Drone

A drone weapon is a heavy or larger tracking weapon that launches automated drones with built-in weapons. These drones can harry an opponent before ramming it in a final attack. For drone weapons, gunnery checks can be made using the gunner’s ranks in the Computers skill plus the gunner’s Intelligence modifier, in addition to the usual methods detailed on page 320 of the Core Rulebook.

During the gunnery phase, when a drone moves toward a target, the gunner can also fire the drone’s built-in weapons at that target. If the gunner does so, the gunnery check used to guide the drone is used for this attack, but with a –4 penalty. In addition, drone built-in weapons are short range. This gunnery check can’t deal critical damage due to a natural result of 20 on an attack roll. If the modified gunnery check is successful, the built-in weapons deal the target the damage shown in the drone special property (see the table). Each time a drone fires its built-in weapons, it reduces the tracking weapon damage it can deal by one die. For capital weapons, you instead reduce the damage multiplier by one each time the drone fires its built-in weapons. A drone is destroyed when it has reduced its tracking weapon damage dice or multiplier to 0.

A drone needn’t enter its target’s hex, but it can. If it does so, the gunner guiding it attempts a final gunnery check. If the gunner succeeds, the drone deals its remaining tracking weapon damage and is destroyed.