So ... a full body transplant would use the following stats:

Unless its an anthroform body, meta-human brain and cybereyes.

That's true, but it means that you'll be stuck in the same body unless you have someone with both Biotech and Drone B/R skills to help you. This defeats one of the major purposes of the biopod, the ability to clock 9-5 as a multi-ton- HMGs-and-SAMs mounted in-every-orafice Death Machine then go home and relax in your can't-tell -the-differance-if-you-have-sex-with-it realistic anthroform body.

Because its more fun, of course. Its also a good way to get information. Seduction is the most classic of all espionage techniques.

The multi-ton death machine can't seduce. It can't have any normal social interaction at all. It can't even fi tthrough most doos. But, it does have its uses. The ability to switch between a perfect body specificly designed to be attractive and a heavily armored combat body gives the best of both worlds. The fact that the biopoded Face can have a social body of any gender and race combonation makes it even more versitle. If you want to infiltrate the Orc Underground, all you need to do is get an Orc anthroform.

There's no essence loss for amputation. So long as no organs are replaced with cyberware the essence loss should be minimal.
The house rules I linked to state .25 for a necessary biomoniter.

Rulewise it's different however ... You simply don't loose Essence when you loose a limb (or more). The only impact on essence occurs once you make some unnatural additions that are directly "linked" to the rest of your body (not just neurally despite of the description in M&M) => Yes, you could remove the brain and spinal cord and put into a nutrition tank and only loose Essence for a datajack ...

That's pretty much how a certain person called Roxborough ended up ...

But, the anthroform drone isn't a replacement, it is a vehicle.Just walking in it requires a anthroform vehicle skill and it is subject to rigging rules.
Sayng that it requires essence is like saying that a blind, dead, mute, and quadrapaligic rigger with a body of 1 should have to pay essence to directly jack into a giant anthroform robot. The brain in a pod is little more than a blind/deaf/mute/quadraplagic rigger qith a body of 1. The only difference is that it's smaller, so it can fit into a human-sized drone.

Actually Robocop (at least the original movie version) still was quite "organic". I.e he still needed to eat, had his original face, one eye and most of the head etc. Guess he was close to the SR possible version.


Birdy

Actually not even a Cyberzombie. Using Alphaware it's a close call but Betaware should be able to do "Murphy" (The Peter Weller Version)

All he had is:

Pair of obviouse Cyberarms
Pair of obviouse Cyberlegs
Obvious Cybertorso
Obvious Cyberskull
Strength Enhancements


Datajack (The "Dataspike")
Cybereyes with [Actually only 1]
Thermo
Opticam
Image Link

Cyberears with
Recorder

Smartlink
Cyberholster
Biomonitor
Some Memory

One could debate a tactical computer (The trick-shot scene) but I make this a Smartlink-II

Birdy

Actually that's not right, murphy had a lot more cyber. Get ready for a real geek thing gere, I read the book Robocop which went into somewhat more detail.

His cyber would have been:

Arms x2 (W/ str enhancement)
Legs x2 (w/one cyber holster w/DNI and str enhancement)
Torso
Skull
Ears x2 (ears were replaced)
--Select Sound Filter
--Hearing Amp
--Recorder
--Voice stress analyzer (not in book)
Eyes (NOT cyber replacement, those are his original eyes. inside there was:)
--Electronic zoom
--Recorder
--Thermo
--Low Light
--Image link
Tactical Computer (heavy essence here)
Smartlink
Datajack (The dataspike, which in the book wasn't a weapon, it ended different)
Headware Memory (unspecified amount)
Biomonitor
Math SPU (Ballistic SPU)

That's all I remember right off.

Incidentally that's NOT his real jaw. They made the conscious decision to make him look human, and reconstructed Murpohy's jaw (and most of his head) out of kevlar laminated titanium bones then overlaying skin over it. Shooting his jaw would have done jack. When he said "they build me to honor him" he was actually telling the truth.

Those are also his real eyes, it went out of the way to say that, all the implants were put in his meat eyes. I'm out to lunch on reflex enhancements but I don't think he had any, but in SR he'd need it.

he definitely had a tactical computer. In the warehouse he was prelocking his targets before he actually started shooting. It was stated in the book he also had a dedicated ballistics processor to boot.

He's pretty much a zombie. he even had the flashbacks ect...