ARIN chrome multi-skill expansion
To improve support for multi-discipline riggers

So it's a great way for pure riggers to have deep UE investment in their primary and get advanced support skills in the bargain, but if someone was or is already an advanced pilot or driver, rigging feels pretty bad to invest in because so much of its current powerful gameplay value (until more robot stuff is added) is duplicating the same skill checks without really adding much value if characters can already make them.

I guess the comparison I would make is if a TruSight used Systems knowledge to give characters firearm abilities in the bargain, while providing some cool functionality to guns that firearms users didn't get otherwise.

Now plenty of riggers rely on this chrome now for these support abilities, so I am not suggesting it get removed or anything like that, but I think it would be nice if it provided some benefit to riggers who are (or were already) expert pilots and/or drivers.

So my suggestion is the following, in some future uncertain date when there is dev time to add features:

+ Make the ARIN chrome a generic robot controller; and,

+ Make the vehicle rigging mechanic combine rigging and the relevant vehicle skill for ability rolls, in a similar fashion to how multiple stats are checked on those rolls.

Although additive skill rolls would be super powerful in other instances, the value of extremely high vehicle rolls is pretty low and I don't think there is a great danger of players spending hundreds of UE in both to get huge vehicle skill checks.

These changes would make rigging feel like a much better addition to characters that already have those support skills, and it would make the chrome much more useful in a wider variety of rigging circumstances to all sorts of characters.

The question in my mind becomes: is the rigger issuing commands to a 'smart' device that is then executing the commands on their behalf, or is the rigger themselves controlling the device?

If the rigger is controlling the device, then there should be in addition to skill check.

If the rigger is simply issuing commands to the device that then executes on it's own, then the device should have a fixed and it simply be a skill check.

To Ratchet's point however, yes, Rigging has the potential to be Skillsoft 2.0 where you simply throw money at whatever skill gap problem you have and get results. Which is not ideal, IMHO.

I am all for ARINs being used for some kind of connection to a bot mount for a vehicle, perhaps, but not as a standalone rigging controller just due to how they work currently IC. Would be neat if there were places IC (corps, perhaps) where you have to jack in to use bots, maybe due to extreme distance or the need for the neural connection versus inputted commands. I think just a normal controller being chrome, however, is much the same as why Quickterm chrome has been shot down in the past.

It obviously need to include the vehicle skill in addition to the rigging skill, otherwise Why the fuck would you ever UE into driving or flying when you could do that AND get bots for free on top? This seems like the most common-sense and self-evident game balance 101 level shit imaginable.