Well, I'm getting involved in a new SR game and thought I'd tackle the one set of rules that I haven't been able to figure out: vehicles, riggers, and drones.

In this case: drones. I understand the basics of them (more or less), but I'm getting confused with all of the stat blocks and trying to figure out which are good and which aren't. So I figured I'd ask everyone here.

So: what are your favorite drones, and why? What, in your opinion, makes a drone good or bad? Is there anything that you think a drone "has" to have? And, conversely, which drones are utterly worthless, and why?

Thanks for the help.

I'm a big fan of the Lone Star Strato-9. The massive sensor suite is the biggest consideration, but the fact that it has a heavier gun than you can otherwise get at chargen also helps. For the most part I'm not a fan of anything that's ground-based—for me, it's all about the rotodrones, as the additional mobility is so incredibly useful. Also, never leave home without a Body 0 walker or rotodrone.

What do you want to do with your drones?

~J

another good one is the Condor series, for the high... uh... Rating Which Determines How Hard It Is To Locate Your Drone With Sensors. i have a memory like one of those things which passes water while holding back objects of appreciable size. anyway, Condors are good for spying on people, especially if you bump up the Sensors.

for sheer asskickery, the Doberman's pretty good.

For sheer combat entertainment value, there's a fun vector thrust, named "Ares Protector" or something like that. It only has about enough spare room to put in a heavy pistol, and it can be outrun by a dwarf just back from Starbucks, but it does have a dozen vehicle armor standard and fairly reasonable handling TNs.

That's it. I must now go about designing a drone called the T-800. Why? I re-watched Terminator 3, and it just seems like a cute idea to have a company researching Terminators as practical battle weapons. If nothing else, they'd serve as an ironically useful pawn of Deus.

Things I'd consider important.

A: The fact they can use normal weapons, so built-ins are not necessary.
B: The fact they need HEAVVYYY armor. But since they only need motor mechanisms and normal weapons, who needs built-ins except in rare circumstances.
C: What kind of power do these suckers use? I'd say some new form of battery, though solar backup would be practical.

It just seems like a cute idea.

Here's a question I've had. Is there any canon clarification about mounting assault rifles on turrets? How about if an H&K G38 in rifle mode counts as an assault rifle or a rifle for purposes of turret mounting?

If it counts as a rifle, or if you can mount an assault rifle as a rifle... wowza. Make a BF->FA modification on the rifle, and you have a micro-turret mountable rifle that does 7S base, and does full auto. You've essentially crammed a light machine gun into a microturret, but it has better ranges -- imho, that extra 25/50/100 at short/medium/long range is better than the extra 50 at extreme range).

The only disadvantage is the lesser ammo capacity (64, versus belted for machine gun).

T-800 uses a fuel cell, iirc.

I believe canon is that with regard to vehicle mounting "rifle" covers Assault, Sporting, and Sniper rifles.

~J

they exist in all but name, frostPDP. check out Deus' skelbots.

What source book is that, MFB? *might not have it *

Brainscan, along with the wimpy bumblebees.

~J

Thanks guys. I'm not really sure what I'm going to have the rigger doing, probably a mix of surveillance, infiltration, and just general fire support. I'm definately looking into a retransmitter as mentioned in another thread.

A couple of thoughts:
1) Isn't a Steel Lynx the size of a small car?
2) I want to booby trap the van I'll have the retransmitter in, so that it blows up if found. The obvious idea is some C4 in strategic places with a radio detonator. While it would get the job done, something tells me it would be a BAD IDEA (especially with our GM). Anyone have a better idea?
3) At chargen, should I shell out for the VCR level 3, or is it better to get level 2 and have more cash for drones et al?

My personal opinion is to go for the VCR-3 and never look back. With that you will be God almighty in a proper vehicle.

On the other hand, be prepared to be utterly useless outside of one. It is the long, hard path of the pure Rigger.

~J

I'd go with the VCR-2 myself. VCR-3 is nice, but 1) it's worthless if you can't afford a good vehicle and an array of drones to take advantage of it and 2) the difference between the two isn't that significant, you'd gain little more than a -1 TN, +2 Reaction, and +5.5 to initiative. Not really worth the 335,000 nuyen and 2.0 Essence difference (or 670,000 nuyen and 1.6 Essence if you go Alpha). But then that's just the min/maxer in my talking.

In any case, to answer your other two questions...

1) It's a Body 2 drone with only 3 points of CF. A Body 2 drone can be as small as a dwarf, a motorcycle, or a subcompact. I'd probably put it in the motorcycle range myself.

2) As Spastic said, a mini-blimp is a way better choice. Not only are they fantastic surveillance and reconnaissance drones, but they can be nearly invisible in the sky (if you give it a Ruthenium Polymer treatment or even a Photovoltaic Chamelon Paintjob loaded with various sky-emulating patterns), they can have very high Signatures making them hard for anything else to spot, and with a SunCell modification they can stay airborne nearly as long as you need or want them to. Throw in an ED system and even if they do get spotted despite their Signature, they'll still be hard to target. Throw a really nice sniper rifle on it in a micro pop-out turrent, and bam, you also have a sniper-on-demand. If you have access to SOTA:2064, check out the rules for Extended Sensors, too. They're fantastic on a mini-blimp.

I almost always take at least one mini-blimp with me when I design a generic rigger.

Brainscan, yeah. if you check the cover of M&M, those are pretty much skelbots.

Brainscan, page 144. Not quite as hard to take down as a Terminator, though (as a Force 6 combat spell or a decent pistol shot can take one down).

thanks, I have the book, but they're not quite there in the time line, so I hadn't looked for it in a while. 'preciate it

If you really want to blow it up, just look at anti-theft systems in r3.150

The LS strato 9 is brilliant, great sensors, heavy firepower at long range manageable and not likely to cause a upset flying around the city.

The Aries guardian is good, it can carry a good sized weapon and has armour 12, unfortunately as of R#R it is not available to a starting character.

A heavily customised Dalmatian is my new standby for an aerial combat drone, over power the engine for load once and pile on the armour plating and a good gun and you have a very workable combat drone. Just don’t push it to hard or the engine will die on you.

On th1 ground the steal lynx combat drone is an old stand buy but it dose draw a bit of attention, they are supposed to be able to fit in corporate coridors. The IWS MK6 (armed) is reasonable but you may want to upgrade the armour, I would ad at least another 3 or 4 points and suspension improvements to cover the loss of handling. Or just use a Doberman, maybe with additional armour, depends wether you want the versatility of a robotic arm or the option of a second weapon.

Many use tiny walker drones as scouts but I worry about them being found to easily. They are slow and easily destroyed if found.

Modifications I add to most vehicles under my control include encryption and auto soft modules. armed drones get SL2 integration.

Edward

auto soft for clearsight and whatever the hell the shooting one is called most definitely.

And a robot brain if yo uhave the money, to make them a bit more autonomous.

Also, another great one, if you have the moeny, and expect to be seeing action against other drones, is the hedgehog signal interceptor. comes stock w/ rigger emulation and an electroincs warfare auto soft. Keeps the riggers fighting for control of their drones, while you can keep shooting with yours. Put 3 or 4 of these things out in Cpt's chair mode, and keep a couple of you heavies out, and you can really mess with other drone riggers.

Edit: it's sharpshooter

I had a load out specced once using 2 reball expresses one witha set of arms. they could fly in, drop off drones that were broken down for storage (except for one, which provided cover while the other 2 were being assembled) and could also serve to ferry ammo to the team. Got too pricey skill wise though and had to drop it.

If you go with combat drones, get the autosoft system for them and add sharpshooter for your artillery drones and clearsight for your spotters. those are two of the best autosoft packages going. ALso, to save yout character time down the road, I suggest some "Mr. Fix-it's" they come with tools and a rating 3 b/r skill soft of your choice. Handy for reloading and cleaning weapons and assisting on simple but time consuming upgrades and repairs on gear.
I also use a Felix for scouting in residential areas. the sensors aren't so hot, but when you have an IVIS system and rating 4 in the main vehicle they can simply keep tabs on what you've already spotted and cause almost no stir stalking about in an enclave.

Also, the mini-blimp with a mounted sniper rifle can pay off big in your career later.

Riggers are all about versatility and force multiplication. Have 2 drones use suppressive fire to pin down the opposition and the sammies can goto town doing what they do best.
Tack on a GL and you've got a great platform for attacks.
Also, you can add cybernetic enhancements to a drone for half price, so definitely consider getting ultra-sound sight

I think this is going to be fun. Thanks for all the help guys. Time to go crunch some numbers and see how many toys I can afford.

OK, another question. How loud are rotodrones?

I ask because the more I work on this guy, the more paranoid he becomes. I'm trying to create a drone that he can send to meets instead of himself. Properties it needs is: speakers so he can talk, a bit of armor and a weapon (in case things get ugly), and a place to recieve payments and other things from Johnsons (which I assume would just be some refitted cargo). I'd like it to be able to fly, just because it makes escape easier, but if the rotodrone is really loud, I'll need to think of something else. Any ideas?

They're as loud as their Signature rating vs. your Perception Test says they are, since that's basically what's used to notice them if memory serves.

Funny.

It doesn't satisfy the requirement of being armored, but I'd just send one of the little arachnoids.

Equip it with a a speaker (use intercom system r3.96 as an analog), and a credstick, both of which weigh nothing. If you're really insistent on offensive capability, toss in a BattleTac FDDM receiver.

I don't know about you, but I expect the average enemy isn't going to bother smashing such an unoffensive little spider drone when your collegues are drawing heavy pistols, extending spurs, etc. In the meantime, you can have that wonderful little spider climb up into a nice airduct, and use the BattleTac FDDM to call in Death From Above in the form of indirect fire (mortars, missiles, etc) while you direct your other drones to head in.

And on the plus side, you can use the spider in the same indirect fire capacity on runs -- people are not likely to notice it at signature 12.