[lazaerov]

How does drone combat work with a TM?
How do Command and Gunnery work together?

Should I be jumping in, or just issuing commands? (Assuming I have 0 pilot skills myself), Command 6, Gunnery 4

Edit: This is SR4

[Dinendae]

My understanding is that TMs are currently lacking in the Rigger department, and you might wish to wait until the Matrix book releases to play one. At least that seems to be the general advice about them on the forums.

[Xenon]

My understanding is that TMs are currently lacking in the Rigger department, and you might wish to wait until the Matrix book releases to play one. At least that seems to be the general advice about them on the forums.

This is a SR4 question.

[Csjarrat]

If you have no piloting skills, I wouldn't advise jumping in or remote controlling. You'll need good autosofts and a decent pilot rating on the drone, as it'll be doing the hard yards

[lazaerov]

What is Command and Gunnery for then, if not RC?  I get the "don't jump in" part because that changes to your pilot skills.

Also, when you do Command + Gunnery to fire in a drone, does it take your full Gunnery (rating + AGI) or just the Gunnery rating?

[Csjarrat]

command and gunnery is fine if you're shooting, but if you have no pilot air skills say; then bad things happen when you try to move.

[lazaerov]

So is the logical thing (if I have no skills) to use a machine sprite with a pilot (appropriate craft) to pilot it while I shoot?

I just want to make sure I've got it because my GM isn't overly familiar with that aspect of the game, so it's a learning experience for all of us.

[lazaerov]

Or would I issue a command for it to "move to x" and it move by itself to that location?  Does the maneuver autosoft I have in the drone count for anything?

[Csjarrat]

"Send message" matrix action is how you command a drone to do something. its pilot will do the hard yards, but it would need the maneuver autosoft to give it a dicepool worth a damn.
iirc its pilot + autosoft for a max dicepool of 9 (until pilot upgrades come out in a future book)

[lazaerov]

Got it.  That makes sense.

Thanks for the info.

[Michael Chandra]

"Send message" matrix action is how you command a drone to do something. its pilot will do the hard yards, but it would need the maneuver autosoft to give it a dicepool worth a damn.
iirc its pilot + autosoft for a max dicepool of 9 (until pilot upgrades come out in a future book)

That's SR5 mechanics, this is an SR4 topic. In SR4, Autosofts are limited by the Drone's System, which is limited by its Response, and both start at the Device Rating of the Drone iirc. It's far more expensive to upgrade past 6 dice in SR4.

[Csjarrat]

"Send message" matrix action is how you command a drone to do something. its pilot will do the hard yards, but it would need the maneuver autosoft to give it a dicepool worth a damn.
iirc its pilot + autosoft for a max dicepool of 9 (until pilot upgrades come out in a future book)

That's SR5 mechanics, this is an SR4 topic. In SR4, Autosofts are limited by the Drone's System, which is limited by its Response, and both start at the Device Rating of the Drone iirc. It's far more expensive to upgrade past 6 dice in SR4.

ah, sorry, keep missing that!
yep, michael's post is correct; drones with big dicepools are hard to pull off in SR4 if you're just using it's pilot to do the thinking.

[lazaerov]

So, it seems for piloting in situations where it needs to be piloted in an awesome manner, the solution really is to just use a Machine Sprite with the appropriate autosoft for piloting to do its maneuvering, assuming it has enough tasks left to do so.

Does it make sense for me to bother getting Echos to boost jumping in, or would I just be better off RCing things?  It feels almost like a waste if I'm not putting points into piloting.  Should I put points into piloting?

My main focus is hacking, and rigging is just a secondary thing to help the party, so I'm not completely useless in combat situations.  I'm just trying to figure out the best way to optimize for drone combat, as I've got some karma to spend, and want to round out that aspect of the character.

Would I be better off just trying to hook up a bunch of disposable drones and just using numbers in fights, focusing mainly on hacking (I *think* this is doable somehow?)?  I guess the problem is that I'm super fascinated by the TM, but the SR4 book seems so vague to me on certain areas.

What I was thinking of doing is just going full VR, and RCing drones with threaded Command + Gunnery.  RC shooting being a complex action, it seems I could really only shoot with 3 drones per Turn with this method (one per IP).  My system is 5, so I can have 10 active subscriptions, but it feels like a waste if I can only RC shoot 3 of them per Turn.  For the other 7, assuming I could afford them, would I just Issue Command to them and they would dogbrain attack (with their crappy dice pools) while I RC the other 3 (with much better dice pools)?

Is there a better book to read in the 4th ed list that might help me try to get a better grasp on this aspect of TMs?

Hacking seems relatively straight forward, but the rigging side of TMs seem to have a lack of explanation in the SR4 core book.   It feels like there are *some* rigger things that overlap, but then other things that don't really mesh.