First Step: Picking a race

  When selecting a race, you want to pick one out that gives plenty of quickness, int, and will. Quickness and int set up your reaction, and int, quick, and will sets up your combat pools. Reaction is what a lot of your driving will be used for when rigging. Even if you have 0 skill, this can be plenty to drive any vehicle or drone regardless of the handling. Not to mention will resists dumpshock, which happens if your rig ends up being destroyed. Races that are viable include: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, Night-One, Wakyambi, Hobgoblin, Menehune, and Koborokuru. For the purposes of this introduction, I will be selecting the Night-one race.

Second Step: Points and Cyber/Bioware

  This area is probably the most problematic  because rigger cyberware takes up a lot of essence, and is extremely expensive. You will want to put 30 points into resources, giving you 1 million nuyen to start with. I would then put 24 points into stats, and the rest into skills (27). My stats look like this, 1 bod, 8 qui, 4 str, 6 int, 3 cha, 6 will, reaction 7. This is not a super ideal starting score, but it’ll be enough to allow us to progress forward with nice reaction. Stats are much more enexpensive to train than skills. For my skills, I went with the following spread. 

Mounted Gunnery (innate / rank 6) Electronics (proficient / rank 3) Negotiation (innate / rank 6) Street Etiquette (innate / rank 6) Driving/Car (introduced / rank 1) BR/Drone (proficient / rank 3) BR/Car (practiced / rank 2)

  You only seem to need 1 point in a driving skill in order to rig vehicles of that type, thus the one point in car. You don’t really need maxed out br skills to make repairs, even when the drone/vehicle is wrecked. Not starting out with a weapon skill makes the early game a little difficult, but it is very much manageable. 

The cyberware and bioware I would recommend going with is as follows, Recommended Cyberware: a boosted reflexes III -alpha Essence: 2.24 a reaction enhancer -alpha Essence: 0.24 a datajack -alpha Essence: 0.16 a vehicle control rig II - alpha Essence: 2.40 Recommended Bioware: a synaptic accelerator II - cultured Rating: 2 Body Index: 1.00 a cerebral booster II - cultured Rating: 2 Body Index: 0.80 muscle toner IV Rating: 4 Body Index: 1.60 enhanced articulation Rating: 1 Body Index: 0.60

Third Step: Picking out starting equipment.

  At this stage, I have 128,000 nuyen. You will want to purchase a Toyota ECR-3 Remote Control Deck. After you have this deck, you can go on a shopping spree for various types of weapons that you will be using later on to mount onto your drones. Be sure to grab some attachments as well, silencers, suppressors are all good to have around as a rigger. Try to get weapons that have open barrels so you can fit the silencers and suppressors onto them. I don’t think things like laser sights and smartlinks are important when using mounted weapons. I seem to get by just fine without the use of them, but I haven’t done much testing. I would grab all the usual stuff here as well. Pocket secretary, phone, electronics kit, bag, some clothing. I’d skip armor, also grab ammunition for the weapons you’ve gathered. Personally, I would go with a couple colt M-23, a couple street sweeper shotguns, and a couple guardian pistols. You can go with the light machineguns, but ammo is expensive, and goes quick. You can always pick these up later in the game as well. A full list of my inventory is as follows.

<eyes> a pair of thermographic goggles <worn about body> a Secure jacket <worn on body> a plated armor vest <worn underneath> a form-fitting body armor III <worn on arms> a pair of forearm guards <worn on legs> a pair of extremely baggy dark blue jeans <worn on feet> A pair of thick soled real leather hiking boots, restrung (2) a sound suppressor (2) a steel silencer (2) a Savalette Guardian (2) a Street Sweeper shotgun (2) a Colt M-23 A handheld Nav-Dat GPS system A Toyota ECR-3 Remote Control Deck a wrist phone a pocket secretary The Title to a Ford Americar a Neophyte Guild housing subsidy card (70,000 Nuyen) 500 normal heavy pistol ammo 250 normal assault ammo 250 normal shotgun ammo. Fourth Step: Getting started as a rigger

  The easy part is over, now begins the hard part. You will need to grind up your nuyen to around $35,000. This will allow you to purchase the most armored drone available, as well as the mountpoints you will use to arm the drone with weapons. First I would drop off everything in your Americar and get to work. Once you have the money needed, you can ask around to find out where the drone shop is if you don’t already know, as well as where to purchase mount points. You will want one external hardpoint, and one firm point. You can only out fit one of each of these onto the drone. Though you may be able to install three firm points. Another item you will want to purchase is a vehicle workshop.
  After you have gotten the    GM-Nissan Doberman and the mountpoints, you can either purchase your own workshop in order to install them, or locate a publicly available workshop. The syntax to install the mounts is ‘upgrade my.doberman hard/firm’ Once the mounts have been installed, you can attach the weapons to the drone with ‘attach my.doberman (weapon name) (mount number)’ For example, ‘attach my.doberman m-23 0’. If you have more than one mount of the drone, you can reload the ammunition hoppers with ‘reload (drone name) (mount number)’ while holding a box of compatible ammunition. You can adjust the mode the weapon fires by wielding it and setting it with the mode command, then attaching it afterwards. Be sure the gun is empty when you attach it, otherwise it will reset once the clip has been emptied.

Step 5: Controlling Your Drone

  You will want to use the subscribe command on your drone as soon as you get it, as well as lock it so no one else can access it. Once this is done, you can control it and operate it as you would if you were driving an actual vehicle. Use the return command to return your consciousness back to your body. Use the target command to target others with your mounts. Some things to be aware of are:

You cannot control a drone or vehicle remotely while in a vehicle. When you fire weapons while remote controlling a rig, your body may be attacked by law enforcement or any other nearby allies. Be sure to leave your body somewhere safe. If you do not set your speed to idle before targeting something with the mounts, the drone or vehicle will continue to attempt to ram the target. This can cause damage when otherwise it may not take any damage, so it’s best to set the speed to idle, then target. Aliases will be very helpful in all aspects of rigging.