Summoning Vs. Drones

[Casper]

Trying to decide on my first guy to play on. I know I want to use minions like those two, but I have no idea what im doing. What are the key strengths and weaknesses of both minion types?

[Lord Of Dorkness]

Summons are stronger, but one-shot, expensive and without some special tricks will turn on you sooner or later.

Drones on the other hand are weaker, but a one-time expense, quite sturdy and perfectly obident.

So do you want a big but nasty punch you can pull off every now and then, or an extra but sorta weak party member?

Personally, I find the tactical potential of drones more appeling, but ultimatly both are valid choices for a charachter.

[kaffekoppen]

There are many places in the environment that let you summon for free, so they're not always really expensive. However, many of the spirits I've summoned have been kind of crappy. For example, the last one I summoned had a 20% chance to hit at the most even when standing right next to someone who wasn't in cover. Useless. Sometimes they're weak, sometimes they're strong.

Overall I prefer drones for their reliability, but I'll happily summon a spirit if I can to get some cannon fodder, I just wouldn't build my character around it.

[Casper]

Ah so drones are more of a dependable summon, and summons are as strong as a player but come with a veriety of downsides that make them circumstantial.

[Lord Of Dorkness]

Pretty much.

They tend towards being flavored towards their element, but even the weakest spirit tends to be a quite decent mage.

Spirit's come with the extra downside of being a constant risk of adding another enemy to the field as well, though. You lose control of them, and they are NOT happy.

[Casper]

You can lose control of any of them? Thats a shame. I think I will most likely make a hacker drone user type. Hopefully I dont get a cool companion I want to use thats that type already.

[Casper]

It looks like I completely misunderstood how drones workedand messed up my build. Took like 20 minutes to get far enough to realize you need to actually spend your drone users turn to control the drone. So basically youre just trading a player for a drone. I already had points in rifles while having points in drone, so now my character is a bit silly.

[shoopy]

Originally posted by Casper:

It looks like I completely misunderstood how drones workedand messed up my build. Took like 20 minutes to get far enough to realize you need to actually spend your drone users turn to control the drone. So basically youre just trading a player for a drone. I already had points in rifles while having points in drone, so now my character is a bit silly.

It's fine. Maybe not ideal but you can make it work, it's not entirely useless. You have options too, you could be good with rifles and use that for combat and just use the drone for scouting and going inside vents.

Also even if you still want to be primarily a rigger, it only takes 1 ap to hold a drone connection and later on you get +1 ap (so you have 3) which means your assault rifle isn't entirely useless. Not to mention you can have a shaman haste you which will let you control a drone 'for free' basically and fight like a normal character.

Or if you want to be really crazy you can be a rigger shaman and haste yourself

Edit:
And in case you didn't understand correctly, controling a drone doesn't take your entire turn, it takes 1 ap per turn. You can use any left over ap to move and shoot and whatever you want.

[shoopy]

Also you can think of a drone as being in two places at once. It actually gives you a net gain in AP between you and the drone - control costs 1 ap and drones can have at least 2 ap and more later on so it's like you're giving up one action on your character to do more actions on the drone.

Overall a rigger can cause more actions than somebody who doesn't have a drone.

[di eshor ribly]

Originally posted by ardiel:

Overall a rigger can cause more actions than somebody who doesn't have a drone.

Very much this. My first character was a Rigger (I looked through the abilities on the karma screen at the start, before specializing in a weapon) that used a pistol. Once you hit the high-end skill of rigging, you can have two drones with 4 AP *EACH* at the cost of 2 of your AP per turn.

A shaman with the Haste spell can be invaluable if you also want to contribute a few bullets of your own, but the pistol has some useful skills that bypasses that a little. Drugs like Cram also work wonders, but that can get a bit expensive too, both in nuyen and inventory space.

Keep in mind that you don't have to have both (later) of your drones active at the same time, so you can comfortably run around with 2 AP and a 4 AP drone, and switch them out as one gets damaged. Or, you could just park your character in a safe spot (around a corner, or in a multiple-angle High Cover spot) and activate both drones and let them clean house. I'd recommend two combat drones for that gambit (the S- and A- rank ones when you can get them).

[kaffekoppen]

Originally posted by Casper:

You can lose control of any of them? Thats a shame. I think I will most likely make a hacker drone user type. Hopefully I dont get a cool companion I want to use thats that type already.

Keep in mind that even if you lose control of a spirit, it's still not actually allied with your enemies, and often they will still attack the spirit.

I don't let my spirits hide behind cover but rather set them up very close to the enemies. Sometimes you can flush them out, but at the very least it's a good distraction.

[Casper]

Ive played for 6 hours already and ive already ran into 3 bugs that have required me to reload my save and need to go through 10-30 minutes of dialog or combat.

[Skyte100]

Originally posted by kaffekoppen:

Originally posted by Casper:

You can lose control of any of them? Thats a shame. I think I will most likely make a hacker drone user type. Hopefully I dont get a cool companion I want to use thats that type already.

Keep in mind that even if you lose control of a spirit, it's still not actually allied with your enemies, and often they will still attack the spirit.

I don't let my spirits hide behind cover but rather set them up very close to the enemies. Sometimes you can flush them out, but at the very least it's a good distraction.

My favorite is to put them in the middle of the enemy. I actually lost control of mine at the same time as the enemy lost control of theirs. Turns out, spirits are allied to each other when they are loose.

[Lord Of Dorkness]

Originally posted by skyte100:

My favorite is to put them in the middle of the enemy. I actually lost control of mine at the same time as the enemy lost control of theirs. Turns out, spirits are allied to each other when they are loose.

...Huh, that's actully a rather neat detail I don't think I've ever noticed. Kudos to HBS on that.

[Combat Wombat]

the higher your spirit summoning skill the stronger the talsimans you can use, you also get more powerful spirits from summoning points. you NEED the summoning controll skill to stand a chance of controlling them, however. the talsimans will let you call spirits when there isn't a summoning point around, more powerful talsmans require a higher lvl of skill to use. but they take up an inventory slot, and can only summon a single spirit. not always a summoning point in the enviroment,but it's like getting a free talsman when you do. but their power is corispondent on your summoning skill, it's a little hit or miss as far as what type of spirit you get, the same summoning point will alwayse summon the same type of spirit on each play through, but you don't need a talisin to use those. spirits can do a pretty good job of turning the tide of battle in your favor, or agnist you if it breaks free and decides to attack you (it could just escape/despwan)

drones take up a wepon slot, wich cuts down on the number of wepons you can cary, but you can still use your fists, if it comes to that. you will NEED to keep your drones up to date, they will quickly become obslite otherwise. you will also need to invest in the drone combat skill as well, they don't function as well otherwise. only problem with drones? if it gets destroyed you have an "empty" wepon slot untill the run is over, so bring some repair kits. gernades are common for support drones (concussion generades anyone?) and the robo doc comes with a couple of medkits, wich get restocked FOR FREE between missions, like everything else in every drones inventory.

wich to choose? personal preference. drones require int drone controll and drone combat to use, each one required for the next skill. spirits require cha spirit summoning and spirit controll to use, each one is dependent on the previous skill. try them both and see wich one you like.