You know Hobbes, every time you post about Riggers in Shadowrun you prove, time and time again, that you have never, ever,
eeevvveeerrrrrr played a Rigger in Shadowrun. At least not without some house rules that fix Riggers pretty handily.
Let me address a couple of your points.
Riggers shouldn't have lower initiatives when piloting.
I take it that was in response to my comparison of Riggers versus other characters in meatspace piloting? Then how do you explain Riggers even coming close to Street Sams / Adepts / sometimes Mages with Reaction + Intuition + 1D6? Do you suggest the character spend resources not on vehicles or drones, but on low level Wired Reflexes to squeeze in next to their Control Rig? Or are you suggesting the Rigger is in VR, in which case said Rigger
can't be meatspace piloting, can she?
Riggers should drive donuts around others in vehicle chases / combat.
That is the lie of someone who hasn't grasped the rules for vehicle chases / combats. Lets take one Bad Ass Rigger (BAR for short) with a dice pool of over 9000!!!! And pit BAR up against Gutter Punk (GP for short). For this example we will give BAR a Control Rig 3, and GP is a Street Sam with Wired Reflexes 2. Let us also say that GP either aspires to be in a go-gang, or is already a part of one. Reaction 8 (with WR) and a Piloting with specialization of 7 to give a pool of 15.
Now, let's put them in a chase. It doesn't matter who is chasing who... Hell, we will call it a race, with whoever pulls away first is the winner. In that case, the environment is almost certainly a Speed environment. We will put BAR in a "classic" rigger vehicle of a Bulldog Step Van with a stock Acceleration (don't worry, we will fix that later). GP with be on a Yamaha Rapier.
If you are right, BAR with a dice pool of over 9000!!!! should be able to win this race handily, yes?
Each of them make their piloting rolls and cap them at Speed (+3 for BAR) and then.....
Only move a number of Range Bands up to their vehicles Acceleration.
BAR only moves 1 Range Band. GP moves, well assuming average roll with a Threshold of one or two, 3 Range Bands.
Each and every IP, save 1 for a control test. Even with the extra die for BAR, losing on average 2 Range Bands per IP and only making up one or two by the end of the round means BAR gets smoked.
Lets upgrade the Bulldog Step Van to
max Acceleration now. 3. Three is the max, so the max shall be three.
Even in this case, BAR doesn't drive donuts around GP. Through attrition, if the race is long enough, BAR squeaks out a victory.
Alright, how about if we bump BAR up to something more serious? I am going from memory, but I am pretty sure no ground vehicle has a stock Acceleration of over 3. Max'ed out it would be 5.
In this case, BAR would certainly win. Even so, it won't be so obvious as to be like driving donuts around GP. It would be a definetive victory, however.
And to be clear, the restriction of Acceleration isn't a proper Limit, so not only can the Control Rig not modify it - Edge can't push it either.
Or maybe Rigger, as an archetype, is just a poor fit for traditional ShadowRun games? Perhaps it would be better to make driving and drone activities more available as sidelines for other types, similar to how hacking went in fourth edition?
Although as a general rule I don't need any more 'pets' in combat, there is enough rolling as it is. Maybe I'll warm up to drones more under 6th edition rules if they really do streamline things.
At this point I would not cry if Riggers were just completely removed. And this is coming from a player who routinely plays Riggers. I keep waiting for them to be shown the love they deserve, and they keep getting put in the corner. Sometimes with Dunce caps on.