Riggers / Jockeys

• 1: Gridguide
• 2: Drone decks
• 3: Vehicle mods
• 4: Hacking vehicles and drones

1 - Gridguide

Gridguide is a centralised, automated traffic control system. When within its jurisdictional area, vehicles are guided and advised by its management systems. This covers both traffic routing around the city, managing flow for minimal congestion, and second-to-second control for accident avoidance and junctions.

Gridguide’s area is expansive but not total. It covers all major roads throughout the city, and all minor roads in downtown areas. It fades out in side-streets in the suburbs and is completely absent in the Barrens.

Game mechanics

In game terms, GridGuide acts as a special sort of WAN that all vehicles are connected to. This does not provide the usual anti-hacking protection that WANs do, but it does provide the following game benefits:

• All Piloting and Notice rolls the vehicle makes get a d6 Wild die.
• While the vehicle is in motion, it gets the benefit of the Active Integrity Checking program, and so rolls Hardening instead of Firewall to resist attempts to crash it. (Parked vehicles are not a hazard if their computers get crashed, so the system doesn’t cover them.)
• Vehicles have numerous tracking tags hidden in various places on their body shell. Gridguide tracks their location in realtime through these tags. Finding and disabling them all is a difficult and lengthy process.
• If any decker hacks control of a vehicle with a GridGuide connection, it will continue to attempt to re-assert control; it rolls d8 vs the decker’s Hacking skill. (todo: how often?)
  • This applies during remote control or normal control via augmented reality surfaces in the vehicle. But some vehicles (not all) are fitted with either manual override controls or rigger adapters. Using either of those completely locks Gridguide out, stopping the attempts to re-establish control.

Hacking Gridguide

As a very well-defended cloud host, hacking Gridguide directly is extremely difficult. However, Gridguide uses a distributed architecture with delegated controls to short-range local hosts, responsible for vehicle control across a small area as well as associated infrastructure like traffic lights. These are vulnerable to hacking in the usual way. They count as standalone devices with a d8 rating. Once a decker gains access, they can issue commands to all nearby connected devices, including vehicles - one hacking roll per command. Note that this will often quickly attract attention from GOD, however it can still be used to facilitate a speedy escape.

2 - Drone decks

Basic idea: similar to cyberdecks, but cheaper. Several tiers with different LP costs. Each tier can load a different number of modules. Required in order to Jump In to anything wirelessly. Provides good bonuses to drones.

Drone decks can:

• form s-PANs
• hide s-PANs on the Matrix
• defend from cybercombat

Drone decks cannot:

• hack things that do not have Autopilots

Module ideas:

• Extended s-PAN range for drones only: 1km -> 10km
• Stealth: can hide s-PAN
• (maybe) Drone hacking: as Persuasion utility, but only works against drones (maybe: roll d8 with no wild die?)
• Firewall: adds Firewall stat as per Fighting utility (2 + 1/2 Hacking), but does not allow other uses of Fighting ie hacking things.
• Pilot: adds a wild die to drone autopilot piloting/driving/boating rolls
• Gunnery: adds a wild die to drone Shooting rolls

3 - Vehicle mods

Per Sprawlrunners RAW, anyone can purchase an untraceable vehicle with LP; riggers get no special abilities to tune their vehicles. This aims to address that by giving riggers access to a workshop (via new edges ) that can be used to boost vehicle stats or outfit them with add-ons.

Spending Mod Points

All the below cost 1 point each. They can be applied multiples times, but each subsequent application costs +1 mod points. For example, to add +3 to a vehicle’s handling would cost (1+2+3)=6 points.

• Increase handling - add 1 to the vehicles handling stat.
• Increase speed - add 20% to vehicle top speed.
• Add armour - add 1 point of armour.

You can also add vehicle accessories. Some of these don’t fit on all vehicles eg. you can’t put a medium turret on a motorbike or a medium drone rack on a single-seat commuter car.

• 1 point - insulative armour - provides immunity to electrical attacks, eg from magic.
• 1 point - gas sealing - ability to hermetically seal the vehicle. Has a small reserve air supply, typically good for 10-15 minutes.
• 1 point - small drone rack - sufficient to launch/land a surveillance or recon drone.
• 2 points - medium drone rack - sufficient to launch/land a hunter drone.
• 1 point - smuggling compartment - hidden from sight and shielded from scanning. In most vehicles, big enough to hold a couple of rifles.
• 1 point - off-grid modifications - extra fuel tanks / batteries, dual-fuel systems, off-road tyres, and other mods to enable use for extended periods in the wilderness.
• 2 points - Valkyrie system - a full smart medbay built into a folding gurney mounted in the vehicle’s trunk, with facilities to provide first aid and stabilise badly wounded people. Needs to be the size of a large car or larger.
• 2 points - small retractable turret - up to SMG sized weapon (does not come with the weapon).
• 3 points - medium retractable turret - up to assault rifle sized weapon (does not come with the weapon).

Other mods available by negotiation ;)

4 - Hacking vehicles and drones

Hacking autopilots

Any vehicle or drone that has an autopilot can be attacked from the Matrix.

Sleaze hacking autopilots

A successful sleaze hack against an autopilot is sufficient to issue it one command of about one or two sentences length or to Jump In to it. If you issue a command, that command can be superseded by the vehicle’s or drone’s owners or occupants when they notice, of course. If you Jump In, the drone or vehicle is yours to command unless/until you are overridden (see “control hierarchy” below) or somebody crashes your connection.

As usual, if the drone or vehicle is networked in a PAN, WAN, or s-PAN, that has to be dealt with (sleaze or cybercombat hacked) first.

Cybercombat hacking autopilots

If a vehicle or drone’s autopilot is crashed in cybercombat, then the autopilot and navigation is disrupted, but the occupants can still use manual controls to take over. Even if they don’t, then a backup failsafe system will attempt to bring it to a safe halt. (It might fail though, they’re quite basic.)

DoS attacking drones

Drones are not smart and are easily confused by messing with their Matrix traffic. Deckers attempting DoS attacks against them take +2 on their rolls.

Stealing cars

A single successful sleaze hack roll is enough to get a parked vehicle to unlock itself, disable the autopilot, and then activate manual controls. It can then be stolen. However, this comes with some severe caveats that kick in as soon as the theft is noticed:

• Multiple broadcast tags hidden around the body of the car will begin to broadcast prominent AR holos proclaiming the car as stolen, as well as uploading the car’s location to the owner and the authorities. Finding and deactivating all the tags is extremely time-consuming (this has already been done to hot cars bought with Logistic Points.)
  • About the only thing the thieves can do once the tags have been set off is use a Matrix jammer to block the signals and drive like Hell.
• Gridguide will constantly issue commands to the autopilot to disable the vehicle and park up safely. The thieves have to disable it entirely and drive manually, or keep fighting for control (by re-rolling periodic Hacking tests).
  • Gridguide will also use other vehicles it controls to form rolling blockades, traffic jams, etc to impede the thieves. This complicates the “drive like Hell” strategy mentioned above.

Throwback vehicles

Some vehicles are throwbacks and lack any sort of autopilot. They cannot be hacked. They can be stolen and hotwired with the Thievery skill.

A small number of prestige throwback vehicles have been retrofitted with rigger interfaces, however. They still cannot be hacked, and a direct cable connection is required in order to Jump In to thm.

Control hierarchy

If multiple entites are competing to control a given vehicle or drone at the same time, there’s a hierarchy which determines who wins:

1. Jumped In control via a direct cable connection
2. Manual controls inside a vehicle (whether physical or via an AR interface surface)
3. Jumped In control via a wireless connection
4. Autopilot

Hence, hacking an autopilot and issuing it commands can be overridden by anyone inside the vehicle who can access the physical controls. A rigger can jump into the vehicle remotely, but a competing rigger inside the vehicle can usurp them with a direct cable connection.