So I just started playing and decided to do a bit of deking but found out its retarded.

You are limited to 3 weapon slots. So...if you dek and have even 1 drone that limits you to either a gun only or a melee only. You can't have a gun, a sword, a dek and a drone. I think this is lame. Why are drones/deks held in weapon slots???

I'm OK being limited to one guy and one melee weapon...but to one or the other..no fun...

I read there was a way to add up to 5 slots total with gamevars but gamevars is no longer accessible in debug (apparently)....

Is there any other workaround/way??

I guess I'll have to reroll my character and give up on dekking. Was having so much fun doing it though. I can never see playing a dekker- EVER...since it takes all your weapon slots and basically expects you to slap anything that attacks you with your bare hands. How stupid.

Rank 3 in Close Combat\Ranged Combat skills unlocks new weapon slots. That said though, hybrids don't really shine in Shadowrun, so you're better off specializing in either of them rather than trying to do both.

For me its not about munchin numbers. it's flavor. I wnt to run around the matrix, play RC shootup and back a hacker and a shotgun.....Even if that makes me meh at all of them..it's about the fun and roleplaying.

Have you looked into cyber weapons? I'm pretty sure that the close-combat chrome - such as blades or the mono-filament whip - don't take up a weapon slot. At least not from memory - could be wrong about that since I haven't played this in a while.

BTW chrome close-combat implants are only available in SR:Hong Kong. If you don't have HK then there might be some mods out there that add them into Dragonfall/DMS.

Good luck being able to afford that chrome by the way - it's not exactly cheap as it is, and if you're decking AND running drones AND want a ranged weapon as well... Well you'll have some fun trying to optimise that setup... ;)

I'm not a fan of min-maxing either, just saying you might not find enough karma points to do everything you want.

OK update...

Well I settle for hacking, 1 drone, and a shotgun

I wanted to have an axe to hack on stuff...but oh well...

:(

I didn't need to be good with the axe...just wanted to hit stuff with it now and a gain, or at least swing it...

hacking is fun I found...so dekker is fun...

The little RC robots get a little boring after a bit and I might as well hire a rigger if I really want one of those......

So when I get on to the other games (just playing the first one now) like HK etc. I think I'll just go with a dekker that uses a shot-gun and axe, then I can forgoe the little robot.

Returns is more generous when comes to karma points. In Dragonfall/Hong Kong you are better off just sticking with decking/melee or decking/ranged.

Also in Dragonfall/HK you have a team of your own.

Anyway, In dragonfall you may get away with shotgun and axe since you can find quite a lot of consumables on the missions but in HK it can be a waste of $$$.

I always preferred a rifle for my decker. So I could stand away from the badguys, but still have a good effect on the battle. You have to get right in there, with a shotgun.

The first two games had a bug I took advantage of for my character: for certain types of weapon, picking up a weapon would shift my slots and make room, giving me 4 "weapons". This allowed me to have 2 drones, a deck, and a gun for backup. For HK, I played a completely different kind of character so I don't know if the bug still works, but, as Glory proved in DF, claw implants are awesome, and, as mentioned above, don't take up a weapon slot.

That is what I call the "Ghost Slot". Always works. Although it is a bug it is actually better than intended imo.
Here is how: have a deck and three weapon slots filled (needs Combat skill 3). Pick up a weapon on a run (Drug Pit, Humanis or MKVI) and it gets shifted into the "Ghost Slot". That means you can use it as normal but one of your weapons won't be displayed in inventory. To change weapons just replace weapons in your slots: afterwards the once hidden weapon will show up with another weapon now being hidden.
It only works with Ranged Combat 4, because all weapons you can pick up on runs require Ranged Combat 4.

This definitely still works in current version (GoG v2.0.9) of Dragonfall. Don't know about other Shadowruns. I played with exactly the same config as above (plus for some time with a deck, a drone and two guns).

I very much agree it's pretty lame that deck counts as a weapon though. It's a piece of equipment just for decking - you can't bash anyone's head with it or whatever, right? Would understand if it took one of the grenade/medkit slots, not the weapon slot!

Anyways, like Zadok_Allen said, you need at least Ranged Combat 4 to unlock the "ghost slot", otherwise the picked weapon won't go into weapon slot but into the stash instead.

Changing weapons afterwards is still awkward however. You have to go to the stash closet and randomly change weapons in some (visible) slots, then step away and check if the weapon you wanted to swap became visible. So you definitely need at least one surplus weapon for this shuffle to work. And sometimes it takes quite a few tries to hit just the config you wanted. Dunno if that's possible in other Runs, but AFAIK you can neither buy nor pick claws anywhere in Dragonfall...

Well, you don't want your character to be able to jack in and still be a fully functional character outside (but, IIRC, once you get more AP, you can use that extra AP outside, and still get more action inside as well; I think I used my drones while jacked in; which I guess makes some sense), but when not jacked in, the deck should just be sitting there. On the other hand, given the apparent size of those decks, it should displace a gun. How do you sling a giant deck and two guns over your shoulders at the same time w/o some kind of special backpack frame? It's the drone controls that shouldn't occupy much physical space, especially 2 vs. 1.

It's a new feature in HK. IIRC, you can get one of 3 different kinds of implants w/o taking up a weapon slot (but taking up valuable karma instead, since you need to invest in a new skill category). I only mentioned DF because that's where I first saw it (Glory is actually better than what you can get in HK, since she also has that adrenaline pump, which takes forever to get anything similar in HK, plus if you take the "evil" path in her side quest, she gets even more powerful).

Note that I'm just speaking from memory; at the moment I can't play games on my current machine due to driver issues.

Exactly. When you jack into Matrix, you can't do anything outside it, regardless of your AP - in fact your character's icon is greyed out during battles. But you can control bots and still move/shoot if you have enough AP though (esp. when your character gets 3 AP and the adrenaline pump). And that is just what I wanted to do (thanks to the "ghost slot" bug, I could and did).

So deck indeed just sits there, when you aren't in the Matrix, thus it can't count as a weapon. (Well, it is [sort of] used also to mark a target. Which is in my experience kinda useless anyway, as the target mark sticks ["hits"] maybe in one of four cases or even less. Besides, marking target by typing on the deck is just an animation of an otherwise inherent decker's ability - not weapon as such.)

Huh, if you want to discuss logic of the giant deck, I really must disagree. What the hell is a "deck" anyway? A sort of computer, right? With a keyboard (WTF!?!) - when in fact you have a datajack in your head, fer cryin' out loud!.

In reality, you need a much weaker computer to connect to Internet (aka Matrix) than to control robots - even when those bots carry a lot of computing power themselves. Not to mention computing (and electrical) power for controlling artificial limbs... Therefore:

a) keyboard as such is completely superfluous (how many today's devices still use a physical KB anyway?)

b) CPU, data storage and a jack I/O interface (which is all that is really needed for a "deck") could neatly fit inside the datajack itself (or in the worst case, a pocket-sized box), so there is no real need to trog that huge brick around. Different levels of decking could be implemented simply as "abilities to use more complex software packages" - which you'd buy with karma - plus the software itself, which you'd buy with monies.

Having the keyboard just for the animation of a decker typing on it is quite silly IMHO.

However, if developers decided to implement decking with a closet-sized keyboard, I can live with that.
Yet it is still no excuse for using up a weapon slot!

Or if it does count as a weapon, there should be four weapon slots, and that's it (perhaps buying a datajack+deck should unlock the fourth or whatever). Where's the logic in forcing a decker/rigger into using only drones as weapons, yet still have free APs? S/he needs a gun as well.

BTW, if we're trying to be realistic about considering carrying such (illogical and unnecessary) bulk around, where does even larger bulk of Eiger's weapons disappear then? When she gets the SMG, she trogs three (3!!) bulky rifles with her - yet when not in combat mode, they are nowhere to be seen at all. She must have some spacious pockets indeed! :) (Either that, or some magic Tarsus-like shrinking device in them...)

So in fact, she has four weapons (including fists), yet your character (not counting the "ghost slot") is only allowed three (including the deck!). Why?

Hence, the "ghost slot" bug actually implements what game design itself failed and is therefore (IMHO) a legitimate way to play the game.

If you need it that badly, you can always pick up unarmed and save you a slot.