I don't think that a clear and defined role in which to shine is strictly necessary. It can be completely fine to be the supporting techguy in many fields at the same time. Let's be honest... How many times have you played in a group with 2 mages or 2 streetsams? Or with a cybered streetsam besides a physical adept with about 90%+ overlap in "their" field of competence. That's completely ok, when they play side by side. When is fighting for the spotlight ever a character-problem, instead of a player-problem? It only gets problematic when the balancing is so bad that one guy can outdo multiple specialists (certain magician builds say hello) or is constantly low-impact in anything he does...
I played a rigger in 4th edition for a long time (or more accurately the vehicle/drone guy as real rigging -as in jumping into vehicles- wasn't handled that well in 4th) in a group of 5 with a stealthy adept, hacker, cybered ranged/heavy weapons specialist and a hermetic mage. No, we didn't do much vehicle fights and chases...so i was never the one guy dominating a scene. Which was completely ok, because i was the most versatile instead, always involved and useful.
The adept infiltrated some corporate compound and i provided the eye in the sky with a flying drone with tricked out sensors catching patrols early while simultaneously having a couple of very small and stealthy drones to scout ahead and map out the area. I could have never replaced a specialised infiltrator because those drones sucked at everything physical (like stealing stuff, planting explosives or even silently neutralizing some security guy) and drones who could do that would be anything but stealthy... but still i provided some unique skills that made the task easier.
I dabbled in hacking too (something that was much too easy in 4th, more about that later...) with low-ish skills but specialising in drones and spoofing, so i would not interfere with any primary hacker job but could compete where our fields overlapped (hacking drones) and if needed i could handle some cameras while the hacker was occupied with a difficult node/host.
And my heavy combat drone was on a par with any specialised combat character. But it was big, loud and obvious (and a bit slow) which restricted it's use. So it never competed with an actual combat-heavy character (although -as said above- having more then one combat specialist side by side is rarely a problem anyway), but was an emergency backup. And i remember my gm once talking about how much he liked that setup: It can be quite a balance between not challenging the specialised combat characters at all and accidently killing everyone else. And i have seen more than one pregen mission/adventure which could be completely aced by a smart and stealthy team... up to the open end fight. So having some "heavy artillery" backup (that's of no real use most of the time) for when the shit has already hit the fan can be a huge boon without overshadowing other combat characters.
All in all that support tech guy (and yes, often working as the soccer mom too^^) worked very well then. There was never someone who had any reason to question his/her own character's use and never the question what the rigger was actually bringing to the team.
And then 5th edition happened and they completely dropped the ball... escalating existing problems while adding new ones:
1) Resources and the priority system:
I understand including priorities as the default character-generating system made sense with that "everything has it's price" motto. I can even understand (to a certain degree) how they increased the possible money you start with (and adjusted equipment costs accordingly) to separate the high attribute or skills guy from the fully-cybered guy and the magic user. But for riggers that's just bad: The magician with magic A gets access to magic and a high magic rating, which he will never lose (short of small magic decreases through essence loss). The high attribute or skills guy gets permanent points. The cyber-sam gets ware for all the ¥ and keeps it, because there are basically no rules for physical damage to cyberware. The decker can buy it's expensive deck, which could actually just be shot to pieces... but there are no rules regarding a physical condition monitor or armor of such a device, implying that it's meant to be hand-waved or more accurately not to happen at all except for story purposes. Which makes sense because he spend a high char-gen priority on getting that deck instead of attributes, skills or whatever...
And then there's the rigger, who buys vehicles and drones. Drones that are supposed to be used in combat and get a complete set of rules for damaging and destroying them. Is there any other kind of character that can possibly lose most of what get got from a priority A selection in the first occuring combat?
This problem theoretically existed in earlier editions. But it was never remotely that bad when you could either modify "combat drones/verhicles" to a point where they were expensive but sturdy enough to survive actual combat or use disposable ones... cheap drones without any mods (that either aren't cheap anymore because of prizes raised to fit the new priority A max. ¥ or are still cheap but come with stats so low they are useless without modding) or stolen ones (yes, there was a time when stealing cars and other equipment was possible...^^).
And to put gasoline into the fire the rules not only tell us our drones are supposed to be fragile by reducing condition monitors and armor (and limiting adding armor), they add vehicle repair costs too. Costs so high it doesn't even matter if your damaged vehicle survives. Better torch it by the roadside and get a cheaper new one, because you might be allowed to buy a tricked out van at character generation but don't think you will ever get enough money to repair moderate damage to it.
2) Welcome to the matrix:
For 3 editons riggers were the grease and oil, cogs and screws and metal parts guys that tinkered with their vehicles and customized them. They got remote-controlled drones later (was it in late 2nd or in 3rd ediiton?), which they could customize too. But it was always about the hardware. Then the wireless matrix happened and suddenly: Congratulations, you are now a matrix character! Doesn't matter that all your vehicle, mechanics, gunnery or hardware skills (which you still need for your job too) actually don't do anything in the matrix. Just broaden your horizon and get an additional set of skills...
Yes, that problem existed in 4th edition. But it was mitigated by the other big flaw of 4th edition: hacking was too easy. You didn't need many additional skills to hack, just a solid commlink with programs (cheap compared to 5th edition), and nearly no attributes at all, because everything could be handled by rolling program+skill...
It was okay for riggers, because they already had a good commlink and programs for controlling their drones anyway. And they could save points for additional software, hackings skills and more programs by lowering attributes that weren't needed that much anymore, because you now used your mental stats in VR, especially logic (the attribute already linked to all their mechanic/hardware stuff) for agility.
But it was bad for hackers (as an archetype) when every script kiddie could grab a commlink with some pirated hacking software (yes, 4th edition had rules for hacked software which degraded over time because it lacked frequent updates but was really cheap (i think to remember 10% of the regular ones)) and be a hacker. So most hacker characters were actually hacker+X, with X ranging from combat chars and riggers to even logic-based magicians...
So i totally get the changes in 5th edition, the return of specialised and expensive hacking hardware (decks), multiple skills needed to cover most matrix actions and the spread of these skills over different mental attributes. Sadly they again forgot about riggers and the problems that were already there just covered up by the lacking matrix design.
So now we got riggers, who still need physical attributes and different vehicles skills, mechanics, hardware and gunnery for their vehicle actions but mental attributes too, because now they are matrix characters. And even if they don't do anything else but controlling vehicles through the matrix they still can't avoid defense tests using logic, intuition and willpower. Oh, and of course they need matrix skills too, wireless warfare and computer at least.
But while it may be necessary to have a high wireless warfare skill to use and counter jamming and a high computer skill for spotting marks put on them/their drones via matrix perception that of course doesn't mean they are allowed to do anything else with these skills as nearly all other matrix actions require marks first (which they can't get without hacking) or are considered hacking (which they can't do without a deck).
And besides (hopefully) high mental attributes that "matrix character" has the same defense against matrix attacks as joe wageslave: rebooting if he gets lucky and spots marks in time. At least he can keep control of one single drone being hacked by jumping into it (at least for a few seconds... see point 3)
And while different later books added more software and hardware to gain access to the full range of matrix actions or defend better against getting your stuff hacked, most of these are either worded badly so you have to endure endless discussions if they are even allowed to be used by riggers (beginning with the not-so-clear corebook statement about which programs can be used (on a rrc or drone^^)) or are explicitly restricted to commlink only.
3) Jumping in...or not:
At the beginning there was this piece of cyberware called a control-rig. It basically gave the rigger his name and allowed him the unique ability to become their verhicle, to feel it and to control it intuitively and gracefully as if it was his own body. Mechanically it gave the rigger a unique vehicle control dice pool to help with every driving related test. It went downhill from there...
With the release of the wireless matrix in 4th edition, everyone using the matrix all the time and nearly anybody being able to go full VR that character-defining "being the machine" got lost. Everybody using VR could jump into a drone (or vehicle with a rigging adaption) to see how it feels to be the vehicle. And the control-rig got downgraded to a piece of cheap, low essence headware that gives a bonus when jumped in. (And it was mechanically a completely useless piece of trash for characters because jumping-in changed the mechanics for controlling vehicles from (cheap) program + skill to attribute + skill... but not your attributes, you used the matrix attributes of the vehicle. So you had to upgrade every single drone to near-milspec hardware-standards to get the same dicepools you had when just controlling it remotely.)
So when they reverted that change in 5th and the expensive high essence control-rig returned and was again required for jumping into vehicles it looked like a good day for riggers. Until you read all the other rules...
Jumped in all vehicle actions count as matrix actions, so you get a +2 hot-sim bonus. But someone using the control device matrix action to remotely control said vehicle gets the same +2 in hot-sim...
Jumping in gives you another +1 dice for all vehicle, gunnery and sersor perception tests. But then there's the codeslinger quality for +2 on a single type of matrix action...say control device for example. So it's either +1 to all tests for jumping in or +2 on all tests excluding sensor perception...
Jumping into a vehicle reduces vehicle test tresholds by the control-rigs rating. At least a real unique bonus... but -as mentioned before in this thread- tresholds are rarely high (and the one control vehicle action you need to do in combat once per turn doesn't even need a test...)
And all these tremendous advantages only come at the cost of taking physical damage (in hot-sim VR) from bio-feedback when your ride gets damaged. Which plays very well with the reduced vehicle armor and increased weapon's damage of 5th edition...
But wait... i forgot something... jumping into a vehicle makes it immune to being remote-controlled by a hacker. After my talk about lacking matrix defense this has to be a huge advantage. Until you realize it's the same edition that introduced us to data spikes and now you only have to decide between rebooting a drone that is about to get hacked or jumping into it to keep control for another 5 to 10 seconds before you get data-spiked, bricked and dumpshocked into unconsciousness (or death considering bio-feedback damage you might have taken before).
5th edition did one thing right in bringing the actual "rigger" back... and then they screwed up the rules so hard the only riggers left playing do so out of nostalgia.
PS: But to answer the first question that started this thread... my group(s) would probably answer: "tech/gear support in all situations"
