I have the desire (NEED) to play a gear-head. The problem I've come across is that my character seems... useless.

The concept is that he's a super-genius, non-awakened, non-technomancer who builds the slickest drones and writes the most dangerous programs around. However, according to the rules, every mod comes from a plan off the Matrix, which everyone has access to, and requires an extended roll, which nearly everyone can manage. So how do I build something better than the next guy? How do I set myself apart from every other drone rigger out there? Hell, why not buy a Manservant, slot some autosofts, and let the machine turn wrenches for me?

Make him an AI.
Otherwise the point of playing riggers or summoners is minions as force multipliers that can tank damage for you while you can stay away from the fighting.
You are basically not your character. You are your characters drones and your character is your drones support more or less.

Maybe Rigger V will answer your questions. Maybe it will habe modding and vehicle design rules that allow players to do something like that.

I don't have the Runner's Companion yet (it's my next scheduled acquisition.) What makes playing an AI worthwhile, and how would an AI's drones be different from everyone else's?

Basically the fact that YOU ARE THE DRONE! Quite a bit more literally than when a rigger does it too.
Biggest advantage? When you are in the drone, you are. in. the. drone.
There is no kicking you out by severing the connection i think.
So you could work in a null zone, where there is no matrix at all still.
Have a little flying drone with a holographic 3D Projector for doing meetings in meat space with other people for example.
Basically, take a look at the dronomancer thing and try and redo that with an AI instead of a meatsack.

I really, really hope that Rigger 5 brings the rigger player sout of the closet.

Or, well, garage I guess.

Get yer motors running...

Ungh, me, too, though I don't really want to spend the money to make the switch to 5th ed. :'(

If you're talking SR4:

For the drone building: You can use Arsenal rules to customize drones. They open up nice possibilities.
For the rest, what can set you apart from other riggers (other than overspecializing yourself in some area to have 2 more dice than anyone will ever have) is mostly how you use the drones. Clever and creative uses of drones (yours or the one available on site) can solve many problems in nice and unexpected ways.

But if what you want is just to have drones that are better than any other out there, you're playing the wrong game. While runners are above the norm, they aren't special snowflakes who can do something better than anyone else in the whole world, including people with access to a whole lot of corporate assets.

Using a rigger as force multiplier is pretty expensive. And if you use the suggest payout guidelines a loss making business.

Playing an AI too is pretty expensive and sometimes a little toxic on the game table. If you take down or damage a player character, most of the time it is just a little juggling for the rest of the team. For an AI, not so much. Damage done to you (drone) costs money, sometimes a lot, damage take to you (Core) costs downtime a lot of downtime. Your team can not drive you to a shaman, doc or mechanic an patch you up to top and running in a couple of hour, you have to restore your core the hard way one test per day(full). And if your AI get crushed or your drone destroyed you lose a lot. You lose money, you lose a lot of karma, you lose options and you lose AI-Essence (1 or more, if you have any essence left you have another chance, if not you can create a new character). So you don’t wanna take any damage you will do anything to not get hit, caught or damaged, because every damage is too much damage. And some gm/player’s don’t like it.

AI Rules, SR5 Datatrails, Matrix Combat p.155ff

On AIs, from my archives...


That was designed for a God-tier AI BBEG, but the concept remains for a player. Get 10 of those drones clustered like I explained. If one is destroyed, replace it - you certainly have the time to do so. It'd take a terrorist assault to destroy all of your nodes.

With the satellite uplink, wouldn't you be able to spread those around anywhere on the planet?

I don't think I was going for "special level = snowflake," so much as I was going for "special level = can't-be-replaced-by-a-drone." As it stands, it looks like my character doesn't even have to have a single mechanics skill, just a Manservant and an autosoft. He comes up with an idea, tells the drone to make the mods, and BAM, your gear is upgraded.

Oh I see. It's true that there's very little that drones can't do at least as good as squishy meatbags. When you start looking at it, it seems that in many cases, a team of drone could make a better job than a team of runners.
I guess that for mechanics, one main difference would be Edge, and possible artifical limits set by the GM on what autosofts for drones can or cannot do.

And that the Pilot program tends to spazz out when faced wth things it isn't designed to handle.

Trusting your car's Pilot to be your getaway driver's a bad idea when it starts liing up for travel queues and stopping at every red light.

I don't think so. I think for Clustering they have to stay inside their own Signal rating.

They have to stay within their signal range, yes. The idea is nifty, however. I may use that in the future.

Those archives I would like to see

Anyway: Anybody can send out a fleet of drones on autosofts. Remote-controlling them or jumping in, however, is for riggers. The dicepools they can get up to will on most days surpass those of autonomous drones. One has to balance drone costs and risk of destruction, however. Remote-controlling "riggers" can even match paces with the team going in. Just keep in the backgound, don't get shot, send in drones first. You don't have to sit in the van all the time.

Yes, any dude with some mechanics knowledge or even just a decent drone-operated workshop and some matrix connection can do mods.
There's the "special machinery"-wildcard modification so people can come up with their own ideas - many of those custom ideas haven't been done before, so the rigger in question would have to write their own plans.
Also, yes, in theory, anybody can modify drones.
From experience I can tell that usually players who have not played riggers before don't know many of the important bits, though. For instance, one has to upgrade a drone's sensors, first thing. I know those rules. Just last week the goup's tank-troll ceded control of his spy-fly drones to my rigger character and I immediately could've listed two to three upgrades I deemed necessary (sensors, chameleon coating, powerful firewall, maybe gecko tips, the works...). The troll has an appointment at my character's mechanics shop now.

I tend to modify my drones to the very last slot and complain about not having more of them. I've turned a motorbike into a murdercycle drone. I also designed a flock of cheap drones to be used as expendable assets. It can turn into micro-managing quite fast.
I'm playing a command-style "Rigger" in SR4. I love it and no mere drone on autosofts could best my character's abilities*


*honestly, though, there's some mystic adept ability in that character. I guess many of those abilities could be done with cyber- and bioware.

I'm going for a TM Command-rigger, though I was thinking more like a guy playing a RTS: selecting groups of drones and moving squads around. The more I think about it, the more expensive/less viable it seems. I'm probably going to go with fewer, better drones and pick one to Command as a sort of "Squad Leader." It'd be cool if I could provide some kind of Leadership/Tactical bonus to the rest of my drones, though I don't know if that's possible. Someone on another thread suggested it *was,* but I can't find the rules they're referencing. I'm starting to think they may be talking about SR3, while I'm running SR4.

So now it's more like a bunch of Chameleon-coated Fly-Spies for situational awareness and Battletac, plus a few modded Manservants turned into soldier-mechs all Clustered together with a Machine Sprite using Diagnostics on their super-node, which is in turn slaved to my Bionode to make them immune to mundane hacking. I can remote one drone at a time to make one of them better-still, though I would still rather provide a universal bonus to a group of my drones than make one that much better. If I can find a way, I will, otw I'll just stick with this.

What about Rigging a drone-cluster? Probably wouldn't be able to divide my attention... but iirc there's a bit of cyber that lets you do exactly that, give your full attention to multiple things... Back to the books!

Have you read HPMOR yet?
Comment is relevant, but requires a quadruple spoiler warning to explain.

I haven't, but on the other hand I unilaterally dislike Harry Potter.

EDIT:

My contact info is in my sig.

I also have a specific note saved with a standard sensor array I put in drones and vehicles. 5,550 .