1) What does a drone roll for defense against attacks? Normally it's Rea + Int, and drones use their Pilot rating in place of mental attributes, but I don't see anything about what would substitute for Reaction. My best guess would be that they roll Pilot x2, but I can't find anywhere that actually states that. Also, a driver or jumped-in rigger uses their normal Rea + Int for the vehicle, correct? Meaning a rigger isn't any better on defense than a manual driver?

2) Do drones have the option of using non-sensor targeting? It looks like they do (the example on p.184 compares a drone using sensor targeting vs. not) and the -3 dice for sensor-based attacks against most targets means it will usually be the better choice, but I'm not sure what that would represent.

3) Are drone-mounted weapons limited to a single clip/magazine/cylinder of ammo? Weapon mounts can hold lots of ammo, but it doesn't look like we have any rules yet to modify weapons for belt feed.

4) When can you get the benefits of a smartlink with a drone weapon? Actually, it looks like I answered this myself while searching through the rules -- the description of the smart firing platform (p.433) says you can use an implanted smartlink when remotely firing a gun in VR. So it looks like using AR with goggles that include a smartlink won't work.

5) This isn't quite drone combat, but what's the limit on programs that can be running at once on an RCC? Equal to device rating like cyberdecks? Do they take up Sharing rating as if they were vehicle autosofts?

Drones roll Pilot + Autosoft [Handling] for defense against attacks (SR5 p. 205 "Attacks against vehicles"). So it's just Pilot and nothing else if you don't have Autosofts.

??? THe example on p. 184 compares active vs. passive sensor targeting. A drone has to do one of these to target anything at all, hasn't it? In mean, how else do you think a drone should "see" it's targets? It only got its sensors after all.

The way I read this is that once you installed a weapon in a weaponmount it miraculously gets an ammo capacity of 250 rounds (for a standard mount) regardless of loading mechanism or original ammo capacity. I would just assume that installation of a firearm in a weapon mount includes changing the loading mechanism.

Hope that helps.

-CJ

Which is more than a little ridiculous, isn't it? I mean, I know that this is the future and all, but converting a weapon from magazine- to belt-feed is not a simple process.

Were it me, I think I'd houserule this such that mounted weapons can't have more ammo than they naturally have. Which, by way of unintended consequence, might make Machine Guns have some use again.

Sure it's ridiculous. But it's also simple (as is your houserule, btw). Maybe we can expect more comprehensive rules in the upcoming new gear book.

-CJ

You're already dealing with weapons that fire caseless ammunition, which can be bricked by a hacker and can be converted to a smartgun (automated controls for clip ejection, safety, firing mode, trgger) by installing a *kit* and can be done in a couple of hours (or a lot less) by a decent Armorer, which probably includes zeroing the gun and calibrating the smartlink's "smart reticle" (which would be an engineering marvel today, I mean to have your reticle literally show the exact position your bullet's about to strike).

Yeah, I know. We kind of hand-wave all of this stuff and say "It's The Future" (that's The Future, capitalized. In case you missed it the first time), but it kind of gets to me sometimes.

Caseless I don't have a problem with. H&K supposedly solved the over-cooking problem back in the 80s, and as for cracking/slivering of the propellant from mis-handling, my response would be: "Factory-sealed magazines".

Smartgun as an aiming device I also don't have a problem with. It is, essentially, a laser pointer and a HUD. It starts getting a little more complicated than that when dealing with cover/long distances, but now with Google Glass I honestly think we're not very far away from having "Smartgun 1.0" in real life.

The external kit I also don't have a problem with, until the Smartgun becomes more than just an aiming device, and then steam blows out my ears. There's no way to modify a gun's internal workings with an external kit like that, unless that gun was already "Smartgun-Ready" (as in, engineered to accept just such a kit) or some such. And maybe in "The Future" all guns are Smartgun-Ready, but at that point I would have to think that no government/corporation in their right mind would want those things in the hands of civilian shooters. Which means that sporting/civilian versions of guns would almost certainly not be Smartgun-Ready. Which then goes back and implies that not all guns in The Future are indeed engineered as such, and so having rules stating it is so doesn't make a lot of sense. I'd much rather see a gun-by-gun description of which ones are capable of accepting external kits than the current assumption we have that they all can take them.

Don't get me started on bricking.

Maybe if the kits were gun specific... so you buy a Colt Manhunter smartgun kit, so the engineer has already worked out a set of bolt/clamp-on, etc. accessories that physically connect to the gun's controls or replace them altogether, kinda like all the "tacticool" shit you already have for the AR family.

For the "smartgun-ready" part: All firearms in SR5 are fitted with wireless capability by default. So ejecting the clip or changing the firing-mode through DNI is already part of it and doesn't require a smartgun-addon.

Right. Because, in The Future, the government/corporations will recognize that the average civilian/sporting shooter will have a Direct Neural Interface, and so build guns to accommodate them.

Just because some of the Smartgun functionality from pre-SR5 has now become subsumed into wireless rules does not in any way nullify the point I made in the previous post. It doesn't matter what you call it or how you justify it, every gun in the world possessing that functionality simply doesn't make sense.

No, the average Joe will use this with AR, using his shooting glasses. It also brings up a range of features that goverments/law enforcement agencies *might* want, like locking guns in an area when the police triggers it, or at a shooting range giving such control to the range master. These are not used in America because gun culture is so ingrained that people would boycott a product that enforced them. More authoritarian or less gun culture conscious nations might make remote access to these features mandatory.

All in all, the "smartness" makes the gun more user friendly, so the iPad generation can use it more easily... the fact that a wired person with DNI will operate the gun *faster* is incidental.

Your comment though, about *all* guns 'magically' acquiring these properties is spot on... there should be loads and loads of guns on the market *without* them, after all it's only 2075, not 2080.

Explain to me how a person would eject a clip or change fire modes through an ARO. It has nothing to do with "faster". It has everything to do with built-in, specifically-engineered functionality. I'm questioning why that functionality exists in the first place, on quite a few of the guns in the book. Obviously, the government/military/corpsec versions of things would have that functionality. I'm having trouble imagining why a Remington 750/950, Ruger 100, anything PJSS, a Streetline Special or Taurus Multi-/Omni-6, or Cavalier Deputy would be engineered in that fashion, with that functionality (the smartgun-ready, or DNI-based wireless bonuses) as they are all, in my mind, targeted towards a civilian market.

Edit: I see you've edited your post, to which I must say I enjoyed the snark.

Delinquent weekend shooter who should never hold a broom much less a firearm™ brings up the gun's AR control panel and pushes the big logo saying safety, or another logo saying reload... kinda like how he plays those AR FPS games with virtual guns. Is it actually *any* better than doing things manually? Hell no... but with the toted iGun™ technologies, corps can sell guns to a whole range of people, claiming the tech will sort things out... never mind that said people have trouble tying shoelaces, much less operating a deadly weapon.

Thanks, somehow I just couldn't find that. It doesn't say which autosoft is used on defense -- I would guess Evasion, even though that's only described as avoiding sensor locks.


I was referring to the first example, where the rigger tells the drone to use passive targeting and then compares the results of that (the drone uses Gunnery + Pilot [Sensor]) to what I assumed was the previous state (the drone uses Gunnery + Pilot [Accuracy]).

Are all remote or jumped-in weapon attacks also required to use sensor targeting (in those cases there's also no other way to see the target)? It's presented as if it's an option rather than mandatory, but I suppose it could be optional only in the case of manually-fired vehicle weapons.

And yet the books actually say otherwise. *shrug*