Creating a Plastic Fantastic Lover, How can I build an android? Options

[FanGirl]

I've been struck by a brand-new character idea—a shy young hacker named Marty, who spends his hard-earned cred on upgrades and maintenance for his robot "girlfriend," which he built himself. I intend for Eve (as I'll call her until I can think of a better name) to be a fairly sophisticated gynoid; Marty designed her as a doting and supportive helpmate, and I think she’d meet the task well. Of course, she would be incapable of real thought or emotion, but she would look, speak, and act fairly realistically, and she’d always act in a convincingly sweet and attentive manner towards him.

I therefore have two inter-related questions:

1. How much nuyen should Eve cost at Marty’s chargen?
Since there aren’t any androids that I know of in the gear listings, I need to figure out a price for a homemade android. I figured that I could buy an entire “body” made of cyber-parts and add in an expensive commlink (with lots of software), but somehow it doesn’t seem enough.

2. What kinds of upgrades could Marty give her to make her “smarter” and more realistic?
Adding more and better knowsofts is the most obvious choice, but I know that software alone won’t “humanize” her.

Any input would be very much appreciated. Thanks much!

[PBTHHHHT]

...

it'd might be cheaper to have someone with a personafix chip... with the specifications that marty would want.

[Gothic Rose]

[Abbandon]

commlink -> sim module -> virtual person

Please say your not gonna use the android for battle or anything?

What kinda sex toys would they have in the future ?? Instead of making her out of cybernetic parts i would make her skeletal structure out of a medium or large size drone. I dont really know what you mean by having her be more human. You can have a list of hobbies or interests she has and you could make a program for her to randomly pick one to focus on each day.

I dont know though. I think if they was allowed everyone would become a rigger who gets to control a terminator. Or the game would turn into Bladerunner.

A hacker should be making enough money to acquire the services of a joygirl for a long period of time.

[hobgoblin]

a human size antroform with special autosofts should do the trick. put a blond wig on here and you have a excuse for when she dont understand the orders ;)

[FanGirl]

[Crusher Bob]

Touch Link, a high level agent, several skill softs. It's the future, she dosen't need a body.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm...

You know, this is sounding more and more like a DM's sandbox. :)

After all, what is "sentience." Where's the line beween an autopilot soft and an SK and an AI? Would you agree that an AI would be sentient?

What about a Ghost in the Machine that siezed control of Eve? Hey, that'd be an idea. He could use Eve to give some girl runner trapped as a Ghost in the Machine a body again. :)

Oh, and as for synthetic sex toys...

www.fleshlight.com

That's 2006. Imagine what they'd have in 64 years. I'd expect that if he assembled her from prosthetics designed to look and feel real, they would in fact look and feel real. Don't skimp - go for Alphaware non-obvious cyberlimbs, the whole enchelada.

[Kyoto Kid]

,,..damn, the character Harper (who I stole as an NPC) from the vid show Andromeda already tried that by creating Rami into whom he programmed too much common sense for his own good.

[knasser]

Cloned body, vat grown from the beginning and genetically no higher brain functions. Approx: 150,000 :nuyen:
Skillwires and basic feed yourself & follow instructions chips: 10,000 :nuyen:
Cost of bribing your friends to shut up about it once they find out: More than you could ever afford.

A built from scratch robot would probably cost more than the biological approach. If you really wanted that, I'd work off summing the cost of all the cyber limbs plus torso and skull and then, say 30%. You'll then need to add some sort of control system, probably some sort of rigger control system with a decent rated pilot. That's your base system. As a GM I'd charge extra for cosmetic enhancements.

But maybe there are things like this mass-produced in which case you can buy off the rack. I think competition from Simsense would keep the market costs quite low.

The role-playing when your hacker finally falls for a real girl could be good though. :)

[Kyoto Kid]

....Think Bladerunner.

....Think Replicants

Better than Human....

[Abbandon]

Can i be the first corp guy through the door/window into marty's house/place after the corps track him down and raid his place and i get to blow the head off or face off of his doll??

[Slump]

Don't forget to throw in an internal combustion engine. Nothing like a girlfriend who sucks diesel.

[DireRadiant]

[Phobos]

IIRC Novatech, MCT and probably others have offered Pleasure Drones since the mid-60s, prices for basic models started at about 20k, more than that if you wanted a custom build one or one of the licensed celebrity models.

If you want to build one yourself, you need access to a Cybernetic and Robotics Facilities or you'll have to seperately order custom parts - in both cases expect about five times the normal price for your toy ...

oh, just in case someone asks : it's stated in the fluff part of one of the 3rd ed. sourcebooks, but don't ask me to look up the page reference.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Page?

[Ankle Biter]

The problem with this is that if you can build eve, the homebound human love doll, then Captain Munckhing can build Caine the Antrho death mech o doom. Game balance is the big problem with robotic anthroforms.

The reason I think that humanoform drones have so little info is that a drone rigger with high levels of gunnery and control autosofts would have a big advantage over meat runner opposition, with minimal personal risk. Especially when they start dropping gamma scoploamine and 7-11 grenades (or whatever that nasty goop was called).

They can be used as very effective suicide bombers, cos you can load them with all sorts of nasty and they will walk up to the mark and detonate without even reaching for a trigger. Using them as a waldo allows a Rigger to use all of their hardware abilities at range, and possibly with better eyes and more nimble fingers than their own, not to mention the silly initiative they get from being full VR. All in all it gives too much opportunity for game breakage.

[Phobos]

more or less OT :
Well, the problem with Mr. Munchkin exists anyway. He could do such stuff with Rigger 3, and he will be able to do even worse when Rigger 4 is finally published - and until then he can just point to FanPro (Quote : "Note that the Shadowrun, Fourth Edition will replace the Shadowrun, Third Edition rules set. Source material from previous editions will still be compatible." and build his contraptions using Rigger 3.
But this is not Mr. Munchkin, AFAIK, so why not help poor Marty get his RoboGirl on the track ? Though in 2070 the virtual pendant is much more common (what a surprise a prices of only a few hundred nuyen for the basic versions), the physical versions should probably have made a few leaps in technology towards even more "realistic" and "user-friendly" versions :D

Back to topic :
So, if you really wanted to work out every detail of your baby, use the construction rules for Anthroforms from Rigger 3 for the hardware side of the problem, then use SR4 to calculate the cost for commlink hardware and software (+ Skillsofts, Knowsofts ...)
Better yet : simply ask your GM - (s)he has to approve anyway - and use the price range for comercial models as a guideline when bargaining ;)

[Crusher Bob]

Well the price for the modern equivalent (NSFW) is 6,499 USD plus shipping (500 USD for CONUS).

What's to stop Mr. Munch from using a steel lynx instead of a much more expensive anthro drone?

[PBTHHHHT]

Heh, reminds me of the time a coworker showed me the patent application for the sex doll that has a servomotors built in the waist area so you can have the gyrating hips. I kid you not. There's an entire area with examiners who focus entirely on 'entertainment devices' applications.

[ShadowDragon8685]

That thing is creepily lifelike. If I ever win a lottery, I'm gonna havta, just out of morbid curiosity if nothing else. :P

Yeah. By 2070, she should be doing pretty well, especially if the person who owns and maintainances her is a clever rigger with medical and anatomical knowledge.


The real rub is in trying to figure out how she reacts to things. You could fill a mainframe with canned reponses, but it would be better to design a learning system and let her go from there. Of course, then you're essentially growing an AI, but... :)

[GB1]

/rant
It's funny how when someone asks HOW to make/do something, there's always others that tell them to do something else!
"Don't do what you want for the pure enjoyment of it, no one would/should to that. You should do this... <insert min/max here>" :P
(this is a slight at the internet as a whole, not just Dumpshock)
/end rant



Topic:
IMO: even though Sim sex would be better (or enslaving someone and rewriting their personality. Yuk!) there still may be a market for android girls/guys.
For example: Here in Toronto we've had DSL for about 15 years (The core downtown has been fully wireless on the street for 2 years).
Anyone can use the 'net to get any free porn they want. Meanwhile porn DVD's are still kicking hollywood's ass in sales, and there's even a porn theater walking distance from my place.

Not everyone wants, has the tech savvy, or coin, to get the "latest and greatest".
Most of us know someone that hates computers or can't program a VCR (like my mom, lol)

And some of us still paper/dice roleplay when not playing a MMORPG or RPG video game.


http://realdoll.com/
Started, and still owned, by a husband/wife team that used to do f/x for legit hollywood movies.
(While i would never drop $7,000us on a sex toy, someone must be. :D )

If these guys team up with, say, Sony's robot division and Playboy, (or even NASA for long term flights to other planets, etc.) imagine what they could have in 60 years! wow!

[Lagomorph]

In sr3, I think in either SOTA64 or in Sprawl Survival Guide, they had a short blurb on athroform butlers. IIRC they were 3-5k. Since he's a hacker, he rewrite the software they use and get a contact to do the body work.

edit:

the whole purchasing cyber limbs and torso and head would work, but those are all designed to function while attached to humans, so a lot of the work and cost involved in those wouldn't really be representative of a human shell for a robot. Though I could see it end up being more lifelike that way.

[MikeTrevin]

It's worth noting ( as someone else already did in this thread ) that it is already possible to build a 'Terminator'. Has been at least since Rigger 3; I can't speak for before then. While such a machine would not show a human level of intelligence, it would at least be capable enough to really, really ruin your day. On the flipside... they weren't more Uberiffic ™ than any other drone with the same body/armor and one or two manipulator claws.

I think the big question here is how to give the drone enough personality to -seem- human for an extended period of time. Ignoring questions of sentience ( since that's not even the goal here ), that leads to the question- just HOW smart is a drone? Considering they are often referred to as 'dog brains', I'd be inclined to say not much. And Shadowrun doesn't -very- clearly indicate what kind of personality limits you could expect from a drone or Agent.

If it does say it somewhere, I missed it. Apologies in advance if so.

Since we seem to keep looking back to modern day times, however, the solution may be in programming. Some people burn a lot of effort into making programs that can pass a 'Turing test', but we've made no real inroads in the area.

http://iniaes.org/ for an example of what I'm talking about.

In 2060/70 though, we have sophisticated S-Ks that have become AIs, and the S-Ks themselves are probably sometimes at least 'smart' enough to mimic human behaviour. We've also got the advantage of catchwords like 'fuzzy logic' to play with when making our neat toys. However, S-Ks are specifically beyond the ability of a Shadowrunner to create; and again, there was nothing that said much about the personality of even a superwhamadayne fuzzy-logic Robot 5 'brain'.

Long story short- the body is not a problem. Indeed, making the body is laughable- she CAN be made.

But can she be smart? As a GM, I'd probably rule not- that seems like something better suited for large corporate programming teams, and less for a single home-bound shadowrunner.

Besides, I like working the electric sentience angle in my campaigns. My toys! Mine! Runners are supposed to discover them, not make them for themselves right off the bat! :)

[Shrike30]

If I were your GM, I'd let Marty pick up the gynoid as a Loyalty 6, Connections 0 contact.

This is a flavor element for the character, not a walking, talking, cybergun-slinging death machine. If I had to assign stats, it'd basically be a fully-cyborged "character" (using the baseline 3/3/3/3 of all of the cyberlimbs/torso/head, with the bonuses for multiple limbs/torso/head figured in). Redline a commlink (that cannot be stripped out for other things, since it's a custom job), add skillwires, and pick a few skillsofts that "she'd" have (things like Ettiquette, Massage (Backrubs), Con, Cooking, Cleaning... hey, you said "helpmate"). Say that the copy protection on these is "unbreakable"... that is, it's basically a bunch of his custom-written software, that wouldn't actually work in a human.

If Marty wanted to add stuff that didn't make as much sense for the background (cyberweapons, combat/hacking skills, etc), then I'd actually charge him for it, since it might actually have a noticeable effect on the game. As is, however, "she's" just a very loyal (and kinda weird) contact.