The Roboticist's Dilemma

[Dhaidburt]

My take is that silicons should not be self-sufficient. Ideally upgrades, repairs etc. would all need a roboticist. Also ideally there'd just be more sidegrades and stuff for the roboticist to actually make.

Frankly I think we should move guardbuddy stuff under robotics. Then we could work on some way for silicons to better interface with buddies (giving them commands etc.) and expand on how modular buddies can be?

> a console that gives them a list of every active silicon on-station

That feels like it overlaps with the functions of the current Robotics Control console. We should probably put more info into it and then put one in robotics with kill switch disabled?

Considering that science barely ever touches guardbuddy stuff despite it all being in their department, I feel like this is a great swapup. Science has to talk to robotics or cargo now~
If this does happen though, any chance we could see cyborg guardbuddies? Obviously you can't walk through them and people could mistake them for players, but still an idea.

If we were to add such a console, I think it'd be great to see the last known location of a borg's brain in case they're ever destroyed. Having the roboticist relay this info or go out and search themselves would be a great way to involve them in the rounds.

could make it so borg upgrades get slotted into different parts of the body. then hypothetically you would have a good way to have trans-humanism too, where arm/leg upgrades can be put into humans too. robotics spend their time performing 'surgery' on loose robot limbs and attaching them to borgs, medbay spends their time doing surgery on people.

Interesting idea, but I think the only slightly balanced upgrade would be the shields for a duration on a cooldown. it's probably the only upgrade that isn't just eyes or replaces worn equipment with something unremovable.

It would be nice to have roboticsts not be bound to their one part of the station to be useful, perhaps serving as a paramedic for cyborgs around the station.  Could have a tool that lets them give some immediate charge to a cyborg, so they have enough to work for just a little bit more, or to retreat to a nearby docking station.

Yaknow, I like the idea of being able to go around and baby the robots. Charge them a little, oil them up, pat them on the head, maybe repair them a little and send them on their way. Considering there's a possible 3 roboticists at once in certain maps this'd be at least a little more interesting than instantly changing jobs.