Unorthodox indeed
All right, let's start at the top.
The low REA, AGI and CHA is intentional as I don't ever plan on leaving the vehicle; if that happens, my character is pretty much royally screwed. His dice pool for maneuvering the drones and the car is actually 16 (14 if Running Silent), with a -3 to all thresholds due to the rating of the VCR; barring the most insane stuns on rocky mountain roads that are covered in ice, netting one or two hits should be easy peasy, even with a few modifiers. This is kind of why I don't see the need for a high REA on a rigger with decent gear; the mechanical advantages the rules provide to riggers pretty much ensure that all you'll ever need is 1, maybe 2 hits, thus negating the need for high stats, and in this case the low stats reflect the isolated life the character has lived in various labs and university study halls.
I foresee sneaking being difficult in an Ares Roadmaster no matter what, so I'm only actively using Sneaking when Jumped In through the Fly-Spy drones, which are small enough to (hopefully) warrant some additional negative dice pool modifiers to even be spotted; either a -3 for the size of the object or an addition to the sneak test (which I'll have 11 dice for, when Running Silently obviously), with additional negative modifiers for either not being in the immediate vicinity and/or being far away and/or visibility or light. I plan on parking these drones near light sources so perceivers get glare modifiers when looking in the direction of the drone, or merely flying them 40m up in the air (hoping the GM sees spotting an insect shaped object at that distance as a difficult task indeed).
I'm not sure what I would achieve by going to a R2 Control Rig, to be honest; I'll lose out on lowering a threshold (taking the most extreme example in the book (the scene from The Transporter where he unhooks a bomb from underneath the car by jumping the car through the air, rolling it 360 degrees on it's own axis, and detaching the bomb on a crane hook) from a 4 to a 1. A Rating 2 Control Rig would make this test a 2, requiring an effective dice pool modifier of +5 (4 for the extra 1 hit, and 1 for the loss of 1 dice from the VCR). To achieve this equivalent increase, I'd have to get REA +5, which is only achievable by getting Wired Reflexes 1 and Reaction Enhancers 3, putting me out Essence I don't have, and/or through lowering the other mental skills. As a rigger, however, you need Willpower to resist biofeedback damage, Intuition for VR initiative, and Logic for flavour skills (like Engineering) and EWAR.
If the time comes where I'd HAVE to get out of my vehicle (and between the vehicle itself with 9 to 36 damage when Ramming, I don't see why I would), I'd be forced to spend all my time completely out of sight, and even then I'm not 100% safe. As such, I'm certainly a liability here; talking is most assuredly not something I'd be doing at all, being in full Ragdoll VR mode in the back of my car for 99% of the time in-game
The drones and vehicles all come with sensor arrays (equal to the Sensor rating of the vehicle + the rating of your VCR/RCC, which in my case is 6 or higher); as such, I will rarely, if ever, need to perceive anything through my meat eyes. If I do, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Between the two Fly-Spy drones, the two Roto-Drones, and the Ares Roadmaster, I honestly can't think of any situation where I'd want to substitute perception over EWAR.
As it stands, the character concept is more of a remote drone pilot than anything else; he has extremely solid dice pools when perceiving with EWAR through sensor arrays, when firing vehicle weapons with Gunnery, when maneuvering vehicles (due to the RCC and VCR), a high initative (11+4d6), an excellent memory (useful for when I as a player inevitably forget some important detail), resists Matrix attacks and biofeedback damage decently, and an ability to be stealthy from afar. The crowning achievement of the character, as I see it, is his ability to take on targets from beyond the range of most weapons; at 600+m out and with a single initiative pass of two take Take Aim actions, I'm rolling 19 dice with a silenced Crockett EBR loaded with APDS.
This all comes at a cost; in close quarters combat I'm nearly useless, because a roto-drone will go down like papermache, unless the GM allows movement to take place before and after a shot, but my abilities are more stealthy than confrontational. Instead of being forced into combat, I can survey the scene up ahead and map out targets for the other players, potentially redirecting them out of harms way all together, or at the very least giving the hacker something to trace so he can overlay the AR feeds of the other characters with positions of the opponents. Sadly, there's no tacnets yet, but I'm hoping the GM will take the usefulness of knowing the opponents position ahead of time into the equation when considering things like ambushes and the like.
I notice that your character has an agent and the track program; that's a great call, and I'll steal that in-game for when the decker is busy doing other stuff.
