Cyborgs and Cybernmancy, Is Cybernmancy dead? Options

[Stormdrake]

The reason I am asking it seems to me that a cyborg brain pod can be dumped into an appropriately rigged tank and its good to go. A Cybernmancy zombie can’t match that or at least I don’t think it can. I read Augmentation and I just can’t see many if any advantages for Cyber Zombies over the Cyborgs so wanted to see if any one else could point out anything I may have missed.
Thanks!

[FrankTrollman]

Basically a rigged tank can have a non-cyborg who just happens to have a vehicle control rig put into it. At the large end, the advantage of the cyborg is that you save approximately 60 kilograms of weight off your vehicle by virtue of having a containment unit instead of a whole body.

A cyberzombie, on the other hand, is a human sized, human shaped killing machine who is very efficient and effective at killing spirits and other magical threats. That's something that a man in the passenger seat of a vehicle really doesn't do well.

So really I understand where Aztechnology is coming from in making Cyberzombies. They do something (fight spirits) that other expenditures of piles of money can't touch. Cyborgs though... I'm not really sure what the point is. They don't really seem to do anything that would justify their very high cost.

Anything they can do can be done with non-super secret black ops techniques out of the basic book. It strikes me as a technological dead end.
-Frank

[Stahlseele]

by the way . . what happens, if an essence-sucker or blood spirit with that power drain or what it was called uses said power on a cyber-zombie? does the cyber-zombie actually get stronger ?

[Whipstitch]

The big one is that Cyborgs actually aren't all that terribly buff because the use the attributes of the drone they're in. That's pretty good, but that also means that in many cases they're essentially equivalent to a fancy, expensive, less expendable rigger drone. By contrast, Cyberzombies are big crazy technological death mobiles that partially counter magic by their very existance.

EDIT
Pfft, Frank beat me to it. I really ought to stop opening up multiple threads if I'm not going to refresh each of them and double check before replying.

This post has been edited by Whipstitch: Nov 2 2007, 05:42 PM

[Ancient History]

Cyborgs in spaaaaaaace...

[Moon-Hawk]

Could cyborgs be made to not suck if you just dropped the bit about charging double for their mental attributes?

[Eryk the Red]

That's what i would do. It's not really a strict rule, it's just a suggestion given if you were to try to make a cyborg PC.

The thing to remember is that cyborgs are not designed to be balanced PCs. You need to play with the balance if you actually want to allow a cyborg PC. But the real problem comes from the fact that there's just not enough options for vehicles and drones yet. Cyborgs are really just a GM's toy right now. After Arsenal, cyborgs will more likely be viable as PCs.

[Buster]

Cyborgs suck, cyberzombies still rule. I'm sure (or rather I hope) once Arsenal comes out with some decent drone enhancements, that assessment will balance out. The only real advantage a cyborg gets for all his drawbacks is a +1 to all Vehicle tests and never needs to spend a complex action to pilot his body.

Check out my thread on the cyborg I was able to make with a generous GM's allowance of buying the CCP with 50 BP just as you can buy a metarace. The only real advantage is that you get to start the game with Skillwires 5 instead of Skillwires 3. Even with that GM allowance, the chargen cyborg is still sub-par. Getting rid of the double cost of Mental attributes would go a long way to making cyborgs not-suck.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=19554

You can also check out my "We can rebuild him...but I don't want to spend a lot of money" thread about how cheap you can build a cyberzombie.

[Ryu]

The main advantage of a cyborg is fast adaptability. You get a superintelligent combat drone control system that requires no wireless connectivity. The body costs less, as R&D gets paid by the drones department and economies of scale are better (for the same reason). Don´t think "weak human", think "cool AI".

That said, I still think most players will prefer to play a rigger.

[Stahlseele]

[Buster]