Artifact expansion and modification.

[Erev]

Stolen from a seed of an idea from kamikaze mongoose:

Artifacts typically just do 'X' thing. But what if, in addition to scanning and figuring out how to activate the damn thing, there was also the ability to modify the output.

• In his example, some artifacts give off hot/cold air currently. What if, through SCIENCE!!!!! you can fine tune that? Done right and you might have a great force for good (and repressurization).
  
• Shield artifacts might let you determine what it shields against - everything, mostly organics, mostly non-organics, the undead, atmosphere, ect.
  
• Borging artifacts might turn people into flesh golems, nearly human sythetics, or actually clone someone if you manage to suss out JUST the right numbers.
  
• Healing artifacts might be able to specialize in types of damage, a lower omni heal, organ damage, or cause harm instead.
  
• Injector artifacts might inject different things, depending upon the settings.
  

Now, this would of course have to be round random and would function basically as a second step to artifact study after the whole 'how the hell does this turn on' step. This could either be through using the lab equipment on hand, splicing it with other 'minor' artifacts (using ones from other origins may be rather risky), or some other idea.

[zjdtmkhzt]

this sounds like a really cool idea!

Basically just generating a secondary set of triggers for artifacts once they are activated and having those modify the artifact's existing values should be doable, I think?
And maybe it could be used to give all those lamps/noisemakers/gravity artifacts some kind of use, which would be sick!

[DJ-Fireball_did_this]

Maybe there could be a mode for the equitment or special machine to interact with artiacts in a way that communicates information? IE a machine that sends electronic pulses, heat, radio-waves, etc to the artifact. Maybe it could be kinda like the station network with different kinds of signals and the artlab needs to figure out what they mean.

Also maybe buttons/switches/etc to directly interact with them, but they're like the airlock wires and you need to figure out their purpose. Something more complex than just "touch = on".

[zjdtmkhzt]

The different strengths of stimuli already kind of communicate information! So it could be like, ok, you activated a lamp with radiation.
Now the lamp generates a new trigger, which is heat. If you apply a hot stimulus, it will get brighter. If you apply a cold one, it will dim.
Could also be like, the different strengths of radiation instead, the xray machine alone can do all the way from 1 to 10, so there is a lot of fine tuning possible with those.

I really like this idea, I might take a crack at it if noone has picked it up by the time I am done with my dumb patho changes.

[GORE]

Yeah - I dig both the ideas ZJD.

1. Artifact activator 1. followed by activator 2. for an expanded effect. (2-stages of activation)
2. Artifact able to be activated with various different stimuli or settings of stimuli for a different approach. (1-stage of activation)