One of the sometimes often over looked aspects of a cyberpunk setting is the use of drones. Some of that may be that a lot of early writing of genre really pre-dates the usage of drones. Much like most scifi classics never saw the idea of the cellphone coming. Now that they are here we need to look at where they will be used at to put the into the various worlds.
This time I will be talking about what is going on right now. North Dakota has become the first state in the US to legalize the use of drones carrying less then lethal arms to be used by the police. The bill passed does a few other things likes completely prohibits lethal arms and makes it where the drones cannot be used to collect evidence without a proper warrant.
Here is a link to an article on said bill.
However warrants can be looked over if there is known criminal activity taking place. Such as a gunman holding up in a shootout with the police, etc. The 'known' part gets kind of sketchy from time to time. In a cyberpunk world it would get even sketchier meaning they would go even further.
So police drones would become a very obvious part of police activity. Some of the non-lethal arms could even include the classic Arasaka Nauseator from Cyberpunk 2020 making it a flying, moving form of crowd control/dispersal. A mass effect device that would get whoever just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time as well.
So the next time you have the cops in your game be sure to give them some back up. Lots of it. In the form of drones the character may not be able to do anything about. Especially once AI is introduced and they may not even need a human pilot to guide the drones.
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