Replicants as an Antagonist

[UrsulaMejor]

Replicants should be unable to flip up-turned turtles

i'm not sure when or why this would come into play but it should be.

But they're not doing it... Why aren't they doing it?

[Megapaco]

Dont let this cool idea die

[Frank_Stein]

Yeah. I loved replicants when they were a thing before. Having them run around attaching junk into and onto themselves would be fun.

[salix_catus]

Here's an Idea. Have them start inside artifacts. Somebody touches artifact, activating it, they then get sucked in and replaced with an identical (picked from dead players) replicant version of themselves. This process wouldn't be noticeable to the outside observer, perhaps mimicking other artifacts like the prison artifact? The only way this could work without being abused is if you couldn't tell which artifact did it and it could only be used once.

[Grek]

Universal Replicant Powers:
Replicants are robots pretending to be humans rather than actual humans. While they look like and have all the equipment slots of a human, they share a bunch of traits with cyborgs. Replicants don't take damage from atmospheric temperature or content. They are not slowed by cold. They cannot be shocked by doors. They are resistant (not immune) to stuns. They are immune to radiation, toxins, (most) chemicals and diseases. If burned, a replicant takes no actual damage. Instead, their outer fleshy layer melts off revealing the robot inside. This can be repaired by synthflesh, but until they do so it is very obvious that they are not human. Replicants take brute damage normally, bleeding motor oil if below 50% health and starting to spark and fizzle when below 25%. All replicants recognize other replicants on sight.

Replicant Attachments:
Each replicant gets two selectable attachments, one for each arm. In order to make use of a power, they need to unfold their arm, dropping whatever is held in that hand slot to expose the attachment. This is instant, but produces a big red scary message. While an attachment is out, it is very obvious if someone looks at you and you don't have access to that hand slot. Clicking the button again retracts the attachment and gives you back your hand. Available attachments include:

• Transporter Unit: Functions as a cargo transporter for all purposes, but has unlimited charges and can be used on replicants with the usual delay. Perfect if you think the greedy humans are going to steal all the transporters for themselves, or to teleport around.
  
• Surgical Extractor: Toggles between Brain, Skull, Heart and Butt. Has a leadup time similar to that of shocking grasp, but if successfully deployed, it extracts the target organ, causing instant death, cardiac abscondment or a debutting as appropriate.
  
• Advanced Laser: Works exactly like an advanced laser, including self recharge. Be Megaman.
  
• Kinetic Disruptor: Works exactly like a AK-744, but with 100 rounds. Unfortunately, you have no way to reload it.
  
• Replicant Conversion Device: A special RCD that starts with 500/500 ammo and builds creepy replicant floors/walls/airlocks instead of normal ones. Can be reloaded normally with RCD ammo.
  
• EMP Generator: Fires an EMP burst, with similar targeting to fireball. Charges like a radbow.
  
• APC Hacking Tool: Targets an APC, blowing all connected lights and destroying the cell inside. Charges like a radbow.
  
• Cell Conversion Matrix: Click a power cell with it to convert the cell into a spider robot that scuttles up to humans and shocks them. Doing so drains 1000 power from the robot. At 0 power, the robot dies.
  
• Chemical Injector: Holds 100 units of chemical and injects 10 when clicked on someone. Starts out loaded with nanomachines.
  
• Advanced Voltronic Matrix: Functions as a Voltron and a T-Ray scanner all in one. Wow!
  
• Remote Door Interface: Opens up the AI/Borg menu on a door in view. Open, bolt, toggle IDs, shock, the works!
  
• Flesh Accumulator: Melee device, click on someone to instantly rip off their skin, then click yourself to steal their appearance. Does 15 brute and some bleeding to the victim while making them skeletal. Mostly non-lethal.

Spawning and Objectives:
In a Replicant round, some of the crew (around 10%, similar to the numbers on a Nuke Ops round) spawn as replicants. Each replicant have normal jobs and access like traitors, but spawn with a Cargo Transporter and a menu for selecting their two attachments. Each Replicant three theft objectives in the form of "Beam X up to the Mothership from the Y cargo pad." where Y can be any of the eight cargo pads and X can be any of the following:

• container with 5 human skulls/brains/hearts/butts (pick one)
  
• container with the skull/brain/heart/butt of <name> (pick one)
  
• container with the limbs of <name> (requires all four)
  
• container with 20 assorted human limbs
  
• container with 20 assorted cyborg limbs
  
• container with 10 power cells
  
• 50% of all bulky eldritch/wizard/martian/forerunner/robot artifacts on the station
  
• 50% of all space heaters/air pumps/air scrubbers/meteor shields on the station
  
• 50% of all plasma/oxygen/nitrogen/air/CO2 canisters on the station
  
• 50% of all welding fuel/firefighting foam/water/compost/helium tanks on the station
  
• container with the RCD and 5 units of ammunition
  
• container with the hand teleporter
  
• container with 20 power cells

Beaming something up to the Mothership involves taking the item to the proper cargo pad and trying to transport it with a cargo transporter to its current location. If you are a replicant, the Mothership will pick up on this signal and beam up it up. Humans cannot beam things up. Living things that are beamed up are destroyed, leaving their ghost on the station. If you successfully submit an objective, the mothership will start beaming in killbots to random locations on the station at a rate of one per minute for the rest of the round. If you (or a fellow replicant) submit multiple objectives, the effects stack leading to even more killbots get beamed in. The killbots do not target replicants.

[Carlarc]

Reactive Blood: Poisons and diseases are taken from your bloodstream and stored in an internal resevoir. *piss to release toxins, beware of buildups.
No matter anything else said in this thread, this is already all that's needed for it.
But yeah, I want everything in here, sounds real fun!

[Houka]

Flesh Accumulator: Melee device, click on someone to instantly rip off their skin, then click yourself to steal their appearance. Does 15 brute and some bleeding to the victim while making them skeletal. Mostly non-lethal.

Oh the comedy potential this would have. Replicants as a new antagonist would be especially fun with one running around just ripping off everyone's skin. Challenge objective: Turn the entire crew into skeletons. Bonus points if they accept it willingly.

I really want to see this idea implemented, it seems like it'd have its own flavor and fun to it. We need something that's a different flavor of weird than vampires or changelings.

[somepotato]

[Stryxic]

Not sure how necroposting is allowed in terms of the rules, but after reading through this thread, it sounds amazing.

Certainly a new antagonist would take a load of work, but it does sound like an awesome idea. I'd love to see something which uses a more stealthy approach, but is more of a robotic enemy considering we have supernatural (vampire), terrorist (syndies), traitors, magical (wizards), alien (blob) and while a ling is pretty stealthy and I can imagine a replicant being pretty similar, they'd at least be interesting. A replicant might also not be faced with the problems that wizard has in terms of all of their objectives are death and destruction based, hence fireball, shocking grasp and cluwning are the ways to go if you want to be effective. Giving a replicant varied abilities from murdering to subverting to stealing items would be an incentive towards different playstyles. All that aside, some personal ideas towards it -

Replicants/Replicators
Because damn you Somepotato now I literally cannot type Replicant without typing Replicator on instinct first.

First things first, I think the antag should be effected by an EMP in a similar way to being flashed. It only makes sense.

Secondly, being robots in a flesh suit they shouldn't be exactly as weak as a regular crewman, but nor should they be as strong as a ling or borg. To this end, they should be immune to certain diseases, I.E. Kuru because they don't have a brain, Colds because they don't have lungs, but something like Necrosis will reveal their frame beneath. I was thinking something like the automaton or a light borg. Also to alcohol.

Genetics will just straight up not work with them, but to stop them being instantly thrown into a scanner, I think they should have an ability which can temporarily make them look far more human, I.E. they can get drunk, they look like they have genes, etc.

Borrowing a bit from material sciences, I think it would be good if their starting flesh had a few traits from there, like having slightly higher dielectric strength than other humans and so they take reduced burn from shocks, or they're naturally more insulated and so can last in space a little bit longer.

Finally they should have some gimmicky things which they can use so that even if the crew know they're a replicant/replicator, they wont instantly be murdered. Hell, maybe they could team up with the crew and fight a blob with their powers, then go to kill them off sneakily?

That was all meant to be in list form but I couldn't work out how to do it :I


Here is where it gets into Replicator Territory. Also way more unfeasible because it would require the creation of a new mob, but I think it would be very cool if a Replicator could plug themselves into a terminal, and become stationary. When stationary, they get a different set of powers. Things like the ability to remotely tap into computers via powernet, and being able to access cameras with a toggleable ability. Their abilities should take from a kind of internal battery which is charged directly from the station's power supply. Say, being connected to a computer drains a certain amount of power a second, which would make it less efficient than just manually using one.

Obviously in this form, they should be completely immune to any electrical effects, such as arc flashes which should infact power them up. As a result they should be able to use targeted electric shocks as one of their powers. Maybe they could use this power remotely and drain power from themselves to shock a crewmember from an APC after a charging up period, like a significantly powered down shocking grasp? Regardless, one of the definite abilities should be the ability to produce Replicators either from an awful lot of power, or from materials and a lot less power. These would basically be reskinned ice spiders, but they would seek out APCs and latch onto them, remotely transmitting power back to you, and draining a little bit of power from each system. In this form, I think that there shouldn't be long cooldowns on abilities, but rather it should take power.

The more replicators inside APCs, the more their max storage and charge rate - Kind of a middle ground between blob and wraith. The way to destroy the replicators would logically be to open them up, and smash them with something heavy. The negative to this would be that a) You're smashing a battery with something likely heavy and metal and if you aren't wearing insulated gloves, you gonna get shocked and b) if the system has enough power then the replicator can leap onto you and forcefully transform you into a mindslave. What's to stop people willingly going and getting transformed? For one it would require a huge amount of power, for two it could only happen pretty rarely, and for three it might be good if after 10 or 15 minutes they automatically gib into 3 or 4 replicators themselves.

Now, why would you go into stationary mode if you're already pretty good as standard? Because of potential immortality. If you have a replicator inside an APC upon the death of your host body, it will start to drain lots of power and start to essentially clone you.

Now, these all sound really powerful. What are the downsides to this? Well for one it requires a location where no one really frequents, has a terminal, and pretty much requires an active engine. This means you couldn't just hightail it to the diner or tech outpost and pump out replicators then teleport people into those areas, because there wouldn't be enough power. Secondly - Actually draining power. This means that if you know there is one on station, all you need is for an engineer to go look at the power monitoring computer and go 'Yup, it's in North Solar Maintenance.' or wherever. Finally, it's powered by electricity. You can (if it hasn't spread already) just cut the wires to and from its location, and seriously dent its charging rate.


Now this is all a bit fanciful and it would essentially give the antag like 20 abilities in total on first glance, but I think if you have its human form being choosable like a wizard, then its stationary one has locked powers then that allows for some interesting versatility. Maybe you want to get engineering access as a human, start a hellburn, ramp up power and use that to kickstart your rampage? Maybe you never want to go stationary, or maybe you want to start off like that. I can see this being a pretty versatile antag, and versatility is fun!

[misto]

george should bark at u because dogs can detect terminators

[atomic1fire]

george should bark at u because dogs can detect terminators

In that case give HOS and captain a leash they can walk george with, for replicant detection.

[Frank_Stein]

george should bark at u because dogs can detect terminators

In that case give HOS and captain a leash they can walk george with, for replicant detection.

How about George can smell things with someone's scent and help track them down, too?

[BruiseCruise]

george should bark at u because dogs can detect terminators

Oh snap, that gives me an idea! What if the Replicant could incorporate that whole T-1000 'liquid metal' schtick? Maybe make it run on collecting electric energy or metal? That would account for resistance to bullets and whatnot and also could make the antagonist a bit more unique!

I gotta think about it more, but the T-1000 was pretty awesome. Just saying.

[misto]

the t-1000s capability of oozing under/between things, growing metal tools/weapons at will, posing as nearly any inanimate object as well as any crewmember, as utterly innate abilities, would be fuckin sweet, but might be too strong in the hands of a crafty player. a t-800 or t-x would be simpler to start with.

[BruiseCruise]

the t-1000s capability of oozing under/between things, growing metal tools/weapons at will, posing as nearly any inanimate object as well as any crewmember, as utterly innate abilities, would be fuckin sweet, but might be too strong in the hands of a crafty player. a t-800 or t-x would be simpler to start with.

Hmm, perhaps. I was trying to think of a good middle ground between Changeling and Wizard in terms of stealth/rampage capabilities. I like the idea of being resistant to bullets and having ooze form, but everything else might be too ambitious. I think it's also important to consider what the endgame for the Replicant should be. Does it have to use violence to achieve its goals, or can it stealthily complete its tasks if done correctly? It's obvious that a Replicant should be able to blend in with the station, but as for what its ultimate goal is still eludes me.