry, set up, and reload the weapon quickly and my character has a target designator that gives targeting information to the mortar to fire.

My question is what would the roll be on this?

From Arsenal:
A spotter can use a target designator (see p. 34) to reflect laser,
microwave, or radar energy off a target, allowing a weapon with an
appropriate seeker head to home in on the reflected energy. Only
self-propelled seeker-guided munitions may be used in this way, such
as seeker-guided missiles, rockets, mortars or even gyrojet rockets.
To “paint” the target with reflected energy, the spotter must
succeed in a ranged combat Attack Test. The spotter’s net hits are
used as extra dice for the indirect fire test.

A ranged combat Attack Test using what? The drone is actually firing the weapon but I'm sending the fire command and using a target designator to aim the weapon.

You are the spotter. You make a ranged combat attack test, then add your net hits to the indirect fire test, which the drone makes. I assume by "sending the fire command" you mean "using Issue Command" not "using Control Device."

Normal modifiers.

Imagine targeting the second story of a drug lords mansion. The ninja rolls up and paints the target. It's long range, and a lightly obstructed view due to trees and branches getting in the way. He rolls his test, gets 7 hits. As he's targeting a location, it's an unopposed roll.


7 additional dice are now used to actually fire the weapon from it's location, with the usual modifiers, and you're going to get hit with the heavy blind fire penalty of 6, and likely a range penalty.

Double Post.

This is wrong. You take the range penalty as normal, but you take -2 for target-designated indirect fire, not -6 blind fire, and you use your normal stat (Response, for a drone) rather than Intuition (or Pilot for a drone). See Arsenal 162-3.

Using what?

Do you use drone stats (if so, which) for actually rolling the attack?

There you go, I knew it sounded off.

And according to the write-up for the mortar, you are not the spotter.

Via Arsenal
"[the mortar] can be fired either by sight (using data from a spotter) or using guidance from a target designator"

No, you ARE the spotter.

"A spotter can use a target designator (see p. 34) to reflect laser,
microwave, or radar energy off a target"

You are using a target designator to function as a spotter.

If the drone is firing the mortar, it would roll Response + Targeting Autosoft - 2 (target designator indirect fire) + spotter's net hits with the target designator - range modifier +/- any other modifiers that would normally affect ranged combat.

So what weapons skill does a designator use?

The target designators are Accessories; it appears that you make the attack test with the weapon to which the designator is attached.

What about hand-held units? There are target designators that dont come attached to weapons.

Sensor Test (Sensor Rating + Perception), range increment of Laser, subject to visibility modifiers (Specifically, things that affect lasers). Net Successes add to the Mortar Attack Test. *shrug*

Quick question: if you were to hit a target with an RFID round could you use that to remote target, or does it have to be a targeting laser?

This is incorrect... weapon designators use an exotic weapon skill. No different than any other underbarrel weapon, you don't use your small arms skill.

Just as an underbarrel grenade launcher uses heavy weapons, an underbarrel laser designator will use the exotic wepons(lasers) skill. The radar based ones would use the something like the HERF gun. You could also probably make a generic exotic weapons (target designator).


Also the drone would be rolling, PILOT (not response though response caps Pilot) + Targetting Autosoft (Heavy Weapons) -2 (indirect) + net hits from spotter.
If rigged.. the drone would be rolling SENSOR (not response) + gunnery. If remote-controlled Command + Gunnery.

Oh, I see where the hand-held ones are now. Falconer is right that it's Exotic Weapons, then.

Falconer is also right that autonomous drones use Pilot, not Response. Sorry about that.

Jumped-in rigging attack rolls are funny. You can choose to use Response+Gunnery (SR4A 245). The table on SR4A 247 says to use Sensor. SR4A 171 indicates that you can choose to use Sensor (Passive Targeting), but if you do so, you apply Signature Modifiers to your attack roll.

The general (but not universal) consensus is that you can use Response+Gunnery, or Sensor+Gunnery+Signature Modifiers, your choice.

Ok, so lets see if I understand this right.

If I am using a target designator attached to a weapon or hand-held for the purposes of marking a target for a drone-mounted mortar to shoot at, I do the standard Exotic Weapon + Agility and I add the hits on that roll to a Pilot + Targeting roll by the drone. The drone's roll is at -2 for indirect fire.

Is that about right?

I've been reading through Unwired and the Common Rigger/Drone Tests chart on 105 lists an an Attack action as a Command + Gunnery.....

Mostly correct... The skills and attributes used to attack from a drone are dependent on whether you are issuing it commands and it's doggie brain pilot is executing them. You are jumped directly into the drone and rigging it. You are using a command program to remote-control it directly like some kind of RC toy.


Overall though it's too bad they didn't put anything to just drop mortar rounds off flying drones as bombs. There's a wide variety of mortar shell options and only a singe published aztech fragmentary dumb iron bomb.

The entire indirect fire section for SR in every edition has never made any sense. For example, a laser designator is trivial to use. You just set the weapon code in it, aim it at the target and start lasing when the guy launching the weapon says "laser on" until you see the weapon hit.

If you use a target designator, you MUST use seeker ammunition in your mortar. Otherwise, you can make a sensor target lock (with a drone or a smartgun) to act as an information guided spotter (-4 + net-hits on the mortar)

But you still need to hit the target, which might be a moving truck in dense jungle at during a heavy pourdown. If it's something the size of a factory and you are aiming from high ground with plenty of time to aim, the spotter's roll becomes an unopposed test with a crapton of positive modifiers, in other words "trivial to use"

I would also give a bonus if the drone uses direct fire on the target but is assisted by a target designator.

In the case of a Tracking Round with an RFID chip I would add the RATING of the RFID chip as added dice instead of attackers attack test. Tags have a device rating of 3 so +3D6.

Drone Dicepool = Drone Rating + Autosoft + Smart Link

Assisted Direct Targeting
Drone Dicepool + Assisted Targeting Net Hits +/- Normal Modifiers

Assisted Indirect Targeting
Drone Dicepool + Assisted Targeting Net Hits -2D6 Indirect Fire +/- Normal Modifiers

Tag Assisted Direct Targeting
Drone Dicepool +3D6 +/- Normal Modifiers

Tag Assisted Indirect Targeting
Drone Dicepool +3D6 -2D6 Indirect Fire +/- Normal Modifiers

kxt I'm not seeing your point. It's not trivial in that you must hold the laser on a target steadily (not easy on a moving target). If the spot moves around it can be hard for a seeker head to track.

Also using a TD puts a -2 'sustaining penalty' on the spotter because he needs to hold the spot while he does it.


That said... Particularly in the case of a flying drone for example... nothing is stopping anyone from using sensor rules... getting an active target lock for +dice. using the active lock to paint the target with an on-board laser. then using the bonus dice from the active target lock and spotting to offset any penalties which incur from the 'indirect' attack. Remember mortars by design are designed to be indirect weapons (high lobbing arcs... though I also think they should also be able to be simply dropped like bombs). Seeker heads of the type you're talking about ARE available for direct fire weapons like rockets/missiles.


Just to give a solid example... i have an ares air supply A-10 variant drone up.... I have a single reinforced weapon mount on it... in that mount i have a rocket launcher with underbarrel laser designator, smartlink, and airburst.

I use sensor 6 of the aircraft. A rating 1 missile with seeker head.
Active sensor lock the target.... 6+perception+specialization(sensors, not uncommon on a rigger)+target size bonuses/penalties. Simple action... done prior.
Next round.
Simple action, I now laze the target. gunnery+sensor+smartlink+active targetting.
Simple action, I now fire the missile. gunnery+sensor+sensor(missile using vehicles sensor rating in place of it's own)+smartlink+active targeting+lazing bonus -2 (lazing penalty since I'm both spotter and firer).

Even with missile scatter... that pile of dice should be a large number of successes bringing the missile spot on. airburst 2d6 -1(cheap missile sensor rating) - net hits.