Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Character creation and critique => Topic started by: GA_Wolf on <08-06-11/1033:26>
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Ok, so I have the starting Technomancer in another thread. Still really interested in that too. Here's a Technomancer focused on Droning. Worked from my other Technomancer and looking at this post: http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=4352.msg62350#msg62350
Not sure what drones to buy. The tool I have doesn't have the drones in it mentioned in the post, and I don't have the referenced book either, just the core.
ATTRIBUTES Walk/Run 10 25
Body: 4 Charisma: 4 EDGE: 2
Agility: 1 Intuition: 5 Phys Init 7
Reaction: 2 Logic: 5 Passes 1
Strength: 3 Willpower: 4 Resonance: 5
ACTIVE SKILLS
Hacking 4
Software 4
Gunnery 6
Infiltration 3
Perception 3
Tasking (Group) 4
Electronic Warfare 1
Pilot Aircraft 1
Pilot Ground Craft 1
Data Search 1
Computer 1
KNOWLEDGE SKILLS
Procedure (Matrix Security) 4
Matrix Theory 3
Operating Systems 5
Computer Theory 3
Matrix Games 4
Criminal (Seattle Gangs) 3
Street Drugs 2
QUALITIES
Low-Light Vision
Codeslinger 10
Addiction (Moderate) -10
Media Junkie (Mild) -5
Prejudiced (Common, Biased) -10
Addiction (Moderate) -10
FORMS Resonance: 5
Forms:
Analyze (Computer) 5
Browse (Data Search) 3
Command (misc.) 5
Armor 3
Defuse (Hacking) 5
Exploit (Hacking) 5
Spoof (Hacking) 5
Stealth 5
Track (Computer) 3
CONTACTS
Mechanic (Loy. 3 Con. 2)
Fixer (Loy. 2 Con. 2)
GEAR, ETC???
Armor?
Vehicle?
Which drones?
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By "just the core" do you mean just SR4A, or just SR4A plus Unwired? You really need Unwired to play a technomancer. I'm assuming you do have Unwired and just don't have more obscure stuff like This Old Drone.
You are an orc, right? I can't see it listed but your stats match up and you seem to have Low-light Vision.
What stream are you? If you want to dronomance, you should definitely pick an Intuition stream with Machine Sprites.
2 Reaction vs. 1 Reaction isn't actually going to help you too much; I'd get something else instead.
4 Charisma is fine; you're getting something (more registered sprites) for it. You could go down to 3 and be alright, but it's something that is nice to have.
You really don't want 5 logic. It does little to nothing for you, and you don't need 10 complex forms. You especially don't want to be hardcapping it! I suggest 3.
You really don't want 4 willpower. Even willpower makes Baby Dunkelzahn cry; go down to 3 (you round UP for your stun boxes).
You really, really want Resonance 6. It determines a huge amount of what you do and will save you karma in the long run because of how buying up CFs works.
Infiltration and Perception 3 is karma-inefficient; I'd suggest going 2 and 4, or scraping up 8 more bp for 4 and 4.
Don't buy the Tasking group, because Decompiling is useless. Buy Compiling and Registering separately.
You need to actually buy the Technomancer quality.
Codeslinger is for Control Device, right?
You have waaaaaay too many complex forms. You don't want to have some CFs at 3, either; you want your CFs at 6 because of how buying new ones works. Starting with a 6 and buying a second one to 3 is 6 karma. Starting with two 3s and buying one of them up to a 6 is 15 karma. Also, in general, Technos are good because of their ability to get really high ratings on a few complex forms and being able to thread up "good enough" on everything else.
Cut Browse, Armor, Defuse, and Track. You could take just the 5 remaining CFs at 6. Or you could pick up Disarm. For Cybercombat, you are best off having sprites fight for you rather than doing it yourself; you are simply never going to be good at cybercombat because you are fighting people who just reboot when they "die," whereas you die in real life. If you are really worried about it, the Shield CF is a better investment than Armor.
Gear-wise, what books, exactly, do you have access to? You mentioned you're using a tool - does it have the Arsenal drones and mods in it? SR4A alone is missing a lot of stuff to make rigging functional.
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Umaro has already covered a lot of it, so just the couple of extra remarks
- Whatever you do, put the full 200 BP intro attributes. You never get them as cheap as during chargen
- Multiple Physical stats on 1 mean you are a cripple. Some GMs let this slip, but on my table such low attributes will shoot the player in the foot at some point
- Willpower is a clear case of "depends", if you plan to spend some time jumped in the extra point is very well worth it
- Logic is your soak stat for matrix damage and used for most technical skills, I recommend not dropping it below 4.
- Speaking of technical skills, you might want a couple of points in Hardware and Build/Repair skills, unless you want to subcontract each and every sensor upgrade on a drone ;)
- My standard drones
-- Doberman with White Knight LMG, Armor, and Gecko Tips for combat
-- Fly-Spy with Rating 6 camera, microphone, and radio signal scanner for scouting
-- Stormcloud for aerial overwatch
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So, Sengir makes a good point about attributes at 1. I did recommend Reaction 1 rather than 2 but some GMs will shaft you for this and you should probably just ask your GM.
I also agree about attributes by and large, but Technos tend to be really, REALLY tight on BPs so you may not be able to. A big thing, though, is that as a techno you will have nothing to spend money you earn on BUT drones and vehicles (aside from minor stuff), so money is the place to skimp at chargen.
Jumping in is bad and you don't want to. It is especially bad as a Technomancer.
Logic is the sort of thing that would be cool to have a lot of, but not as cool as other stuff. 3 is my cutoff. You CAN make a logic-based techno, but you can't afford to be a logic-based techno and also be a good rigger. Similarly, you just can't really afford technical skills; the Mechanic contact is a good plan.*
*If you want technical skills, Biowire gives you a way to learn them down the road. But you're not going to be able to start with not-sucky technical skills without shooting yourself in the foot. This is true in general of "it might be nice to have sometimes" skills - wait until you can Biowire it.
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Jumping in is bad and you don't want to. It is especially bad as a Technomancer.
Normally, using Command is no better than jumping in, just slower. With plenty of munchkinism, a Command-Mancer can boost his dice pools to crazy heights, but that's a clear case of "win more"
And remember, what you can do with Command, an NPC can do with Spoof. A single spoofed ifconfig wl0 down and your precious drone is a fancy paperweight ;)
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I'm not sure "have command 6 and then use Threading and Assist Operation" really counts as "Munchkinism." Jumping In is going to leave you with a significantly smaller dice pool, and it also leaves you with the big problem that you have to upgrade the Sensor and Response of your drones to not suck. A Command rigger can easily get good use out of cheap drones.
There are of course times when jumping in is worth it, but it should be a trick you do on occasion, not what you're built around.
Spoofing is a problem for sure, but there's stuff you can do to defend against it:
1) Set your drones to refuse all commands from anyone without an Admin account. This might be a shitty idea with modern computer systems, but in the Grim Darkness of the future the best practice is to always run in admin and not allow anything else.
2) Upgrade your drone's Pilot and Firewall to 6. Obviously only worth it on expensive drones.
3) Use cheap drones. If one gets spoofed to shut down or something, command a different one. Slap an AK-97 on a Doberman or a Ford-LEBD-1 and a good command rigger can be plenty deadly with it.
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UmaroIV, I think he's referring to the fact that command is a simple action for the jumped in rigger (SR4A 229) but complex by remote control (SR4A 245). Thus "faster".
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I'm not sure "have command 6 and then use Threading and Assist Operation" really counts as "Munchkinism."
The "munchkinism" was aimed at the aim of boosting a more than sufficient dice pool rather than the methods. Although I certainly disapprove your interpretation of endless re-threading ;)
Jumping In is going to leave you with a significantly smaller dice pool, and it also leaves you with the big problem that you have to upgrade the Sensor and Response of your drones to not suck.
I see that as an advantage, one can literally buy extra dice at the price of a few cheap sensors and a Response chip.
1) Set your drones to refuse all commands from anyone without an Admin account. This might be a shitty idea with modern computer systems, but in the Grim Darkness of the future the best practice is to always run in admin and not allow anything else.
2) Upgrade your drone's Pilot and Firewall to 6. Obviously only worth it on expensive drones.
The problem is that the drone's DP is pretty much limited to 12, even counting the -6 dice for admin commands a hacker can easily beat that. Should he fail, he can simply try again, since it is explicitly stated that a failed Spoof test does not raise an alarm. Spoofing is a major problem for every rigger, so being safe from that is a huge boon.
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Even without Infinity Threading, you'll have way more dice as a Command rigger than a Jumped In rigger.
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I'm not much of an expert on Drones, so someone correct me if wrong, but isn't Electronic Warfare fairly important in case they start trying to cut the signal - or is that only ordinary riggers?
The low physical stats, I will echo, are asking for it. It's still quite possibly worth it, thats your call. But I know that as a GM I'd sure as hell target them at some point too.
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You need a little EW, but you can afford to not be ultra-awesome with it because of the way ECCM works; you do, however, want to own a Satellite Link.
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With only an EW of 1 (and a threaded Scan CF), how do you ever get enough successes to hit the threshold of 4 to detect hidden nodes? Sniffing seems like it would also be difficult with such a low EW (also assuming a threaded Sniffer CF).
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Several types of sprites can find hidden nodes for you pretty easily. Low EW and no Scan means that you can't find hidden nodes fast, and it would be nice to be able to find them fast, but it's not vital. It's also cheaper to buy up Scan and EW than it is to start with medium-ish ranks in everything because of the way CF costs scale.
The other thing is that there's not a harsh penalty for failing either of these things and having to try again, it's just a delay.
Keep in mind, I'm not saying EW is a waste of points in the same way that, say, Decompiling is; I'm just saying it's something you can survive with having at a 1. It would be nice to have more, certainly.
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Even without Infinity Threading, you'll have way more dice as a Command rigger than a Jumped In rigger.
See, that's why I'm calling munchkin: You don't even bother to address my claim that both build can reach plenty enough dice, but merely insist that your pool is bigger.
Both jump-in and Command riggers can easily start with 20 dice right out of chargen and reach 30-something with a bit of Karma and Nuyen. Once you have reached that point, what do another five dice give you? In those few cases where they are needed I'll simply use Edge, that's what it's for.
Just for reference, the gunnery pool of a jumped-in rigger
Response 6
Gunnery 6
Specialization 2
Hot Sim 2
Smartlink 2
R5 Machine Sprite running Diagnostics ~3
That's already 21 dice with hardly anything the player needs to bend over backwards for. Not sensational, but neither something that's "bad and you don't want to"
Further improvements
Control Rig 2 (fill the remaining Essence with other useful stuff, Damage Compensators are nice for example)
Max out Sprite assistance, another 3
Immersion Echo 2
Active targeting (roll a Perception test vs. target's Agility, add hits to dice pool)
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Sengir? Sprites and echoes are technomancer only.
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Even without Infinity Threading, you'll have way more dice as a Command rigger than a Jumped In rigger.
See, that's why I'm calling munchkin: You don't even bother to address my claim that both build can reach plenty enough dice, but merely insist that your pool is bigger.
Both jump-in and Command riggers can easily start with 20 dice right out of chargen and reach 30-something with a bit of Karma and Nuyen. Once you have reached that point, what do another five dice give you? In those few cases where they are needed I'll simply use Edge, that's what it's for.
Just for reference, the gunnery pool of a jumped-in rigger
Response 6
Gunnery 6
Specialization 2
Hot Sim 2
Smartlink 2
R5 Machine Sprite running Diagnostics ~3
That's already 21 dice with hardly anything the player needs to bend over backwards for. Not sensational, but neither something that's "bad and you don't want to"
Further improvements
Control Rig 2 (fill the remaining Essence with other useful stuff, Damage Compensators are nice for example)
Max out Sprite assistance, another 3
Immersion Echo 2
Active targeting (roll a Perception test vs. target's Agility, add hits to dice pool)
Response 6 is costly. You can't start with it without Restricted gear, and it adds 8000Y per Drone to your costs. Ouch!
Control Rig 2 eats essence and you're a Technomancer.
Active Targeting is silly. Spend a simple action to get net hits to your attack test? Just shoot them with a Wide Burst, and then they get a penalty to their next defense check for being wounded.
Now, let's compare a Command technomancer rigger. We're not using Infinity Threading but we are going to use Threading.
Command 6
Gunnery 6
Specialization 2
Hot Sim 2 (Control Device is a matrix action)
Smartlink 2
R5 Machine Sprite running Diagnostics ~3
Codeslinger: Command Device 2
OK, now lets get to boosting Command - without assuming Infinity Threading. Resonance 6 plus Software 4 plus Analytic Mind 2 is 12 dice on threading. Resonance 6 + Intuition 5 is 11 dice on fade resist. That's enough to quite reliably thread up 2 hits and soak 2P; you have a very low chance of getting insufficient hits for that, so no Infinity Threading doesn't stop this.
You can easily Register sprites in downtime, so long as you stick to ones that can't do P damage to you for trying. All you really need is a rating 4 sprite for this, but if you want you can probably get a higher rated one. It can Assist Operation you up another 4 when you need it; this does eat up services and is short-term, but it will last an entire fight. So let's look at your dice pool: 23 dice, 27 with the sprite's help - and we didn't spend 8000Y per drone upgrading everything with Response 6!
Further improvements
Max out Sprite assistance, another 3
You can buy your Resonance and your Command CF up higher
Of course, you could argue this is somewhat overkill; however, this is assuming you're doing something you are heavily specialized at. Even with NO rating in a skill - such as if you have to pilot a Watercraft or something - the command rigger can get Command 8 - Defaulting 1 + Hot Sim 2 + Diagnostics 3 + Codeslinger 2 for 14 dice, which is quite impressive - and unlike the jumped in rigger, who cannot get any better, in emergencies the command rigger can thread higher and risk a point or two of P damage, and can use registered sprite services to get up to 18 dice on tests for which he lacks the skill.
Finally, the command rigger is cheap. You don't need expensive command and sensor upgrades for you drones. You don't need to risk your life by being jumped in with hot sim. You can run an off-the-shelf, unmodified vehicle that you've never seen before and be extremely good with it. The Jumped-In Rigger needs to upgrade each and every vehicle and drone and has to jam Rigger Adaptation on everything - all this stuff adds up fast.
Incidentally, you might be wondering "so what IS this infinity threading abuse I hear so much about?" The answer is that it's only really good when you can jack your Fade Resist up really high and have a good doctor and a mage on-hand. You can then wait until you get something crazy like 6-7 hits, suck a huge amount of damage, and get medical attention. This is a good trick for getting a CF you don't have up to 12, or for getting a CF to 12 long-term without needing a sprite, but it's hardly the crutch on which command riggers lean.
Lastly, there ARE good reasons to jump in. The big one is spoof-proofing yourself; sometimes less dice and biofeedback is worth the immunity to spoofing. The second one is using specific non-FA weapons; one of the nice things about gunnery is that it's universal, so you can slap a sniper rifle on a drone and then jump in and snipe people with Gunnery, and 2 shots at a smaller dice pool is better than 1 shot at a bigger one. Also, Mind over Matter is fun for jumping into stuff like buildings that was never meant to be jumped into.
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Sengir? Sprites and echoes are technomancer only.
Aaaand, I need to apologize - you are doing technomancer.
It's the smartlink that threw me - you're either losing dice from sustaining multiple CFs or you've lost essence (and dice) from sacrificing resonance (essence) for the links. Or so it looks to me -- I could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time. (see apology)
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You can get Smartlink by putting the Smartgun system on the drone's weapons and then putting a camera with the Smartlink vision enhancement on the drone. You yourself having a smartlink doesn't help you in any way.
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My thoughts,
Get the electronics group, It's full of good stuff.
Piloting can be dumped and picked up later.
Two skills at 3 are not as good as one skill at 4 and one at 2
For drone suggestions: Lone Star Strato-9 (This Old Drone), Wuxing Hussar (WAR!), Lockheed Arachnid (WAR!), the Arachnid is a forbidden Doberman which is cheaper and cooler (because it's a giant spider with an LMG). Get at least one flying drone for aerial recon.
I’d cut logic to 3 to get some more points. Make sure resonance starts at 6, and buy CFs up to 6.
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I'm not sure "have command 6 and then use Threading and Assist Operation" really counts as "Munchkinism."
The "munchkinism" was aimed at the aim of boosting a more than sufficient dice pool rather than the methods. Although I certainly disapprove your interpretation of endless re-threading ;)
No such thing as a "more than sufficient" dice pool. If the dice can fit in a five gallon bucket you don't have too many.
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No such thing as a "more than sufficient" dice pool. If the dice can fit in a five gallon bucket you don't have too many.
A bucket? Does this mean we're supposed to put back the others?
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I've been following this thread, and trying to create my own robomancer (I prefer that to dronomancer) along the way. What's the difference in build between a rigger who uses "issue command" over "remote control". I understand that issue command is the only way to control more than one drone at a time, but which is more efficient with building a Technomancer?
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Issue Command is nonexclusive. This is a case of poor terminology because Issue Command has nothing to do with the Command CF/Program.
Issue Command tells your drones to do shit on their own. Remote control (which uses the "Control Device" action) means you are controlling it with a VR or AR control set, like a video game style controller.
The general idea is that no matter what type of rigger you are, you can use Issue Command to have drones do shit on their own. However, they are hella expensive to make good at doing stuff on their own. There are various options:
1) Settle for "passable at doing stuff on their own." For not totally crazy prices you can get a drone that rolls 8 dice to shoot people in the face on its own.
2) Have a few big, very nice things, like a pimped out Ares Roadmaster, Hussar, and Ford LEBD-1, and cough up the dough to make them good at stuff. If you're already paying a huge amount of nuyen for a rocking drone, another 30k to make it good at fighting without direction from you is worth it. One useful aspect of RC is that you can make a very cheap "gun platform" drone to control yourself, so the idea is you have a few cheap "gun platform" drones you RC, depending on the situation, and a few expensive utilitarian drones that mostly run themselves.
3) Use Machine Sprites to control drones. This is one big edge technos have over mundane riggers - you can get a machine sprite that can rock pretty hard in a drone, and it's free.
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Response 6 is costly. You can't start with it without Restricted gear, and it adds 8000Y per Drone to your costs. Ouch!
Control Rig 2 eats essence and you're a Technomancer.
Active Targeting is silly. Spend a simple action to get net hits to your attack test? Just shoot them with a Wide Burst, and then they get a penalty to their next defense check for being wounded.
- Take Response 5 if you don't want to invest into the R 6 chip, one less die doesn't really matter
- So? After the first submersion (so Resonance doesn't drop below 6) getting one Essence worth of upgrades is totally worth it.
- Active Targeting means you roll a sensor test with all your boni to drone actions and Perception (and -3 when targeting a person) and can use the net hits as bonus dice for every subsequent attack on the target. When jumped in long bursts are simple actions, so you can easily do both on the same pass
So let's look at your dice pool: 23 dice, 27 with the sprite's help - and we didn't spend 8000Y per drone upgrading everything with Response 6!
In other words, less than 30% dice more dice at most against a starting character who chose to forgo the Control Rig and Active Targeting. That hardly makes jumping in "bad and you don't want to"
Even with NO rating in a skill - such as if you have to pilot a Watercraft or something - the command rigger can get Command 8 - Defaulting 1 + Hot Sim 2 + Diagnostics 3 + Codeslinger 2 for 14 dice, which is quite impressive - and unlike the jumped in rigger, who cannot get any better, in emergencies the command rigger can thread higher and risk a point or two of P damage, and can use registered sprite services to get up to 18 dice on tests for which he lacks the skill.
I you can't do something yourself, let a Sprite do it ;)
Finally, the command rigger is cheap. You don't need expensive command and sensor upgrades for you drones.
In my experience, TMs sooner or later run into the problem of having far too much cash and nothing to spend it on. So a couple a drone upgrades are no problem...also, Sensors are not really expensive (camera, microphone, RF scanner, some unrated stuff) and are not even needed unless you scout or use Active Targeting ;)
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I’m about 200,000 into a TM and am buying skillwires are 40,000 a pop for biowires.
For about 65,000 you can get 4 Wuxing Hussars on a tacnet with Flashflood Watercannons, rolling 10 dice at long wide bursts (-5 to dodge), that form an independent mook team with armor 18. You can always use more Hussars.
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Response 5 is still 4000Y - that's still expensive.
The upgrades are debatable - I'd rather spend the karma on having a higher Resonance and higher Command, Exploit, and Stealth complex forms. Control rig is hardly free.
Active Targeting is wasting your actions. You CAN active target and then long burst, but you're much better off doing a wide narrow burst and then a long burst. Or being a command rigger who rolls more dice and doing a narrow full burst.
A starting technomancer with Control Rig is shooting themselves in the foot because of the price of buying Complex Forms at 6 with BP versus Karma. Active Targeting is as above stupid. 30% more dice for less cost and less money per drone is indeed pretty good, yes.
My point is that it is sketchy to only compare Gunnery dice pools. What about when you need to Infiltrate in a drone? Or Pilot in a drone (there's no piloting skill group, so having all of the Pilot skills at 4 is expensive). Sprites are good but you can always have sprites do stuff.
You DO need Sensors to function: your attacks are Sensor+Gunnery. Looking back you seemed to have assumed it was Response. You need response too, for Manuever, Infiltration, and Initiative.
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- Take Response 5 if you don't want to invest into the R 6 chip, one less die doesn't really matter
- So? After the first submersion (so Resonance doesn't drop below 6) getting one Essence worth of upgrades is totally worth it.
You'll lose a point of Resonance submersion or not. Submersion just increases the maximum by 1. When you get ware, both your current and maximum Resonance drops by 1. So it's 30 karma to buy it back up to 6. To be fair, a logic techno might get alphaware cerebral boosters 3, control rig, and PuSHeD with that essence. Or drop the control rig and get an alphaware Encephalon instead.
In other words, less than 30% dice more dice at most against a starting character who chose to forgo the Control Rig and Active Targeting. That hardly makes jumping in "bad and you don't want to"
If you forgo Control Rig, it's 21 versus 27 dice. That's 6 dice or 2 hits. In addition to pay for that -6 dice, you take damage whenever the drone takes damage. There's some beanies to being jumped in, but you're really paying for it. With a control rig, it's only 4 dice and I'll go with that.
As for Active Targetting, it's at best fair. You get to make a sensor + perception test +1 (drones, metahumans, critters -3 + 2 hot sim + 2 control rig) so assuming a good dice pool of 15 (sensor 6 + perception 4 -3 critter mod + hot sim 2 + control rig 2 + attention coprocessor 3 + widget 1), that's 5 hits, likely much less if your target is evading detection (how easy is it to be evading detection is something that's left to GM call).
So let's see how they stack up between a command rigger and jumped in rigger piloting a response 6 sensor 6 drone with an LMG. They have same Init and IPs so no advantage there. I'm going to handle extra dice by having it add straight to damage (i.e. a +1 die advantage is .33 DV).
1st IP:
Command Rigger- Narrow Full Burst at 27 dice 14P damage (factoring in +8 narrow)
Jumped in Rigger- Active Target Simple (5 hits), Long Narrow Burst at 28 dice 11.33P
2nd IP and future IPs:
Command Rigger - Narrow Full Burst at 27 14P -1
Jumped in Rigger- Narrow Long Burst at 28 11.33P, Narrow Short Burst at 28 8.33P or Narrow Full Burst for 14.33P
Basically unless the long/short burst works, it'll take the jumped in rigger a long time to make up for the lost time targetting. Since Shadowrun is an offense heavy combat system, it'll only take 1-3 IPs before whatever target you have is down or took you down. You don't have enough time to catch up.
If the active targetting roll only gets 4 or less hits (such as having a more modest pool of 12 or so or bad luck), then you'll never catch up. If you're ambushing, the command rigger can active target as well since you have lots of time.
I you can't do something yourself, let a Sprite do it ;)
While true, you don't have to worry about taking an action to summon whatever sprite you need. Also, both the jumped in rigger and command rigger can do this. And the command rigger can do it better since he has a higher resonance rating.
You DO need Sensors to function: your attacks are Sensor+Gunnery. Looking back you seemed to have assumed it was Response. You need response too, for Manuever, Infiltration, and Initiative.
I assume he's using Passive Targetting which uses Sensor instead of Response for shooting.
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You DO need Sensors to function: your attacks are Sensor+Gunnery.
If you use passive sensor targeting, which is really only worth it when facing something large. Otherwise, Gunnery is Linked to Agility, which is substituted by Response as normal. Yes, the table is a bit confusing in this regard.
Active Targeting is wasting your actions. You CAN active target and then long burst, but you're much better off doing a wide narrow burst and then a long burst. Or being a command rigger who rolls more dice and doing a narrow full burst.
Well, this was about getting large dice pools, so I naturally assumed that a wide short burst just doesn't cut it ;)
If a smaller pool is enough hell yes, hit them with two simply actions rather than one complex.
@Tsuzua
You'll lose a point of Resonance submersion or not. Submersion just increases the maximum by 1. When you get ware, both your current and maximum Resonance drops by 1.
What I meant was to get Resonance 7 and then drop it to 6 with augmentations, thereby avoiding a loss of CF ratings ;)
Basically unless the long/short burst works, it'll take the jumped in rigger a long time to make up for the lost time targetting.
Don't see why it shouldn't work for drones if it works for Sams..
Anyway, I think we've confused all the newbs looking for advice enough now and can agree to disagree. Any last words or sensational new insights no yet mentioned? ;)
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So if I planned on using Issue Command often to control a swarm of drones I'd have to spend a lot of mulah on making those drones awesome when they're autonomous.
OR
I can control one at a time, but the resources are spent on making me a better rigger.
That about it?
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As a technomancer, it is actually not too bad to do drone-swarms; the trick would be getting Machine Sprites to pilot them. This lets you not worry about their crappy Pilot scores and lack of Autosofts (because Machine sprites get pilot=Force, and get 1 Autosoft at force per 3 force), and instead just deal with their crappy Response and Sensor. Sensor is not super expensive to upgrade - just toss all of the sensors they come with (except unrated ones) and slap on a rating 6 camera. Response costs more Y, and you can't upgrade it more than 2 from the base. You also of course need weapons.
The way I would go about it would be to start with a small number of drones and use your BP on making you yourself awesome. Then try to get 2 types of drones:
"one-trick dronies" that do one particular thing well, like Repeater drones, Flying Eye drones, and cheapo weapons platform drones (like the Lone Star Strato-9). These can have crap for response with no problem, because you rig them yourself with Command, which ignores Response.
Nice drones/vehicles that you trick out with upgrades, including making sure they have enough sensors to run a TacNet and have a good weapon. The Wuxing Hussar is pretty much the gold standard for land combat drones. There are various vehicles you can get; I like the Ares Roadmaster for a subtle vehicle (16 armor but not restricted, get a concealed turret), or pretty much any big vehicle with Armor 20 for a not subtle vehicle. The Ford LEBD-1 is probably your best bet for a flyer (the lone star strato-9 is better for a weapons platform but it has less Response because it's obselete, and is Forbidden). Cough up the cash for nice weapons like the FlashFlood Water Cannon or miniguns, and have your Sprites pilot these guys (although of course you can too). If you have enough of them, your drones can be a tacnet unto themselves which is nice.