Swarm limitations make sense, better to hardwire those to perhaps RCC-rating per individual swarm max. As for problematic rules, here's stuff I can dig out, which includes a lovely mixture of terminology and contradicting rules. (Redownloaded my SR5 book since the original PDF was stuck on an unplugged computer.)
Gunnery
p185: G+A[Acc] manual, G+L[Acc] remote
p240: G+A for drone-mounted:
"You perform an action through a device you control (or at least control sufficiently), using your commlink or deck like a remote control or video-game controller. The dice pool of any test you make using this action uses the rating of the appropriate skill and attribute you would use if you were performing the action normally."
p186: G+L[Sensor] Passive Targeting with signature penalty (active targeting requires a Simple action and will provide the defender with a penalty)
Drones always lose 3 dice? Weird.
Assumption: Control Device description mentions AR-gestures. Makes no sense in VR. Ruling required.
Bonuses & Vehicle Active skills:
p267: All Pilot skills, + Gunnery, are Vehicle Active skills
p268: Jumped In: Vehicle Actions, inc Gunnery and Sensor tests, become Matrix actions, which means a Hotsim bonus. Claims Hotsim bonus is +1, which is a point of contention. (Assumption: default +2, not the +1 listed)
Control Rig:
p201, p203: Piloting AR+1 Limit, VR+2 limit. Jumped in threshold down by rating Control Rig.
p268: Limits + Rating Control Rig (what about VR? Do the bonuses stack to max +5? It does say it connects more smoothly), this includes Sensors, Speed, Handling, Accuracy.
p454: Control Rig gives Rating as dice-bonus on Vehicle skill tests (Vehicle Active?), adds rating to Handling and Speed, reduces thresholds
CONTRADICTION: Bonus on Handling and Speed, not Limits, means a Rating 3 Control Rig lets you eightfold maximum speed of a vehicle.
CONTRADICTION: Dice bonus not listed elsewhere?
Vehicle Speed: Helicopters can hit 140 in town, 220 open terrain. Tiltwing can hit 300. Cars can hit 80 in town, 120 in rural areas. These are not supported by rules, and any Speed 3 vehicle can't hit 80, only 50, under RAW.
Decision: Change Speed rules
Since she's chasing a F9 channeler, even with average agility of 4 that's... 288 in a combat turn.
That's a speed 8 ground vehicle, a speed 4 air, a speed .8 Jet. (Wakshaani wrote about the varying speeds that never made it into rigger 5)
So she should be fine keeping up especially with control rigs to bump it up. Maybe not on foot, but rotodrones can definitely keep up and part of most arsenals, same for noizquitos or fly spies, etc.
In general the houserules to keep it simple would probably be:
* Intuition for reaction, logic for all gunnery.
* Any held weapon is gunnery, the appeal of riggers is that swiss army knife feel.
* Repair costs capped at 20% of the drone cost, if recoverable. Or base drone price cost, or any combination of the two.
* Forget noise except as a plot device once fresnel fabric, cyberears with antennae x3, datajack is bought.
* Allow extra armor outside of mod points or vehicle points. This way you can make some fragile drones semi armored. That said, just keep it reasonable for both sides.
Yeah, vehicle speeds make no sense. Under RAW, Speed 3 vehicles can't reach the speed fluff says cars have on a highway in town. That's why I designed a flattened table, which doubles every 2 steps and has the same velocity at Speed 5. Also helps nerf the Eurocar Westwind a bit. Included rules to boost the Velocity of aircrafts to compensate. Not sure what those houserules are?
My own decision would probably Agility for AR, Logic for VR for Gunnery. Repair costs nerfed helps yes. Noise can be fought quite well. Not sure about armor.
It doesn't matter if a control rig will increase the Speed Attribute or the [Speed] Limit. The Speed Attribute is never actually used as a dice pool modifier or measure of how far you travel in a combat turn compared to other vehicles in a chase situation. Game Mechanic wise you only use [Speed] as a Limit. Game mechanic wise raising the Speed Attribute or "only" the [Speed] limit is the same thing
Uh. No. When I know enemies are X distance away, the amount of time it takes to get there does enter play. And when a Channeling Mage goes way faster than a Drone, that's rather significant. So there is a BIG difference between Speed and [Speed], so there's 100% a contradiction.
One thing that helps on a more "holistic" scale, consisting of two steps:
- Nerf to the Hardened Armor Rules: Hardened Armor still grants half its rating as automatic hits BUT these are Hits deducted from the remaining dice of your Soak roll - Think of them as Dice that automatically score a hit instead of flat out bonus hits. (There are other ways of facilitating this Nerf, f.i. leaving the auto hits out entirely and flat doubling the amount of Soak dice generated by hardened armor).
- Buff to Drone Armor: With the Nerf in place, houserule Drones and Vehicles to have Hardened Armor.
Working together, both rules should help to:
- Make Hardened Armor in Spirits and Milspecc Armor less ridiculous.
- Level out the fields between Summoners and Riggers (at least a little bit)
- Make Armored Drones more survivable
- Make Armor Penetration more important when fighting drones and vehicles - which is quite plausible!
My players like it; even the Shaman and the Milspeccīd Streetsam
Oh and fuck the Movement Power. It doesnīt add anything to the game except cheese.
Eh, Hardened Armor can be fought with Bullseye. And Immunity is vulnerable to magical damage. But yeah, Drones should have some sort of anti-squishiness. As for Movement, when time literally is of the essence, that speed has both tactical and strategical value. So I wouldn't ditch it 100%, even though my houserule of max -80% bonus depending on circumstances doesn't balance out enough.
My other Houserules for Riggers:
- Base condition Monitors for Drones (before adding Body/2) are based on their Size: 2 for Microdrones, 4 for Minidrones, 6 for small Drones, 8 for medium Drones, 10 for Large Drones and 12 for Huge Drones and Vehicles.
- Electric Damage: If the Damage is physical (f.i. by a Ball Lightning Spell), apply the full amount of applied Damage to both the Physical and the Matrix Condition Monitor and also apply the secondary Effects if the Drone is controled by a Pilot Program. If the damage is Stun, split the amount between both Monitors. (half a nerf and half a buff. IMO, it makes sense that High Voltage Electricity is dangerous to Drones, but not Tasers. This way, physical is more dangerous and stun is less dangerous then in current RAW)
- Aktive Sensor Targetting is handled as a success test and not as an opposed test. The victim can still break away (with a Complex Action and an opposed test).
- Excess Capacity of Weapon Mounts: Based on the Rules detailed in Rigger 5.0, a drone mount equipped with a smaller-than-possible weapon may have the remaining space "filled up" with an appropriate smaller weapon OR add 1 point of recoil compensation for each Point of unused "space". Example: A Heavy Weapon Mount (6 MP) equipped with an Assault Rifle (which only needs a 4 MP mount) can add an additional Machine Pistol or smaller weapon OR 2 Points of Recoil Compensation.
- Shooting Mounted Weapons: Shooting mounted weapons uses Logic instead of Agility, as long as the shooter doesnīt use manual control (may be already RAW?). Also, firing them uses the same Actions (Simple or Complex) as firing unmounted weapons.
- Manual Weapon Mount Control: (Unarmored) Manual Control on a Vehicle Weapon Mount adds to the Cost, Threshold, Availability and Modification Slots needed only if itīs added to the Remote Control, but not if Remote Control is replaced entirely.
- Autosofts: Drones have access to all internal Autosofts and to all RCC-shared Autosofts at the same time and will automatically choose the Autosoft with the highest rating for any given task. Thereīs also no limit on how many internal autosofts a drone can have and run. However, the max. rating of an internal Autosoft is the droneīs Pilot rating (with the ecception of pre-installed Autosofts(), the max. rating of an RCC-Shared autosofts is the RCCīs device rating. (It should be obvious why the current rules are not reasonable...)
- Nozquito: The negative dice pool Modificator from multiple Nozquitos is not cumulative. (Classic Catalyst: The Nozquito is one of the best drones in Rigger 5.0, but itīs so obviously OP that many tables, Missions included, outright ban them after first use. Nerfing them is essentially a buff for Riggers...)
Condition Monitor makes sense. Stun damage, so nerf weapons that are meant to stun, seems interesting.
Allowing so many internal autosofts kind of takes out the fang of having to make tactical decisions, so not sure there.
Nozquitos I already nerfed in the past. I forget what the limit was though. But the second didn't just add a full penalty again. We've used them in the past, which turned out to not be a smart move. XD Something with enemies getting so confused they sprayed bystanders instead.