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Paladin Drone: Misprint? Too Good to be True? Or Works as Intended?

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Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« on: <04-07-18/2340:06> »
Reference:  Paladin Drone.  Rigger 5 pg 142.  Relevant points: 5,000 =Y= price tag and its staggering 18 armor value.

Points of comparison: Steel Lynx Combat Drone SR5 466. 25,000 =Y= price tag for less armor, and the Ares KN-Y series unmanned tanks that all cost over 200,000 =Y= and still only have 18 armor (R5 143-144)


So the Steel Lynx has 1 more body than the Paladin, and the Paladin has crap for sensors.  Still, the Paladin costs a fraction of the Steel Lynx even after slapping on a weapons mount and upgrading the sensors.. and that correlates to lower per-CM box repair costs than the Steel Lynx that still mounts less armor.

The Ares unmanned tanks come with all kinds of bells and whistles (arguably including weapons themselves included in the price tag, going by the fluff description if not the actual stat block) but they still essentially have a Steel Lynx's statline.  If 25,000 =Y= is crazy to pay when you coulda had a more survivable battle drone platform for 5,000 =Y=... it's sheer stupidity to pay over 200,000 =Y=.

So maybe there's some digits missing on the Paladin's price tag?  Or one too many digits in its armor value?  Thoughts?
« Last Edit: <04-07-18/2343:39> by Stainless Steel Devil Rat »
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Marcus

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« Reply #1 on: <04-08-18/0358:13> »
Given that it's clearly intended to be defensive, and that the real source of that armor is intended to be the arms coming up to deflect the bullets. It's seems that its not intended to be weaponized as such it's defensive drone, that can assist its considerably more vulnerable siblings. As a GM, I would make sure not to allow it to be armed in any meaningful way, and then i think it's basically working as intended. 
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Jack_Spade

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« Reply #2 on: <04-08-18/0601:15> »
The Paladin has quite a lot of drawbacks compared to the Lynx:
1) There is practically no room for modifications. You need to reduce speed by one to even be able to mount a basic pistol
2) The drone is large, making transporting it a pita
3) That much armor doesn't mean much if you encounter electric weapons. One good taser shot will take it out pretty quickly

The Lynx has the option to get it's armor up to 18 with little trouble and still has 5 mod points left.
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firebug

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« Reply #3 on: <04-08-18/0653:05> »
Yeah, it's meant to be basically moving cover and little else.  The only way you could reasonably use it offensively would be to drive it around at top speed crashing into people (which would do kind of low damage) and banking on it taking no damage in return.  Not very threatening.  The fact is, it can only ever get 1 mod point through downgrades and so is very difficult to make into anything more than basically a fridge on tracks.
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Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #4 on: <04-08-18/1031:15> »
Thanks for the replies.  However, I think I must be missing something as while the answers are basically unanimous... they appear to simply be wrong as far as I understand the rules regarding drones and modifying drones.  So presuming it's me who's wrong, please bear with me as I speak out loud to explain why I think what I think so that any misconceptions I have can be identified:

The Paladin has as many modification slots as any other drone: one mod slot per point of body in each of the six modification categories (R5 pg 151).  Sure the Paladin has 5 body vs the Steel Lynx's 6, but 5 slots per category is still plenty.  That advantage in Body in practical terms is just an extra soak die.  (an advantage more than made up for in the higher baseline armor on the Paladin)

So you don't have to downgrade anything to munch out a Paladin... you've got oodles of capacity to do that out of the box.  Slap on a Heavy Size weapon Mount (R5 pg 163: cheaper and lower Avail rating than a core Heavy Weapon mount for vehicles), give it the Flexible Flexibility mod and it's nearly as good as a turreted mount, and you're able to slap anything from a pistol to an assault cannon on your Paladin.  Yeah you've more than doubled the cost of the Paladin (+6000 for that weapon mount) whereas the Steel Lynx came with a free, turreted heavy weapon mount... but you're still under 1/2 the cost of a Steel Lynx with better survivability to boot.  Still ahead of the game.

Tack on some sensor enhancements if you intend on the drone being relevant when you're not jumped in (along with maybe a pilot upgrade, which the Steel Lynx would also need anyway as they start with the same pilot rating) and those come out of a modification budget unaffected by the presence or lack of a weapon mount.

@ Size logistics: True apples to apples comparison.  If you could get the Large Steel Lynx there, you could have instead gotten the Large Paladin there.

@ vulnerability to electrical elemental damage:  Again so is every drone.  It's in the Rigger's interest to keep the drones' total cost down as much as possible so repair costs are commensurately lower.  In SRM play it costs 500 =y= per CM box to repair an unmodified Steel Lynx.. 220 =Y= per CM box on a Paladin that's already more than doubled it's cost by adding the weapon mount I described.

@ being nothing but mobile cover:  I don't know if the Paladin is being confused with the Matilda, but it'd be easy to do.  The Matilda is a refridgerator sized mobile cover-granter.  With less than half the armor for more than 3 times the price.  AND it suffers a half-armor penalty when it's got its shields out protecting is principal, which of course the Paladin doesn't suffer.  The Paladin's combination of stats doesn't just make the Steel Lynx look obsolete... why ever take a Matilda?

Sure, my SRM rigger uses a Paladin as his beatstick drone, but I feel dirty doing it.  I'm absolutely not invested in being right... I'm hoping I'm wrong!  It feels like there's got to be something wrong on the rules balance, but I'm not seeing it?
« Last Edit: <04-08-18/1049:56> by Stainless Steel Devil Rat »
RPG mechanics exist to give structure and consistency to the game world, true, but at the end of the day, you’re fighting dragons with algebra and random number generators.

Jack_Spade

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« Reply #5 on: <04-08-18/1457:27> »
You are mixing up the drone modding rules with the vehicle modding rules. Technically that is permitted as the drone modding rules are the optional ones. But all drones in the Rigger 5 book are using the drone modding rules as basis, so it can only lead to confusion if you than turn back to the vehicle modding rules.

As you can see in the stat block, the Paladin has Body 5(0) which means that all its mod slots are used up. In contrast the Lynx has 6 without parentheses, so it has all its mod slots open and also a heavy weapon mount.

@Size argument: This is an argument mainly in contrast to other drones. I wouldn't recommend the Lynx for anything but perimeter control. Anthro drones are much better suited for assault work: They can wear normal Armor, have more health boxes and don't need weapon mounts to wield weapons thanks to their articulated arms.

@Electric damage: Again, Steel Lynx isn't really the drone I'd recommend. Armor in general isn't that relevant on drones, since they are easily one shotted unless they are sporting a tremendous amount of armor (like an anthro drone with a FBA). A flying drone with a sniper rifle is usually out of range for the opposition and therefore untouchable.

@Mobile Cover: Paladin and Mathilda feature similar abilities and roles. They are made for police and military work, not for stealthy runners.

If you really want great value in your assault drone, get a Sparring Drone from HT with some spare armor.
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Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #6 on: <04-08-18/1507:59> »
As you can see in the stat block, the Paladin has Body 5(0) which means that all its mod slots are used up. In contrast the Lynx has 6 without parentheses, so it has all its mod slots open and also a heavy weapon mount.

Aaaah.  I knew there had to be something, and this appears to be it.  Thank you!  I had indeed not realized there was an entirely separate set of modding rules for drones.  Or that per the SRM FAQ for SRM purposes those are not considered "Optional".  Heh.  Time to audit my own Rigger.
« Last Edit: <04-08-18/1513:02> by Stainless Steel Devil Rat »
RPG mechanics exist to give structure and consistency to the game world, true, but at the end of the day, you’re fighting dragons with algebra and random number generators.

firebug

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« Reply #7 on: <04-09-18/0045:28> »
Yeah, even though the book calls them optional, a lot of the drones in the rest of the book make use of those optional rules, so they'd have eliminated like 30% of the drones if they let the rules stay optional.
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