Ouch. Like, 10 drones. That sucks. Sure hope Rigger4 hurries up.

What's with the picture of the chick putting together the anthroform drone? There don't seem to be any anymore.

Anyways, on with a few questions. I just got the book about a week ago, and hanv't had time to go over it with a fine tooth comb... but I am looking forward to the decker/rigger merge as I tended to play rigger/deckers in SR3 anyways - but I ahve a few questions on drones....

1. Why is the ocular drone so expensive? What makes it worth the extra 50,000 just because it can sit in your head instead of in a pocket? As a rigger, if one of my drones gets shot on the job - no biggy, you expect that. You patch up what you can, and take it to the shop later on... if someone shoots MY FUCKING EYE on the job, that's a bit more of a problem. I understand that in order ot make the drone obay your brain when its sitting in your socket, it might take some expensive wiring... but why woudl any Runner really want to hand over 50,000 per eye just to have a convienent place to stash his drones?

2. IF Pilot=IC=Agent now, can the drone's Pilot programs be treated like agents? Can you load them with programs? task them with matrix-taks? etc.

3. Since file-size isn't the issue anymore, and all drones are on the matrix all the time, and the pilots are more like agent programs loaded onto a physical chasis... does that mean you can upgrade the pilot program down the road?

Occular Drone costs 3K¥ - the Availability of 6 just missed its column.

10 Drones is quite impressive for a main book of SR.

While Pilots, Drones and IC use mostly the same rules, they aren't the same - but you can load IC/Agents with Programs into a Drone, given enough Response...

That indeed means a Drone's Pilot is limited only by its Response - so if you got a (cracked) Pilot 6 Program, you are only limited by the available hardware when you load it into any Drone.

You could even outfit an Agent with some Hacking Programs, a Pilot Program, some Autosofts and order it to hack, turn over and upgrade Drones for you.

Thanks for the fast response.
That actually cleared up everything. I suppose before I dig into the main book I should check out the erratta.

You can also install response upgrades to accomodate better firewall andpilot programs.
Also, the Electronic Warfare autosoft allows the drone to engage in jamming and node locating tasks

And arthroforms haven't gone away, theres a skill for them. Just no examples in the BBB. They'll be out.

Yeah, I figured as much - just woudl have been nice if htey had tossed one of each type in there, rather than 2 of each size.

I've always prefered anthroform and walker drones.

They'd have to include those. I mean... come on... Battletech, yo! ^_^

There is a walker drone in the bbb:

Shiawase Kanmushi: This quad-leg micro-drone “bug”
crawler is ideal for penetrating closely confined areas and is
capable of crawling on walls and ceilings. p 342

I think that sounds like a walker drone.

Well they included the pictures for them so one can hope the stats will come along, lol.

You don't have to - you can control your Drone directly, too.

This won't work when controlling a Drone at the other end of the city/country/world, though, so sometimes, using the Matrix as a relais becomes interesting.

Also, I must be blind, but I cant' figure out two more things..

1) what is the responce of a drone? DO I have to basically buy a commlink-model for each drone? That seems extranous because I don't need displays and keyboards and crap.

As far as I can tell, Pilot = System, Signal is determined by the drone's signal package, firewall = pilot, but I can't tell how the responce of a drone is determined - jsut that I am supposed to use it for initiative.

2) According to the vehicle list, all vehicles have a pilot rating. Does this mean they are all drone-able? or is this the SR4 equivilent of autonav, and you still need to rigger -adapt anythign but a drone to dive into it?

Vehicles that do not carry passengers are already drone-adapted. Vehicles that carry passengers are not drone-adapted by default.

If there aren't specific ratings provided for a drone's Response, you use the "Device Rating" table from the "Wireless World" chapter to obtain their starting ratings.

IIRC, it's something like Device Rating 3 for civvy vehicles, 4 for security-grade, 5+ for military.

So yeah. One can assume that any given drone will probably start with 3 to 5 Response, depending on whether it's civilian, police or milspec. That's usually fairly obvious when examining the drone's description. Most of the core-book drones would be security grade IMO. (The Steel Lynx would be milspec though).

"Pilot" programs are actually a subset of agents, so yeah, System = Firewall = Pilot.

One last question (I hope).

So, I can conenct a number of devices to my drone = to its System/Pilot rating x2, right? So, lets say I would like it to connect to each of my team-member's Commlinks, so that they can share visual information (like, the drone could mark targets or something - or jsut so they coudl check in on what the drone is seeing). Assuming a 5 man team (including myself) this would eat up 5 of the connections, plus, one of hte conenctions available by each of our commlinks?

What if I only want to give them the ability to recieve information from the drone (and possibly for the drone to pick up information from them - smartlink targets, etc)... but I don't want them to be "logged in" to the drone and able to give it commands.

SR3 had the concept of 3 channels (command, system, and somethign else), but SR4 seems to abstract things away to "conencted" or "not-connected".

I guess my question is, can I allow poeple to connect with restricted privligages? or once I let them connect ot the drone, are they on the honor-system that they won't make it go get them coffee or something?

The limit is on subscriptions active at a time - the list itself is not limited.
As long as there is no transfer, it doesn't take up a slot.

But keep in mind your smartgun or fridge counts, too.

This is one limit in SR4 that can be extended or removed without real harm, though.

BTW, SR3 had the same limit on subsribed drones on a RCD, too.

Yes, but can "permissions" be set on a connection?

Like, if I want my drone and team to share data, they take up a conenction on each other's lists (since data is going both ways, at all times)... but I jsut don't want that to mean that the team's prankster can send commands over his commlink's connection to the drone, and have them interpreted/executed...

Yes, i believe that they can be given "user" access that lets them receive telemetry and sensor data or upgraded on a temp bassis for Pilot access.

Sure, as Drones have a System, too, you can configure different accounts.

Drones even can interconnect and share data themselves, if configured this way.

So, one last thing I am confused about - why exactly I would need to load an agent (with programs) onto the drone. The drone comes with a pilot program (OS) which is capable fo running programs itself, right?

So, given a drone with everything = 3 (System, responce, pilot, etc)
I could load a firewall program (rating 3) and a Electronic Warfare autosoft (also 3) on there just fine, right?
THen, maybe I want it to encrypt its transmissions, so I throw an Encrypt (rating 3) program on there, bu now since I have too many programs on there, the responce goes down to 2 (dragging the sytem down to 2 with it - and making all three programs run at rating 2)
Is that all correct?

Also, with encryption, according ot the book, in order to decrypt stuff, the intruder makes a Something+Decrypt program extended test with threshold = encryption rating x2, 1 combat turn

SO in this case, he only needs 4 hits to break the encryption? (sinces its running at rating 2) That doesn't seem like its even worth doing.

But back to my origninal question, why would I need an agent program loaded onto the drone as well? COuldn't I jsut command the drone's pilot to carry out whatever tasks I would have commanded the agent to do?

Same reason you run an agent on your commlink, to handle certain tasks automatically.
If the drones attention is split between spoofing, jamming and following, it's likely to miss something. Have the agent handling the spoofing and your're reducing the workload.

Firewall and System don't count on the limit for runnig Programs - they are assumed to be always present: Without System, you can't run Programs.

And firewall is separate from system, you cna have a system 3 but a 6 firewall

Only if you have an Response of 6, in which case it would be quite odd to run anything less than System 6.

I guess, except that my commlink doesn't have a "pilot" rating, so cannot be commanded to do anythign on its own - unless an agent is running on it. The drone, effectivly, already has one agent running on it, because it can recieve commands to perform autonomous action. Uploading another one basically gives it another "brain" which (necessarily) in control of the body.

I do agree with your point about splitting the workload. I guess with enough agents running, you're effectly allowing the drone to "multitask" by say, taking two actions in a round (one for the agent, say jamming signals or something, and one for the drone itself, following me around and shooting targets).

ah, yeah I know that if I'm doing any upgrading, the first thing would be to upgrade the system/response stuff - but I was jsut suing those numbers as an easy example so that I could make sure I knew how the programs bogging down the system worked.

Isn't the encryption stuff a little easy to overcome though? WHy would anyone bother to encrypt data that can be broken by average-joe-hacker in a matter of seconds?

It never states that Firewall is limited by response, though System and application ratings are. That tells me that Firewall is unique in this respect.

Sometimes, even those seconds are invaluable.

Keep in Mind that an encrypted connection neither takes up a Program Slot nor does it's Rating have to correspond to the Device it runs on - only the Response/System of the one who installed it matters.
Same goes for Databombs...

So, actually, there is no reason not to do it.

So if I want my commlink to have an encrypted connection to a drone, only the commlink needs have the encryption program running? The drone can respond, in an encrypted fashion, without having access to the program?

Also, once the conenction is encrypted, you're saying I can flush the encryption program, to make room for something else, and everythign stays encrypted?

That's kinda slick.

No need to flush the program, you have more storage than god does on his PDA

Concerning the firewalled fridge... you don't have to stop there!

Just upgrade it's Response, replace it's System with a Pilot and add accumulator and legs, rip the Sensors out your blimp and transplant them, then armor it... and let it follow you on your Runs.

well, there arn't really rules for adding armor or legs... but you could TREAT it like a vehicle... pay to have it rigger-addapted... and then jump "into" the fridge.... then you would

A) get the real-time experience of BEING a fridge...

B) Find out if the light stays on when you close the door.

I do think its one copy per crack... but still free and doesn't take very long.

I'm going to miss the SynthKitties though. WOuld be cool to have a pet cat who is also my computer. Always wanted to do that in SR3 but the kitty couldn't fit a deck.

Cracking a Program should remove the copy protection completly.

That applies only to legally bought Programs, too...