I was thinking about the arachnoid minidrone. Someone please check my math.

If a rigger uses an RCD in Captain's chair mode, he can walk-and-talk at the same time -- the RAS override doesn't shut off his normal senses in Captain's.

He could then hang an arachnoid on his back or in a pouch (or on a teammate's), he could refer to it as needed (even jumping into the drone briefly) to detect people on the other sides of walls, vehicles on the other sides of buildings, and so on, out to a range of about 2 km.

Is that right?

Sensors don't go through walls.

I was thinking about the Direct LOS/Interrupted LOS sensor-enhanced gunnery modifier in SR3.

Or just have non-mobile drones built into their helmets. Why pay for those expensive legs?

Hell, I ran a rigger that had non-ambulatory drones that were little more than SMGs on a micro-turret. They were designed to latch onto the shoulder armor of our resident troll PC. Called the "gunpods"

I did tell the troll that they were designed to not be able to aim in the direction of his head, though I can't recall if they actually were.




-karma

Those are cool ideas.

Makes the snakeeyes module redundant imho.

I think you are quite wrong, Kagetenshi. Not having any obstructions at ALL provides a -2 TN to detecting a target (and, for some inexplicable reason, a -3 in a combat situation). This is not the same thing as being able to see through walls.

Or, please, do enlighten me as to which sensor component grants this mystical see-through-walls ability. The video feed? Ultrasound? Radar, perhaps? Maybe its the rangefinder...

mm radar could do it, depending on the wall's materials. besides which, there's stuff like analysis of sound and echoes, shadows, and other indirect sensory clues.

Sound analysis through walls that you don't know anything about (except for surface material) is "a bit difficult", or more accurately all but impossible. Indirect sensory clues still require you to have LoS to somewhere near the object to be spotted. Low-power radar (such as you'd get on an object you must carry yourself and which functions very near humans) will have serious trouble penetrating structural materials; detection through very light cardboard/plastic/plywood walls would be possible, though.

I would personally allow some level of detection with vehicle Sensors through walls, there'd just be TN modifiers based on what kind of walls there are in between. Something like +1 TN per Barrier Rating over 3.

The ambiguity here is caused by "Interrupted LOS" being a separate modifier, instead of just being "Cover", as in combat between characters.

But sensors have always troubled me as a gamemaster. For example, if the TN to detect a metahuman with an uninterrupted LOS is 3, then a drone with Sensor 1 will fail to detect 2/3rds of the metahumans that walk directly in front of it.

Which makes the idea of a car driving itself with only a Sensor 1 package pretty ludicrous.

Your math is a little off. TN 3 means only 2 of 6 possibilities fail, so every 3 seconds a rating 1 drone will notice 2/3 of the metahumans in it's plain viewing arc but 5/6 trolls.

Right, my mistake. My math was backwards; the drone will detect 2/3rds but fail to detect the other 1/3rd. Which is still a catastrophic failure rate.

But I don't buy the "every three seconds". As GM, I wouldn't allow a drone or a PC to make a new perception test once every combat round. If they fail the test, they don't see it. They don't get to keep making rolls every turn until they do.

For normal perception tests involving people, the one-shot perception test rules work reasonably well. However, it is assumed that people notice obvious things without a roll. When a troll starts opening up on you with his MMG, you dont need to make a perception test to shoot back. Drones, however, *do* have to make a sensor test to shoot back. Allowing a new test every 3 seconds for vehicle sensors actually makes the range of sensor ratings make a small amount of sense, as opposed to leaving you scratching your head as to how that sensor 4 spotter drone could have completely missed the MMG-toting troll, so I recommend it.

Yeah, even if one rules that sensors don't penetrate walls, it is a pretty neat trick

Thermo can see through (really thin uninsulated) walls. MM radar, audio,

Your thinking of active sensors as well. The drone still gets a pilot rating roll for the passive audio/visual sensors to dectect a meta in addition to the active sensors roll.