Hey all, new to the neighborhood and been reading up on some of the topics here, so hope I'm not interrupting anything.
I'm kind of interested in hearing it from an official source, and agree it's an interesting question.
The only thing that the core covers anything like it is Medkits. If the "(talkative) doctor expert system" that if needed "can operate itself with a dice pool of Medkit RatingX2 with a limit equal to its rating" isn't a drone of some sort, I'm not sure what is.
Though when assisting a character, unlike another human assisting in a teamwork test, it doesn't add dice to the player making the roll, only the limit. It's strictly assisting.
So, can that logic be extended to other activities? Like a drone 'lighting up' a target as mentioned earlier? Without any official source saying otherwise, as a GM, I'd probably allow it, but like the Medkit it wouldn't add more dice rather than just raise the limit based on its roll (there's nothing intuitive or constructive the drone is adding, merely providing a service similar to a Medkit). Still, in this case, it wouldn't make a gun more accurate, only making it easier for the one shooting, so this would only really help if the gun's accuracy is higher than the character's limit in that scenario if my presumption is correct.
Of course, a Drone's ability to 'assist' in that way would be situational, and limited to what it is programmed to do, and the creativity of the Rigger or one telling the drone what they wanted from it.
If, for whatever reason, the drone is programmed to lockpick for example, the dogbrain would only try to pick the lock itself with whatever tools were built into it- it wouldn't be able to assist the character (unless the character needed a lockpick tool and tore it off the drone maybe?
). I kind of see drone programs as akin to Skillwires (in that it controls the 'muscle memory' of the user). The drone 'understands' how to pick the lock, but can not explain it, only attempt it.
Now, if it were programmed like I'm presuming a Medkit is, in that it is programmed specifically to assist in such actions, if you had a programmer give it a knowledgesoft on "how to Lockpick" that would probably work like a Medkit. Does that make any sense?
...Now that I'm thinking of it... I'm kind of curious if physical Skillwired characters can (or should be able to) assist in teamwork tests of that type if they're relying on Skillwires... but that might be a whole new can of worms...
Anyway, that's my 2 nuyen on it.
Crunch~