[Charasanya]

I was looking for a small to large drone for my rigger, that is able to accompany other characters (and/or myself) during a mission. Therefore the drone should run mostly autonomously, however I'm able to jump in, in a pinch. The drone should be a walker type, have gecko tips for climbing, an effective armament and a mechanical arm. Being stealthy is a plus. However, as I am on a budget, it should not cost more then 100,000 ¥.

So far I am kind of torn between a Doberman and a Black Knight, though I am not sure if there is a way to circumvent the "Obsolete" property. It also may be too large to fit just about anywhere characters may go... The Doberman however seems rather fragile. Any ideas?

[UmaroVI]

Gecko tips are medium or smaller only.

Neither the Doberman nor the Black Knight is a good idea.

Are you sure you want a walker with gecko tips, rather than a roto-drone? The Ford LEBD-1 is a really good option, as it can fly, hover, is cheap, has a weapon mount, and has a mechanical arm. It's also Restricted, not Forbidden. Since you don't need any of the mod slots to add on functionality, you can get it Armor and Chameleon Coating.

The Lockheed Arachne (WAR!) is a decent option. It's very cheap and comes with autosofts, legs, a weapon mount, and gecko tips. You need to mod on a mechanical arm. Its only real flaw is being kinda slow, but it can just hang onto a troll or something.

The Doberman can, I guess, do this, but it has the problem of needing 3/3 mod slots to get the arm and gecko tips, leaving no room for armor upgrades, which hurts.

On the whole, I think the Ford is better, but the Arachne is much, much cheaper.

[_Pax_]

Question: why are you stuck on Walker mode?

If it's got Gecko Tips, and is confronted with stairs - just drive it up them.  Or drive it up the wall, and then turn to follow the stairs up.

...

Regardless, the Ferred RPD-1X might be the best choice.  It has extra slots available, for a total of 10 modification points.  With Sensor 3, Pilot 3, it's already doing pretty well for itself.

[cr4kp0t]

Agreed Umaro LEBD would be best really.

However if you are stuck on must be  a walker why not try a manservant?

basic drone 2.5K
9 armor 1.8K
gecko tips 300
flexible RC weapon mount 4000

not particularly brilliant but very doable on a budget and all option are withing starting availability.
 
then all you need to do is decide what to arm your little king machine with.   

[UmaroVI]

Regardless, the Ferred RPD-1X might be the best choice.  It has extra slots available, for a total of 10 modification points.  With Sensor 3, Pilot 3, it's already doing pretty well for itself.

It can't mount weapons without special permission from the GM.

However if you are stuck on must be  a walker why not try a manservant?

basic drone 2.5K
9 armor 1.8K
gecko tips 300
flexible RC weapon mount 4000

The Evo Orderly is just outright better than the Renraku Manservant-3. It's cheaper and faster and comes with a free medkit.

I'm still not a major fan, though, because putting an obvious weapon mount on it makes it Forbidden, and I think the Lockheed Arachne is a better buy. The orderly is faster, though, so it's a defensible choice.

[_Pax_]

Regardless, the Ferred RPD-1X might be the best choice.  It has extra slots available, for a total of 10 modification points.  With Sensor 3, Pilot 3, it's already doing pretty well for itself.

It can't mount weapons without special permission from the GM.

  It's description says it often mounts weapons - albeit, small and nonlethal ones, like tasers.

[UmaroVI]

Yes, the description does say that, but the rules don't support modding it on.

[Charasanya]

Thanks a lot for your helpful tips so far! Some very nice ideas there!

My idea was that, infiltrating buildings and sneaking around, maybe scale a wall, a drone that makes less noise (like I imagine a walker drone does) would be much easier to justify then an autogyro one, which I imagine makes at least some noise and blows up dust and such. Just someone staggering back into the rotors will likely crash it. Yes I know there aren't any rules to support this, but in our game realism sometimes outweighs rules.

The ferret is great as a support drone, but not suited for combat, with a body of 1 and a maximum armor of 3...

Another question: Couldn't a drone (especially a humanoid one) with one or two mechanical arms just carry and use a handheld weapon, like a pistol or a rifle? And what kind of improvements for the hardware/software would you recommend, like response, firewall and what autosoft programs?

[UmaroVI]

The answer to the holding a weapon question is: sorta.

A cyborg in an anthroform body using a held rather than mounted weapon may use gunnery or the weapon skill, their choice.

A drone acting autonomously would use Targeting. Per the rules, the drone has to specify which targeting, such as Targeting (Longarms) or Targeting (Pistols). Or, more likely, Targeting (Gunnery). It's not clear what skill it needs to fire a held weapon - but that doesn't matter here, because you just pick that skill for its Targeting, whatever your GM rules it is.

Where it gets stick is what skill you roll when remote controlling or jumped in. There just isn't a rule, because you aren't a cyborg. So maybe you roll the weapon skill, maybe you roll gunnery, maybe you roll your choice. This may be a problem for you.

With regard to the drone's upgrades:
First, based on your requirements, the Lockheed Arachne is probably your best bet - the big thing it has going for it is +4 handling, which is really nice and adds to a lot of tests, including Infiltration.

As far as hardware/software goes, I suggest being pretty restrained about that. The Arachne starts out with a 4 Pilot, 5 Response, 5 Firewall, Clearsight 4, and Targeting 4. And it's only 1900ny, which is quite cheap. You could start upgrading its ratings...but you'd enormously increase the price of the drone for a comparably marginal effectiveness increase. I'd keep it economical and just get Covert Ops 3 and maybe Adaptability 3, depending how big your GM is on the Pilot tests to not be stupid (there's a huge price jump from 1500 to 4000 going from rating 3 to 4 - not worth 1 die, IMO). You do want better Sensors; rip its out, and put in something like this:

Sensor Package (2300) for Arachne
   -Camera 4 400Y [1]
      -Smartlink 500Y
      -Thermo 100Y
   -Vision Magnification 100Y
   -Vision Enhancement 3 300Y
   -Radio Signal Scanner 6 150Y[1]
   -Motion Sensor - 50Y [1]
   -Microphone 6 300Y [1]
      -Spatial Recognizer 100Y
   -Audio Enhancement 3 300Y

which gets it to Sensor 6, gets enough channels for a rating 4 tacnet, and gets Smartlink.

Then slave it to a commlink running a TacSoft, and make sure that commlink is well defended. Better yet, get more of them (at 5700ny each, plus the cost of a weapon to go into their mount, say 7000, they are a steal; you can buy a TacSoft and six of them for half your budget).

If you really don't want to do that, ditch most of the vision enhancement (I'd keep Camera 5, Microphone 6, Audio Enhancement/Vision Enhancement 3, and Smartlink, but lose everything else), put Analyze 3 on it, and keep it encrypted and running in hidden mode. You can't really get more than token matrix defense on it, though, not without spending enough money to defeat the whole point of using a simple, cheap drone.

I