[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

There rules from the crb remain, but there's also a new chase mechanic where speeds and distances are relative rather than absolute.

That's good to know.  Anything for using drones at character scales more easily?

the only new mechanics are specifying what drones and vehicles use to defend against attacks with.  Which was implied in some cases, but it was murky... and completely unsaid when it came to vehicles and drones NOT under autopilot.

when it comes to tracking how many meters a drone has covered so far in a given turn, or how much speed a vehicle can gain/bleed this round... you can either play it as written (which I agree is a bit onerous) or just be a little handwaivey.  Just like there's no rules for turning radii... strictly by RAW there's no reason you can't do a 180 degree turn at 200 mph.  GM can decree that calls for a crash test of course, but it's already handwaivey on that aspect anyway.  SR6 isn't a vehicle combat simulator at heart (nor does Double Clutch turn it into one)

[Typhus]

So again, we have a set of rules that doesn't really work at the table and needs to be handwaved or houseruled to work smoothly.  Not sure why I would ever go in for Double Clutch if it's just adding more of the same.  It's design choices like these that keep me out of 6e.

To be clear, I'm not looking for a vehicle combat simulator (rpgs don't do that well anyway usually), rather the opposite.  Just something that's functional.  As written, from standing starts, drones first lag behind characters, have to overspeed to catch up, then overshoot the party because they can't slow down in time (even ones with legs). 

Even a conversion formula for moving them at character scale without fussing with Accel and Speed intervals would be helpful.  Sounds like we're too late for that idea though. 

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

If you're not even using a map, the exact distances are all very fuzzy anyway.  Inherently hand-wavey.  I suspect that's not what you're talking about tho.

If you're playing SR6 with a gridded battlemap where you measure exact distances, then drones are going to have to be sticking more or less to pedestrian-like speeds in order to not fly off said battlemap (10 meters per move action).  A samurai can move up to 10 meters per round, round after round, irrespective of what their "speed" was last round.  The only variation is whether or not they throw in some sprinting, which again doesn't remember past rounds' movement rates.

If you have a fire support drone along, it's probably by necessity going to be sticking to similar speeds.  Whereas the samurai can't just add speed round by round (they either move up to 10/15 or they don't) the drones are able to vary how many meters they get on a move action. Accel isn't a hard limit on how much speed can be gained or bled in a round, it's the safe limit.  Even then, drones like the Samurai have an Accel of 10: they can go from a dead stop to Street Sam's move speed just right there as is... and unlike the Street Sam they can keep accumulating more and more... there's no "falling behind".  And again you can gain or lose however much you care to try: the GM throws a handling test at you with an arbitrary threshold (this topic again ) based on what the exact circumstances are.

TL;DR:  I'm not defending the vehicle rules as being ideal... but I think they're certainly playable at the pedestrian scale.  And, once you have the chase rules, you can just ditch all that gaussian mathematics when it's vehicle vs vehicle combat scale.

[Typhus]

When you accelerate, you only travel half the distance of the Accel value.  So, as written, they don't keep up with the samurai.  While I appreciate the "safe" qualifier, it seems like there's no guidance to the GM or a player for what happens/should happen if you exceed that limit. 

That said, if "safe" is in play, I guess I would just default to "you can move up to the maximum speed of the drone" at character scales, and not worry about the rest.   

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

When you accelerate, you only travel half the distance of the Accel value.  So, as written, they don't keep up with the samurai.  While I appreciate the "safe" qualifier, it seems like there's no guidance to the GM or a player for what happens/should happen if you exceed that limit. 

That said, if "safe" is in play, I guess I would just default to "you can move up to the maximum speed of the drone" at character scales, and not worry about the rest.   

You mentioned you wished it would work better (at all?) at pedestrian scales.  That's what I presumed we're talking about. If your speed is 0 mpt, and increase that velocity by 10 mpt, then your speed is 10mpt.  Now, "realistically", the drone didn't go from 0 to 10 instantaneously, which is what'd be necessary for the drone to actually cover 10 meters when beginning the turn at a dead stop.  But, since the move action doesn't worry about that for pedestrians, why go to the headache of simulating it for a drone's move action when it's moving amongst pedestrians?  So much easier to play it as "speed X = X meters of movement allowance on this move action".

That stuff you're talking about is an approximation of gaussian mathematics governing total distance covered, which yes is rather complicated for a roleplaying game.   And, if you opt to use the chase rules from Double Clutch, no longer used for vehicle scale scenes/chases.

And as for "well how much more than 'safe' can you accel/decell, then?".  If you haven't accepted that SR6 not only embraces but relies on GM discretion, I don't know what to say

Edit: I also grant that this rationale isn't exactly spelled out in the CRB, nor did we add it via errata... but it IS a topic that we hope to officially publish as a FAQ for the CRB.  Sometime down the pike

[MercilessMing]

I mean they sent out the mail that it was deliberate? "Customers who previously purchased Shadowrun, Sixth World will be upgraded to the City Edition: Seattle PDF at no charge."

My email was much less verbose.  Here is the entire message:

Hello,

Shadowrun: Sixth World Core Rulebook - PDF has been updated.

visit:
(Download hyperlink)
to access your updated content

Thank You,
Catalyst Game Labs Store

[Typhus]

If you haven't accepted that SR6 not only embraces but relies on GM discretion, I don't know what to say.

Heh. 

So, "GM Discretion" is another way to say I just won more work.  Also, new GMs need some kind of guidance.  Having no guidelines at all for some things is not a point of appeal.  I always have discretion if I don't like the guidance or need to make an exception. 

Nor is the CRB consistent with this philosophy, considering the specificity of some rules like acceleration, gas concentrations and barrier breaching.  Those are examples of areas I'd rather see more handwavium as a baseline.  There's a sweet spot between no guidance at all and a baseline I can play around with easily.  Some parts of SR6e have that, others not at all.  Consistency is what I'm feeling the absence of.  But as you say, that's well into rewrite territory.

But no need to address that.  The new rules themselves all look good.  The changes hit that sweet spot for me.  I think Combat overall is as good as its going to get, and the other changes all seem positive.  The archetypes are mostly legit now.  The rules I dislike are fringe cases that don't come up often, and now I have workarounds for the vehicle rule issues.  I don't know if I'd ever run it, but I'd play it if invited to a game, and overall it's definitely at it's best point yet.

Thanks again for the discussion.

[Michael Chandra]

I mean they sent out the mail that it was deliberate? "Customers who previously purchased Shadowrun, Sixth World will be upgraded to the City Edition: Seattle PDF at no charge."

My email was much less verbose.  Here is the entire message:

Hello,

Shadowrun: Sixth World Core Rulebook - PDF has been updated.

visit:
(Download hyperlink)
to access your updated content

Thank You,
Catalyst Game Labs Store

Ah, so you got an update from drivethrurpg. I got the mail from CGL, and quoted a relevant part from it.

[MercilessMing]

I mean they sent out the mail that it was deliberate? "Customers who previously purchased Shadowrun, Sixth World will be upgraded to the City Edition: Seattle PDF at no charge."

My email was much less verbose.  Here is the entire message:

Hello,

Shadowrun: Sixth World Core Rulebook - PDF has been updated.

visit:
(Download hyperlink)
to access your updated content

Thank You,
Catalyst Game Labs Store

Ah, so you got an update from drivethrurpg. I got the mail from CGL, and quoted a relevant part from it.

you must have that backwards?  I got an update from Catalyst obviously because my email was signed by the catalyst game labs store. W/e

[Michael Chandra]

I mean they sent out the mail that it was deliberate? "Customers who previously purchased Shadowrun, Sixth World will be upgraded to the City Edition: Seattle PDF at no charge."

My email was much less verbose.  Here is the entire message:

Hello,

Shadowrun: Sixth World Core Rulebook - PDF has been updated.

visit:
(Download hyperlink)
to access your updated content

Thank You,
Catalyst Game Labs Store

Ah, so you got an update from drivethrurpg. I got the mail from CGL, and quoted a relevant part from it.

you must have that backwards?  I got an update from Catalyst obviously because my email was signed by the catalyst game labs store. W/e

I got the newsletter.