[Herr Brackhaus]

Soooo, are we moving this forward or what?

Last I checked, we've got the following initiative orders:
25: Marcus, attacking the ganger with the biggest gun in melee combat
21: 'Dee, taking aim
14: 'Dum, taking aim
12: Jenny, commanding drones (?)
11: Jonas, Matrix Perception Test (?)
6: Zen, casting Force 5 Stunball centered on the Shaman
X: Shaman, casting Fireball
Y: Thug 1, ?
Z: Thug 2, ?

Question on Stunball for people in general; as a Direct spell that targets the aura of people in an area, does the caster get to choose which targets are affected?

I'm asking because it could obviously be relevant if Marcus is in the area of effect. Speaking of which, in case it becomes relevant:
Willpower 4: 4d6t5 0 [3, 2, 4, 3]
Pain Editors are your friend

[Irn0rchid]

Jenny's 12 is correct. 2 simples to send different commands to 2 drones.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Cool, thanks Irn0Rchid. Raiderjoseph, you're up!

[Zweiblumen]

@HB: Yeah, I've been trying to see if there's anything going on matrix-wise.  Looking for a decker or a rigger, seeing if they've got smart guns or are using comms to talk (probably not).  Anything I can do to disrupt that.  HT is on the wrong drugs to be shooting.  He can change that pretty quickly, but for right now, he's high on Psyche.  Matrix overwatch is his first reaction.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Irn0rchid
Couldn't you just use the Free Action "Speak/Text/Transmit Phrase" to command your drones? You already told them to take aim before combat, so a free action with a simple "Fire!" should suffice, no?

That does bring up the issue of subordinates (drones, spirits, etc) acting at higher initiative than the controlling character. In this case it's fine because they've already been told to take aim, but what if you hadn't had time to do that before combat?

Would they just hang around with a held action until your initiative step (not losing initiative, mind you, just waiting until you've had time to go)?

[Irn0rchid]

Welcome to the joys of the vague rigger rules. "Send Message" is a simple action and I try to err on the side of caution, especially since I didn't want to just say "Fire" because I needed to specify the called shot for one and tell both to keep shooting till the ganger is down (because the drones get more total passes than Jenny does). It's not explicitly specified, but to me, a drone that hasn't been told what to do performs an implicit Delay Action until ordered.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Yeah, those are all fair points. Cool, thanks for elaborating!