New Antagonist: Ancient Robot; Redux

[swinglow20]

A) Sounds a lot like hunter, which doesn't really work on RP (outside of occasional thematic admin spawns when murder is needed). This is the simplest design and there might be something there, but antagonists that are immediately identifiable as threats don't really leave a lot of room for interaction (wizard is the exception to this but it somewhat works because you're never really sure what a wizard is going to do and whether it's going to be really bad until they do it)

B and C Sound like a cross between mindeater and flock, both are concepts that didn't really work out. I know you want to design this from the top down, but I think it might be a better idea to focus on the actual interactions with the crew first. What does the moment-to-moment gameplay look like? Why is it unique? Does it require/allow for deception? Is it actually fun to fight against?

To be honest, I'm still trying to work out an enticing gameplay loop. I want this to be an antagonist that multiple people have to join together to beat. To that end, someone in discord brought up the idea of a human disguise. The idea being, the Ancient Scouts can pick from a variety of space suits to project over themselves to deceive the crew in to following them somewhere secluded. Then the disguise drops, and the scout latches on to their victims head. I think for the bigger robots, being able to disguise as an artifact just wholesale would be interesting and give the crew a nice touch of paranoia. 

Where as salvagers come in to conflict with the crew over resource theft, the Ancients come in to conflict with the crew over crew member theft. I think having a way to recover someone's brain if you defeat an Ancient might add to the counterplay between the two parties. Additionally, stopping the scouts from teleporting away with a player's head once the disguise is dropped would be part of the gameplay loop. From there, it would devolve in to fending off the larger robots and trying to recover as much of the crew as possible before the station gets overwhelmed. 

I think what needs to be dropped is the weapons manufacturing and assaulting the Ancient's satellite. It adds too much to an already bloated idea. 
From there, I think giving the Ancients access to a few terminals/consoles to make announcements and contact the crew would be menacing as long as the players stayed in character.