Replicants as an Antagonist

[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!