[salamandre]

I have a concept but i would need some input to know if it's either viable or even possible or just not effective.

I was thinking of doing a decker/rigger. I would be equipped with a deck (novatech navigator) on which i would run a agent program to control my RCC and drones slaved to it (it being my deck).
the deck would have a a high firewall setting so that it would be most of the time more to protect my PAN than to attack. I'm was figuring that to protect my self against other decker, i would use a  deck for it's versatility.

novatech navigator : running agent4, encrypton and signal scrub
firewall: 6/7(encrypton program)
dataprocessing: 5
sleaze: 4
attack: 3

RCC (Compuforce task master)
running on NR:0 and sharing:4
programs:
clearsight 6
electronic warfare 6
maneuvering 6
targeting 6

and having X drones of the same type and equiped with the same guns.

does it change a thing either i run the RCC or my agent do?
does that give me more freedom to let an agent run my drones?
can an agent run drones if ordered to?

thanks you in advance for your inputs

[Marcus]

After reading over Agents and Drones ( 246 and 265-270 SR5 Core) which i suggest you do. I would say you cannot have an Agent run a drone, pilot programs are what do that. Agents are designed to operate on the matrix only, you could I expect have an agent attempted to hack a drone. But that's not here nor there.

Does it change things with a pilot programming running the drone vs you? Yes. As odds are good that comparative stats and skill ratings will be very different. Jumping in is generally more effective then just sending a pilot program, though it of course entails more risk, and depends totally on how you built your character.

Does it give you more freedom to let a pilot program run your drones? Yes. Though that's possibly false assumption, given freedom isn't well defined there. There would be different sets of actions available under each set of circumstances. But one would include what amounted to a NPC with what is described as dog-brain trying its level best to follow your orders.

If you order an agent to run a drone? See above.

Sprites are arguable a different animal Machine sprite might well be trainable to operate drones, given a cooperative GM. But that's really a whole other set of issues.

[RHat]

Agents have the Computer, Hacking, and Cybercombat skills.  Those are their only skills; they do not have any skills required to operate drones and are not able to use autosofts to substitute for them.

There is an option here - the agent runs on the cyberdeck and does the hacking, while you run off the RCC and do the rigging.

[salamandre]

So i guess that my best option would be to let my agent act as a ''matrix body guard'' for my PAN and run myself the RCC?
and since my agent is supposed to be able to run any program that is running on my deck , he could maybe run the encrypton and signal scrub to boost/defend my RCC.

When finding a ennemi decker, i could switch my deck and agent/program to an offensive and try to take  him down too

[ZeldaBravo]

When finding a ennemi decker, i could switch my deck and agent/program to an offensive and try to take  him down too

Your drones can take him down fast and easy. 

[JimmyCrisis]

I've just had a 9 month campaign end, and our rigger just built himself a deck a couple sessions ago.  Granted, he already had an attack helicopter.

A lot of the skills overlap, it seems pretty reasonable that you could tape your deck to the underside of your RCC if you wanted

Granted, you may want to discuss the particulars of upgrading vs. Replacing cyberdeck with your GM before you settle on a cheap deck.  Same goes for rigging cyberware.

[RHat]

A lot of the skills overlap, it seems pretty reasonable that you could tape your deck to the underside of your RCC if you wanted

Which does nothing to deal with the issue of using them both at once - for some reason, when they wrote the Matrix rules they decided to make it impossible to properly use both at once; you have to form your persona through one and find some workaround to use the other.

[salamandre]

thanks for all the input i'll work around that!