Had some players recently bring in new characters and when going over the spells list for the two new mages this thought hit my brain.
The Mage is targeting an enemy rigger jacked in and controlling a vehicle, getting lucky and having line of sight on them, which Control Manipulation spell would you use to affect the jacked in rigger, prevent them from piloting/using a rigged vehicles weapons, Control Actions or Control Thoughts?

Control Actions won't help much if the rigger is running the vehicle/weapons with their mind. Making the meat body do something could somewhat counteract their mental commands. Like unplug the control jack. Yeah, that would help.

Control Thoughts would override the mental commands to the vehicle, as long as the mage can win a test of wills. As long as the mage has that control, this spell would afford more options for the mage. I'd vote for this one because of that potential.

I'd agree - Control Thoughts is the way to go. I'd argue that the VCRs RAS override would prevent Control Actions from working - if the Rigger can't make his own arms and legs move, I don't see why an enemy mage would have any more success! But - if you can take their mind over, then you also take over whatever they're jacked into - and if that happens to be mechs, t-birds or a light cruiser - well, someone's in for a *very* bad day!

I think it’s ambiguous. The fact that the target can be made to use their skills suggests that the peripheral nervous system may be the target of the control, and thus the RAS override would block the meat body (though that would create the possibility of controlling something they’re jumped into—VCRs seem to tap into the peripheral nervous system to do their thing). If they’re in, or switch to, Captain’s Chair, this interpretation would make Control Actions roughly useless. If you interpret the rules as allowing a Rigger to ride a jumped-in motorcycle you’d probably be able to crash them without a test in that case, because the VCR would need to be controlling the body for balance reasons.

Magic Fingers is also an option to yank the datajack if sustained control isn’t necessary, you have it available (and have LoS specifically to the datajack and securing mechanism), and aren’t relying on specific benefits to Control Manipulations.

~J