Remote Control of drones?

AnotherDilbert

Emperor Mongoose
HG said:
Ships that have no living crew make appropriate checks with a skill level equal to their Virtual Crew score, and can also be controlled through the use of the Electronics (remote ops) skill.
Does that mean that my Elec(Remore) skill now counts as Pilot, Gunnery, and Elec(Sensor) skill?

Core said:
Drones are piloted from their mother ship with the Electronics (remote ops) skill
But:
Core said:
Repair drones allows a Traveller with the Electronics (remote ops) skill to use the Repair System action (see page 161). The repair drones are considered to have an Engineer skill level of 1 or the level the Traveller has in Electronics (remote ops), whichever is lower, in all specialities for the Repair System action alone.
 
I think you may be able to try and break a command link, but that would only force the drone into it's own pre-plotted work. They aren't stupid by any means. What > I < would do would have a pre-set number of attack and defense patterns, with the drone picking the best based upon the activities around it. Having control of the drone means you can give them new priorities whenever you want - a great idea! If you lose control they go into the operational mode you told them to, prior to the engagement. So if you had planned to use your drones to attack escorts in the battle, and all of a sudden a battleship became a priority... oops, you just lost communication with your drone... they would continue to attack escorts because that was your last priority order. MAYBE, if you had as a secondary priority, attack any crippled target you come across, some could turn on the battleship. I would have them communicating with each other so they can execute swarm attacks, so maybe in two turns, instead of one, they would attack the battleship.
 
Chas said:
These remotely controlled drones should be susceptible to electronic warfare :twisted:
Depends on the size and cost of the drone?

Small cheap drones use radio, easy to jam.

Some drones use laser beam communicator, very difficult to jam?

Big expensive drones at high TL use meson communicator, can't jam?
 
Are real-life military drone operators typically also airplane pilots? These are just common sense things that any good referee figures out without waiting for a ruling on.
 
If I think of the difference between driving a car and playing a car game, they are rather different, but somewhat related.

Perhaps like a skill specialisation, so Pilot( Remote )? No, the Core book is released.

The old standby would be: Use the max of Pilot and Elec(Remote).
 
ShawnDriscoll said:
Are real-life military drone operators typically also airplane pilots? These are just common sense things that any good referee figures out without waiting for a ruling on.

Some are. Their has been a lot of tangling between the air force and the CIA in this arena, with the air force trying to make it policy and the CIA resisting it.
 
AnotherDilbert said:
If I think of the difference between driving a car and playing a car game, they are rather different, but somewhat related.

For once, I can speak with some authority here :)

Throughout my teenage years, I mucked around with flight simulators. A lot of flight simulators. From instrument-only 737 simulators, to the latest fighter jets and gunships, I did them all (also a fair bit of r/c aircraft, but I digress).

In my 20's, I started taking flying lessons. And when I sat in the plane... I found I could fly it. Pretty damn well - I was doing stall recovery and landing patterns in the very first lesson. There were a couple of new controls (you generally don't worry about carb heating on a flight sim, and trim tends to be automatic), but they were easy enough to cope with.

The two main differences?

1. The weight of the controls. PC sims are, by their nature, effectively all fly-by-wire. A Piper Tomahawk does not have that :)

2. The movement of the air. Flying straight and level on a PC is simple and hands-off. In a real plane it... just isn't!

Anyway, after that I became a firm believer in sims prepping you for real life.
 
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