I am still toying with my SR4 Space opera. I decided only to have 2 races for the onset. gELFS and Humans. The Genetically Engineered Life forms have 3's as min for all their stats and 9's for the max costing about 40 points to buy. I need a few good free racial flaws to balance this out.


Was thinking about making them obviously not human. Shorter than normal and very pale skin/ oversized eyes. Allergy to Sulfur Dioxide?? Granted that Sulfur Dioxide is poisonous anyway in large concentrations, and is a good bit of sulfuric acid, but it is commonly occuring in populated worlds as pollution.

I gave them a triple cost for raising Edge.

this too extreme. please no roasting.

Why would you have super soldiers that are allergic to somehting common.

Why not just make up a package of bioware with a focus on gene engineering and charge it at the BP cost of getting all that bioware/geneware, potentially at a discount to the normal rate of 1 BP = 5k nuyen. Say, 7 or 8k nuyen for a BP, or give them Type O for free ontop of the enforced package

Then you're done, and you know it will be relatively balanced Justify the lower starting essence as they are 'not that human'

The Type-O would be the one thing most armies would strive for either way.
Because it makes upgrading them with bioware easier AND every soldier manufactured to be that way would be the perfect organ donor for every other soldier, of course including others with the type-o enhancement . . both of which drastically cut down on maintenance cost *g*

You wouldn't really 'aim' for it. They would obviously be very similar genetically for the mutual transplant stuff, and I imagine organs cultured for 'soldiers' would be relatively easy to get on the grey market, so they would have 'simulated' type O

Maybe bill them 100 points for a package like this

'Soldier' Type (Can relatively 'easily' get delta grade non cultured organs at the price for regular grade -> soldier organs are regular availability +2F)

Stats

4 / 9
1 / 6
1 / 6
3 / 8
1 / 5
1 / 6
1 / 5
1 / 6
1 / 6

Bioware:

Neo-EPO۩
Muscle Augmentation (1-4) 2
Muscle Toner (1-4) 2
Othoskin (1-3) 3
Platelet Factories
Synthacardium (1-3) 3
Troll's Eyes۩
Sleep Regulator
Low Oxygen Tolerance۩
Sync۩
Reakt۩
Qualia۩
PuSHeD۩
Dynomitan۩

Essentially heavily modified orks. You are getting lots of value for that 100 (to be specific, a 100 points of bioware, 20 points of race, and 30 points of qualities), so maybe pull some of it out or up the cost. The bioware isn't really optimised,

Deep Space Nine tells if that if you're going to create genetically engineered soldiers, you give them an addiction to a substance only you can create. Otherwise, they'll eventually betray you and overthrow your entire race like in Exosquad.

I actually was thinking of a way to offer certain bio/cyber packages at a slightly reduced BP cost(than if you were to buy them seperately, see skills/skill groups), but of course if you take it, you have to take the whole thing. And offering a nice list of several. Of course if you wanted more you could take them, but it would have to come flat out of your BPs/Resources for that. I guess to figure out BP costs i'd take how many BPs it would cost to actually get said stuff, and then reduce it by a small amount(rounding down maybe...so a set of ware that costs raw 32 BPs would be a 30 BP package.) There would have to be a balancing point though; or else why would a sammie/merc/chromed person take anything else? Perhaps it cuts into a portion of your normal BPs...OR said systems are tweaked to work together in such a way they cannot be upgraded unless it's at a high-grade clinic(unavailable at start and very expensive). I sort of like that second option.

Not the same thing you are talking about, but for some reason it sounded at least in the same general direction of the idea i had milling around my head.

You know why don't you just use some of the core races and change the fluff as well as allow them access to cyber/bio that they otherwise would have?

Orks become the "basic" soldier model.

Trolls are the heavy weapons platforms.

Dwarves are short and squat to be the better enabled to scurry in the bowls of the ships.

And Elves of course are just the product of wishfullment for the super rich.

I would agree with hyzamarca. If these are guys made and owned by someone, that someone is going to make a collar for them.

I would also say that because genetic engineering is n soulsot yet perfected, they run a very high chance of unforeseen long-term side effects, such as a high vulnerability to cancer and many unusual (but not rare) diseases. I would probably play them as though they are eternally under bioware overstress, and have the 'the end is near' flaw (can't remember what it's called any more).

Finally, these creatures are no longer natural. They have man-made souls and body. Their essence should be lower, probably about 2 points lower. They cannot be magical in any way. It might be worth considering them vehicles for the purpose of spells - TN is maybe 4 for a slightly processed natural item, +Body, but they don't get to resist spells, nor are they vulnerable to spells that target humans (including heal spells).

Oh yes, I would also tack on some social and mental penalties - these guys are freaks. If people find out, they will be shunned (a lot like replicants in Blade Runner). So they have a dark secret flaw. Depression would likely be very common, due to their odd upbringing. I imagine freud would have a ball with children who had no father or mother, and all their siblings just came from the same test tube.

GELFs would likely be sterile, either intentionally or not. If able to reproduce, the children would have a tremendously high rate of genetic diseases, and would trade some of the above flaws for an equal number of other real vicious flaws.

...hmm, I wish Augmented came out I was retooling RiS. A genengineered ready to go army of "super soldiers". No need to conscript from the local populace and risk depleting your pool of skilled workers to make up for casualties. Every dictator's dream.

Someone might not have a biochemical disorder and still get mentally jackscrewed (which I believe is the medical term) by their upbringing.

The other side of that is why you might not want depressed soldiers, you probably don't want them too well-adjusted either. For no other reason that its apt and in service to my point, I'll quote Capt. Speirs in Band of Brothers:

We're all scared. You hid in that ditch because you think there's still hope. But Blithe, the only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. And the sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function. Without mercy. Without compassion. Without remorse. All war depends upon it.

But because it makes for a good story, I think its fair to assume that the more complex you make their thinking processes, the better soldiers they will be but the more likely they will be to suffer from mental disorders. Let's call it "imagination". A soldier with no imagination will be able to follow explicit orders, but won't be able to adapt very well to a the chaotic and ever-changing nature of battle. You want soldiers that can function independently where they need to, otherwise you'd just make drone armies. (Drones, clones... reminds me of a movie the name of which escapes me; I think it was called The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down.) But the more you make them able to deal with that chaos and change, the more they will develop corresponding processes that might impact their effectiveness in other ways. To paraphrase Professor Farnsworth, every system goes to hell once you have to account for free will.

The scientists may be looking for that point on the graph where imagination and obedience are in perfect proportion, but science isn't an exact science. (Or to put another way, "Scientists, all about the 'Coulda', never about the 'Shoulda'.")

Actually, per canon, full clones aren't do-able, or at least not yet available. Augmentation, page 53
"...no one has ever managed to successfully generate a clone with a useful brain (in containment). ...Even slow-growth clones exhibit mental disabilities and only an animal-level intelligence at best, likely due to lack of mental stimulus from being raised in storage."

Granted, the GM decides reality in his/her own campaign.

Err, full clones are doable and have been done in SR cannon. You just need to be using actual biological equipment to decant them and provide for initial development. I believe this equipment is general reffered to as 'parents'.

But no, you can't tube/vat produce clones with useful minds.

In the last run my players did I had them investigating a research facility under seatlle (gotta love underground research bases). anyway MCT were clonning human bodies scooping out the grey matter replacing it with one bit of Bioware and a chunk of cyber ware.

The bioware component handeled all the autonomice functions to keep the meat allive whilst the cyberware was a highly advanced combo of simrig/internal commlink with a very high bandwidth DNI interface.

Basically it was a Jarhead in reverse.

they weren't overly effective against the runners, as the facility had gone into lock down and the meatdrones had begun to massacre all the base personnel (due to the players recon by fire of the air vent system) the MD's were running around in the buff with the weapons they took off base sec-guards.

My idea for the MDs would be to have them run as a network of between 5 and 10 units with rapid datasharing (similar to the SR3 battltac system (oh Small unit tactics how I miss you*) with fully upgraded commlinks and a smattering of geneware (didn't have time to implant anything else except datajacks)







* We house ruoled SUT back in at the beginning of a fight (or whilst an ambush is set up aor whilst planning a run etc) someone rolls their SUT, the hits gained act as a team edge dicepool, that lasts only for that run and that can only be used as long as the plan is being followed.

I don't have my copy of AUG handy, but is there any reason that the biodrone tech wouldn't work on a metahuman? I remember reading that section twice and not finding any reason stated why it wouldn't work, just that it wasn't mentioned.

So start out with your clone army, add the biodrone tech, and then use a "tame" AI to control them ala a hivemind. Nope, nothing there to go wrong, not at all...

Well, how about giving the GELFs some unique penalties but also offer optional positive qualities unique to GELFs that exist only to offset those penalties. For example, GELFs could start with a -2 penalty to etiquette tests when dealing with non-GELFs due to their rigid and insular social structure but could take a quality like Diplomatic or Liason Training which provides a +2 bonus in the same situations. That way they could excel in any area (as befits a superior being ) but may have to pay a bit extra to perform perfectly in areas not covered by the rank and file GELF.

Random thoughts with regards to empathy:

What if you ran it differently?

Genetic engineering optional, put them in an environment a la "Ender's Game".

What would actually happen to humans in that kind of a situation? (Entry occurs at age 6. Subject is eparated from family and the outside rather completely; religious practice banned; frequent transfers between units; forming friendships is made extremely difficult (purists believe it is banned/made impossible); Oh, and there are no nurturing or even remotely gentle adults. They're all basically assholes.)

Normally with GELFs, as a GM, I'd have no problem basically trading positives and negatives pretty easily. However, a lot of the background was written out in the first post. IMO, if I'm walking around and there's a whole race of people who are basically twice as strong, smart and sexy as I am with no extra work, I'll probably hold a grudge against them regardless as to what training they got. However, if some were like that and some seemed like 'pretty nice guys' and overall pretty normal, it would be different.

kinda like elves and other metahumans . . except that there are no "pretty nice guy" elves . . there's only pretty bois

Except far, far worse. Elves have a +1 to charisma and a few other edges. These guys have a +3 to *EVERYTHING*.

BUT! and that's the important BUT! . . they are NOT elves! . . Else they'd be the BUTT of more jokes than anyone would be able to endure in order to play one of them *g*

Whatever. Let me say, if I was going with my girlfriend to the movie theater and I saw an elf, I could at least remind her I probably make more than him, I'm certainly smarter than him, and I could at least hold my own in a fight. I'd feel uncomfortable, but not very much so. If I were in that same movie theater looking at someone who I know is bigger, stronger, faster, sexier AND smarter than me? I'd hate him, and when I do anything political, a part of me would want to make sure he can't bother me at the same movie theaters I go to ever again. I'd know in my gut my girlfriend would rather be with him than with me.

See what I mean? It's racism, and in this case, possibly justified (since it's based on a generalization which really IS true 99.99% of the time).