So Spectre, you're not gonna be having full combat versions of these AC's then? Because that's the thing which I'd have thought would be driving such a multi-billion nuyen line of research. I know it's what I've used in my own campaign for my Sentinels, since money rules and the corps will only do something if pressed or if it serves the bottom line. How do your AC's serve the bottom line..... that's the question which will define a lot of this. Is CHA important enough in a combat droid to preserve, or at least take extra effort to preserve.

Just my 2 nuyen

You mean the Megas aren't doing this so that 'Runners can explore the C3P0 look?
Just kidding. It's so Runners can explore the Cromebook Dragoon look.

Still just kidding. Actually, I think that combat is not a profitable enough reason to go to this trouble. A smart drone would be easier and more controllable than going to this much trouble for a soldier. And a lot cheaper if it gets trashed.

The best reason to do this sort of work is so that you could send 'experts' on long-term deployments in hazardous environments like the outer solar system, where life-support systems are too bulky and expensive to carry for the kind of deployment time we are talmking about, but telepresence is too slow to be effective in practice. Maybe for asteroid mining operations?

Bear in mind this conversion discussed on this thread is a one-way procedure. It's not like the subject can retire from being a robot.

Okay, I'll admit those are probably better applications - but still, you're looking at the bottom line of the corp or corps who've researched and developed this.

Which was my point, it's for nuyen, not for the betterment of mankind. And that will have an impact on the final product, both in form, function and what's been lost.

Canid13

The Megas are trying to head that way. But this is a big step. The problem with advancing cybernetics research has always been the rejection by the spirit of too much ware. It's at this point that the megas are finally realizing that you can't really profit from cybermancy. There's just too much degredation, maintenance, overhead, and just flat out risk to really return the investment. The top equipment, best surgeons and mages cna do allthe work, and the best candidate can still wander his way out of his body purely by chance. So they went back to the drawing board and came up with the AC construct.

Lantzer is on the right track regarding the megas desire to develop this technology. Cyberzombies are still human somewat and still fall prey to human frailties(lack of air, lack of blood, excess of poison gasses or liquids. But a fully function AC can walk into a biohazard area that is beyond leathal to normal humans, and work precise accurate clean up as if the area wasn't infected. No chem suits, no constant sharps protection, no monitoring air or maybe radiation levels. Not to mention the body can be fitted with strength enhancers to remove requiring heavy lift vehicles that also have to be cleaned and sterilized after every use.

Once the megas get the basic concepts down and work out the kinks, specialty robot bodies will emerge that will be less human looking than these. But right now, those ideas are barely in the concept stage in the world i'm playing in. Why design a robot body to work effortlessly in zero gravity and handle space walks wthout a suit, when you can barely get the robot bodies to function on earth problem free?

Okay Spectre, so you're working up the very first prototypes? And you're going to give them to PC's??

Because as Lantzer and I have both said, profit will drive this forward. Do you really think Richard Villiers or Damien Knight, or Lofwy(sp?), will give a damn about the form of your androids other than the most expedient for the job at hand.

Sure, in pure research terms, a purely anthropomorphic shape which is as close to metahuman norms will be the body of choice, simply because it makes the scientists feel more comfortable. But once anything beyond the very first prototypes is constructed, they'll have the form the scientists or, more likely, engineers think they should have in order to best do their jobs.

And since you can give the android body plating and a smartlink and since it's already got high initiative and physical attributes, an early test would probably include combat of some kind.

My own Sentinels are designed for urban pacification (I know, lots of Robocop inspiration here) - since the governments of the world want their Z zones back, but the difference between the two is gonna be the person inside the android body - the control software if you like. Is it Combat/Urban or Combat/CQB?

Form is dictated by function, and what penalties will apply is going to be dictated by this as well. Does a megacorp care if their androids who're gonna work with other androids in mining an asteroid have high charisma or have other benefits of being normal humans? Pffft, like hell they will. It'll be down to the bottom line, pure and simple.

And your AC's don't seem to be driven by profit, by the fluff of the universe, but by rules which will govern their operation in the game mechanics.

Canid13, That's what this post was originally designed to determine. I am looking for the rules that will be imposed by the GM onto players who choose to play these.

Now, to answer you other questions, yes I do plan to allow PC's to play this with my GM's okay. All they need to do is save up money, get access to a delta grade clinic with a full suite UV Matrix host and PAB unit, save up more money, buy the body, save up even MORE money and have the operation. as I said in the rules, this will NOT be availible to starting PC's.

Will there be combat modles with reinforced body lacing, palm induction jacks, Smartlink II's with range finder snad biometric safeties? Of course there will. But right now, that's all doable elsewhere. They want to test out all their theories, work out all the bugs with the human looking ones first. The next stage will invovle replacing hands with weapons or tools, implanting flgiht control jets for greater running speeds or even low altitude flying, a wearble autocannon setup and other nifty little devices of destruction. They don't want to start that way because what happens if you drive someone crazy when you put them in a tanklike body? How do you put them down safely?

All cybernetic research, even the stuff in our real world, starts from what we know first and expanding on it. the first prosthetic arms and legs were just blocks of wood or plastic made to look real. Now, we've got mechanical gripping hands and legs that can keep up with olympic sprinters. In the area of Artifical Construct research, the megas don't know anything yet. They're setting the trail others will follow. They don't know what the implantation process will do to a mind both in the long and the short run. They don't know what will be possible as technology develops. So why start cranking out the AC's in combat form?

Remember also that as Lantzer said, this is a one way trip. And from the looks of things, the AC's could well be the first truly immortal creature in Sadhowrun providing they keep up their maintenance. Most of the test cases will be people who simply don't have anything to lose by going this route. In my character's case, she'll most likely be maimed and paralyzed with little to no further use for her real body. They aren't going to start cranking out military units until they're sure that after 40, 50 or even 60 years of existence, the mental stability of the AC's isn't negative affected by the process.

Does it seem like this is going away from the cannon of the SR universe? Yes it does. Because this kind of technological leap is something that has thousands of non combat applications. I'm not specficially focusing on the best "shadow" version of an AC, since there's no one using one to make that determination.

I wouldn't worry too much about the corps holding back on making combat ACs. They tend not to take the long view on stuff like that when the annual report is coming out in 4 months.

Also, in order to save up the millions and millions of required to get into this type of body, doesn't it have to be available in the first place and not just experimental.

I could see if the character were kidnapped and used as an experimental subject, but then you get to have the mysterious cyberware flaw.

Also, if part of the concern is the effect on the subject's psyche, make them roll a willpower versus all kinds of TN's every time something feels/responds differently to avoid mental trauma which could lead to psychosis.

Here's why the corps aren't too quick to be handing out wepaonry. In GitS, it was called Project 2501. In Shadowrun, it was called Deus.

To put things in perspective here, all the processing power and performance of person's brain must be exactly simulated in the AC body. Autonomic Synaptic markers for every function fo the human body must have a virtual system for handling it. Otherwise, they will throw the body off balance and the person along with it. (If you don't believe me, try to count how long it is you can hold your breath without looking at anything. Your internal clock works off your own biorhythms. which if they are destabilized will leave you without any rela way to measure time)

But to an AI, this represents megatons of open memory and space to work in. Remember, Deus broke down his code and dispersed it among a number of survivors who were plugged into the Arcology. That's because technically, he had to work in the background. To keep the body functioning, he couldn't interfere with the natural prcesses of a human's day to day life. Now imagine an AI like deus with several, or dozens, or thousands of such bodies? Each one a procesing powerhouse in it's own right, but is also fully articulated and capable of fending off others with human sized ands tyle weapons, or of blending into the masses. NOW factor in your military and combat ready AC's with personal and anti vehicle weaponry, and tell me what corporation wants to top Renraku in the mother of all screwups.

All that has done is made some corps put in more failsafes.

I just think it would put an interesting perspective on things if the corp couls use the AC without permission for combat every now and then with some implanted ware that overrides the personality installed in the AC, then wipes the memory.

It would also give players all the more reason to get a huge combat body and leave the rest of the team in the dust in terms of combat.

While what you are sayin makes some sense in the short term, turning a person into a combat borg is just far too dangerous. Take a look at the best soldiers in the world. Special Forces, Spetsnatz, G-6. All are extreme A-type personalities that generally don't deal well with failure. Now imagine giving one of them a body that literally lets them fight till they die.

And what is with the price of the first? The First, The Winner in Contests, the first man alive/corp ruling to built a perfect android?
"How does it function?" - "Well, it`s a bit of this and a bit of that...mostly technology"

No one has to know there are actually humans or human brains or brain patterns in it...when downloading the..."soul" to the electric brain, wouldn't it be easy to put some...restrictions in? Squatters, Shadowrunners and other wanted staff wouldn't be killed anymore. Wouldn't that be great? okay, there's a little bit of enslavement....but hey, who cares?

Vharn, any restrictions you put in can be re or over-written by somoene else. Once you release the first body to the public or private sectors, you are effectively giving away the bulk of your secrets cause someone can buy the body and disassemble it to reverse engineer the tech and code. Don't forget that at the core here, we're talking pure computer code, which always does exactly as it's told. But who's doing the telling can be anyone from the owner to the maker or even the hacker who broke in last night and made a few changes.

More importantly, that's going to come later as.....well there's a bit of story going with this, and I don't want to reveal what's going to happen. But good or bad, there will be Artificial Constructs coming to Seattle, and not all of them will be controlled by a corp or a dragon

If the failsafe is placed before the persona transfer then there is no reason the person will know it is there.

Hacking the brain of these ACs has been brought up before, but...

I'm not 100% clear on the specifics of the Crash of '29 Virus, but I was under the impression that it was a nascent or proto-AI as well (Psychotrope?) Nothing to say that couldn't happen again. Interesting plotline would be (once these have been around for awhile) what happens when there are enough ACs around for some self-acting Matrix entity to get a handle on them? What if the Network decides it wants them? Can they *all* be co-opted at the same time?

That situation would be fun to play in.

Define fun, like the Arcology shutdown fun, or weekend at Disneyland fun.

I think Psychotrope was a result of the Crash Virus, not a cause.

Yes, but the initial code was part of the crash virus and interaction with deckers gave it sentience IIRC.

I suppose it depends on who you are. If your Deus....well he'd probably prefer Disneyland.

After all, it IS the happiest place on earth...

Hmmm... I need to read Psychotrope again.

I need to find Psychotrope. Never read it.

The only real reason I could see for the value of Z-zones to increase, is if for some reason a corp or group needed alot of cheap land, really quickly. Maybe they know there's a 'secret underground depot' of stuff. Or a hidden vein of orichalcum or somesuch.

Before I ask that things be brought back on topic, I will make this comment.

If the megacorporations really wanted the Z-zones back for some reason, they wouldn't send in AC's, Cyberzombies or even special forces personnel. They would buy the land at the half nuyen an acre it's worth, give some weak warning to all the residents that the land is now part of <insert corp name here>, falls under the laws of Extraterritoriality, and that they are not welcome. Then, pure asymmetrical warfare. Blast the ground in square mile segements with bombs and chemical agents to a technological and cultural level that pre-dates the stone ages, go in with Citymasters and Wandjina drones to sweep up, and repeat the process as needed. No fuss, no muss. No worrying about trying to reintegrate people who technically don't exist into the world, or about potential sabotage later. Just blwo everything on the ground higher than an ant hill to lower than an ant hill and work froms cratch.

It isn't even that difficult. The easiest way to reclaim a Z zone is to buysome land and start building A quality housing. Ass to that a high end market and A quality security services and it wouldn't tak elong for the poor sinless and gangers to move because they can't afford to live there anymore.