[MAJOR UPGRADE] [[ROBOTICS]] Drone Research

[atomic1fire]

I know people have suggested borg killing guns before.

Why not allow jeryrigged emp weaponry.

I know emp guns seem like a terrible idea, but I think it would be cool as heck.

Here's my potentially dumb idea + a lot of safeguards to make this thing hard to make for most people.

Take one of the cameras the tourists have.

Use a screw driver to take it apart, and salvage some electrical things. (this part will require rubber gloves, otherwise taking the camera apart should shock you badly)

Use the soldering stick from mechanics to do "mechanics" on the camera parts to make a "unfinished emp glove"

Add some wires and some metal rods to hold the thing together.

Combine with a spare set of rubber gloves, or don't and risk electrical shock from wearing the device unless you have smess human.
run around with a stun glove that will mess up borgs for a short while and disable drones, and do an increased shock to humans as well as disable any electronics worn by or in them for a short while.

Essentially way more work for a pair of stun gloves that can disable radios and some other stuff with increased harm potential.

For extra "This is not useful to most people" perhaps the emp gloves could be one use only, after that the circuits are fried. Meaning it's a large amount of work for a one use borg stopping tool.



http://www.instructables.com/id/Handheld-EMP-device/

also you'll probably want to wear some heavy armor while you run at the drone trying to touch it to stop it from going nuts so it doesn't kill you immediately.

[APARTHEID]

Or, well, the tasers that work so well on pods and borgs can also be a threat? It's more that this proposed Drone Lab can make hunter-killer ordinance if left to its devices; what can stop someone with the power of X on their side?

It's snappy: the use of a drone is tied to a pair of VR glasses or pod, right? Would there be a way to add back the proposed fuel system to keep drones on a charge? Let taser shots do some damage and drain some battery while leaving more traditional, robuster options such as "beat up the nerd in the goofy glasses" or "dogfight the drone with my equally cool pod" just as viable.

In addition, where the heck would we be gathering materials for this kind of research anyway? I like the idea of finally bringing stuff back from busted up scrap, but would we scan the screens and the circuits? Get some sort of ye-olde Electronics-style of plugging ye-olde Electronics components into a board to make a blueprint for that HK disruptor?

Just more questions than answers.

[APARTHEID]

Here's my idiot idea: either brains in jars or dorks in VR pods control these things. The jar is just a brain in a drone. That's it. You either control it yourself or some brain does it at some horrible cost to themselves if they wipe out.

[BruiseCruise]

Here's my idiot idea: either brains in jars or dorks in VR pods control these things. The jar is just a brain in a drone. That's it. You either control it yourself or some brain does it at some horrible cost to themselves if they wipe out.

I feel like the VR Pod idea is probably the best bet. If we go the Brain Jar route the question arises as to whether or not they're governed by the AI's Laws or not. If they aren't, we're probably never going to see a Cyborg volunteer again and if they are, it'll be kinda difficult to police what the drones can and can't murdalize. Sounds like another SecBorg situation albeit with heavier firepower.

On the the other hand, the VR Pods/Goggles seem to be easier to balance. Though you may have a murderhobo every now and again, it's basically as simple as tracking his/her VR Pod or locating the Goggle user on the station. Once you find the perp you can eject him from his Pod/Goggles and drag him to security if he's being a dick or execution-style him if you're a nuke op. Maybe getting torn out of the VR interface stuns the user a little bit? I think the possibility of being found is more than enough of a danger here.

[APARTHEID]

Here's my idiot idea: either brains in jars or dorks in VR pods control these things. The jar is just a brain in a drone. That's it. You either control it yourself or some brain does it at some horrible cost to themselves if they wipe out.

I feel like the VR Pod idea is probably the best bet. If we go the Brain Jar route the question arises as to whether or not they're governed by the AI's Laws or not. If they aren't, we're probably never going to see a Cyborg volunteer again and if they are, it'll be kinda difficult to police what the drones can and can't murdalize. Sounds like another SecBorg situation albeit with heavier firepower.

On the the other hand, the VR Pods/Goggles seem to be easier to balance. Though you may have a murderhobo every now and again, it's basically as simple as tracking his/her VR Pod or locating the Goggle user on the station. Once you find the perp you can eject him from his Pod/Goggles and drag him to security if he's being a dick or execution-style him if you're a nuke op. Maybe getting torn out of the VR interface stuns the user a little bit? I think the possibility of being found is more than enough of a danger here.

I brought up brains because I completely forgot about the most important part of Robotics: body parts! There's only enough VR stuff for the roboticists; everyone else has to sign up for on-board or out-of-station work. If you want to fuck off to space forever as a murderous drone, so be it! Good luck getting your ass back inside, 'cause you're not a pod!

(By the way, drones and borgs would be united underneath the same set of laws, so if the AI is subverted, watch out! Space might be unfriendlier than usual!)

[Amuys]

I mentioned a "remote corpse" idea from earlier, where you take a corpse and replace its brain with some sort of signal receiver that you can control through a pair of goggle or a VR sort of machine.
Would be cool for a traitor.

[pizzatiger]

I have a question. Whats even the point of doing all this other then people are jelious of genetics, All i can tell is this is a bunch of small murder toys an Robotic dude can quickly build and control.

There need to be a general use for the station like genetics can give people resistances to bad stuff and even has some fun non-weapony mutations while everything your suggesting is a bunch of weapons attached to a remote control that isn't useful to anyone except the user

[cgrn10]

I have a question. Whats even the point of doing all this other then people are jelious of genetics, All i can tell is this is a bunch of small murder toys an Robotic dude can quickly build and control.

There need to be a general use for the station like genetics can give people resistances to bad stuff and even has some fun non-weapony mutations while everything your suggesting is a bunch of weapons attached to a remote control that isn't useful to anyone except the user

Genetics isn't useful to the vast majority of the station. They sit in there being power mongers until no one can kill them by any means. Hardly ever do they distribute they're 'precious' to the station.

[cgrn10]

Their, rather. dear god why do I keep messing these up, being sick sucks.

[Roomba]

I was envisioning something closer to programmable bots, like a cross between guardbuddies and regular bots. It'd be nice if they could do automated tasks like water plants and stuff, they wouldn't need to be a killbot army.

[Amuys]

Yeah, it's a bit sad that guardbuddies are head-accessible only unless you ID spoof.

[Frank_Stein]

I was envisioning something closer to programmable bots, like a cross between guardbuddies and regular bots. It'd be nice if they could do automated tasks like water plants and stuff, they wouldn't need to be a killbot army.

Yeah, the bots on station don't nearly get utilized enough because they just aren't very effective at moving where they are needed and junk.

I would love for Robotics and maybe the AI/Brain Jars to be more involved in bot stuff. The VR could be like, bot commander mode where you issue simple orders to them.

I think a complete revamp of how borgs/bots are built would be something to consider. You're supposed to be a machinery master, why are you using your dumb hands to do stuff? You should be able to build machines to do your work, assembly line style.

[Amuys]

Being limited to needing various ores for modules/upgrades could be the bottleneck to prevent the station being overrun with shotgun firing goldplated atomic hunter-seekers..

[DyssalC]

This, coupled with robotics being cybernetics (and having cyborg arms etc. become more useful and desirable) could be really huge.

I'm currently working on an effort post for cybernetics.

I called dibs. DON'T STEAL MY DIBS PLEASE.

[atomic1fire]

I have a question. Whats even the point of doing all this other then people are jelious of genetics, All i can tell is this is a bunch of small murder toys an Robotic dude can quickly build and control.

There need to be a general use for the station like genetics can give people resistances to bad stuff and even has some fun non-weapony mutations while everything your suggesting is a bunch of weapons attached to a remote control that isn't useful to anyone except the user

Genetics isn't useful to the vast majority of the station. They sit in there being power mongers until no one can kill them by any means. Hardly ever do they distribute they're 'precious' to the station.

I once gave the MD free radiation resistance.

In terms of murder toys the roboticist can already emag firebots, securitrons, medibots, and floor bots for more then enough murder.

It's just not as fun when you aren't traitor because A. people rarely get borged and B. The only other thing to do as roboticist is make not emagged bots and hopefully someone finds them useful.


Sure you got implants like machine talk but there's no real fun to them.

Otherwise Roboticist is a job where you sit and hope someone dies and genetics gets blown up because otherwise there's nothing to do.


I think implant research could be cool, e.g more useful crap via implants.

Also drone research, with more station vehicles and buddies and borgs would be neat.

Robotics used to have research, but the old way wasn't very fun. Now we've gone in the opposite direction where genetics is more fun if you're looking for a challenge, but now there's not really a line of "hey can i have borg" forming at robotics.

Short of a borging artifact at least.