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Drones and Chameleon Coating

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MightyMickey88

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« on: <02-21-18/1603:29> »
I'm new to Shadowrun and have seen multiple people (on reddit and such) suggesting to use Chameleon Coating with Drones. But I only see a listing for Chameleon Coating on Vehicles in Rigger 5.0. Are drones able to use Vehicle Mods and if so do they use the Vehicle rules for upgrading in addition to the drone rules?

Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #1 on: <02-21-18/1609:44> »
Actually the rules consider vehicles to be a big sort of drone, so the answer is yes.  Vehicles can use drone mods :D
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.

MightyMickey88

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« Reply #2 on: <02-21-18/1714:01> »
I can't see anything that says drones and vehicles are the same thing. Mainly due to the fact that anytime a vehicle is referenced, there is text saying it applies to drones too. Also, Drones use Mod Points listed in the Drones chapter and vehicles get Mod slots listed in the vehicle upgrade chapter. Overlapping abilities have different costs for instance a weapon mount in Vehicle Slots is much less than a weapon mount in Drone Mods. Is there something in the text that says a drone has access to both Drone Mods and Vehicle mods?

firebug

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« Reply #3 on: <02-21-18/1733:41> »
The thing is that technically the whole drone-specific-mods chapter is optional rules--
Quote from: Drone Modification, page 122
These rules provide detailed options for drones and can be used as an optional rules system for adding modifications to them. Players who do not want to use a separate system can use the rules provided in the Building the Perfect Beast chapter (p. 150).

If you do use the optional rules, you can assume that they only apply over the normal vehicle modification rules where they are explicitly stated to be different--  So, the number of mod points, the rules for improving attributes, and the few physical modifications like weapon mounts.

With that in mind, the Chameleon Coating mod just uses 2 of the drone's universal mod slots.

Also, even though they are "optional", some of the drones in Rigger 5.0 are written making use of those rules, and so don't make sense if you don't use them.
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Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #4 on: <02-21-18/1735:06> »
Quote from: SR5 pg 269
Drones are unmanned vehicles intended to be used remotely
by riggers or run autonomously. Of course, any
vehicle or other machine with a rigger interface can be
run remotely by riggers or autonomously, but drones
tend to be cheaper, more specialized to their function,
and don’t need to pay for parking. Still, the rules for
drones apply to any remotely controlled or rigged device,
but between us chummers let’s just say “drone”
because it’s shorter.
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.