Ethics of stim units

[674478a271c7bOlfred]

So it sounds good (...?)

[674478a271e6bxdiesp]

I believe the process of rebuilding Nikki would be very fun, with repeated use of the repair\hack skill and combining all items to her chassis. A twelve steps quest would seriously build a bond between you two.

But I was thinking about her relationship with Shodan: currently, the idea is that Nikki dies when you're about to install the final piece. That might be a lesson from Shodan, like the mafia. Or, you could actually build Nikki just fine but in the end Shodan is going to download into her (instead of Rebecca) and the player has to put her down.

Personally I think it would be hilarious to turn the tables and have Delacroix build Goggles the same, but that's for another time.

[674478a27208dxdiesp]

I remembered about Nikki's quest, but I had downgraded it to a fetch quest to rebuild the robot which would dramatically die at the end. But I've got an idea to show more of the original scenario as well. That was about AIs becoming sentient, right? Please also consider that these AIs, were actually humans who became digitized by Shodan because of protoreality and whatever.

Let's say that the hub isn't the brothel, which is honestly a bit risquè to explain. System Shock Infinite 3.0, now featuring the brothel sidequest! The hub is in another place, maybe a cyberspace jack on the back of a Xerxes mainframe. Inside, is a small cyberspace level (whose colour scheme you decide) made of a ring corridor and up to 7 closed rooms. With the posng npcs and not much else.

To open the rooms, you need to use an "infinite memory chip" which is an important quest item in the mod: you get one from each Cyberspace level, and they are used to unlock the best ending. If you use them for the greater good in this hub, you're sacrificing yourself essentially. The chip is needed to cure the AIs, fundamentally: whenever you use one, the room opens and some of the npcs start walking around. Each room tells part of the scenario through ambient audio logs.

edit If you want to make it tragic in the end, the final npc Nikki could decide you need the infinite memory chips more than anyone else and give them all back. And in that moment, all npcs die.

[674478a272240Kolya]

This sounds like a convoluted mess and I don't understand any of it. But I want my cyberspace to be light pink, thank you.
A brothel sidequest is too risqué? You're Italian, aren't ya? I'm putting up a new Ornella Muti wallpaper as we speak. Even Dishonored had the Golden Cat! If you have some specific dialogue instructions, I'll gladly help.

[674478a272367xdiesp]

TL;DR: map with 7 unlockable logs.

You are speaking with the AIs themseles in cyberspace, and you have the greatest degree of freedom to make them tell your story. Maybe you'd like Nikki to just guide you through the quest, or maybe you want to tell the entire story about the AIs becoming sentient.

I'm italian and I have no problem featuring the Von Braun's cybersex slaves as characters, but please let's start the quest out of the red light district lol.

[674478a272596Kolya]

So these holograms are actually anything but autonomous AI. They are subroutines of the ship's computer Xerxes. As such you might find them in "cyberspace", when hacking directly into Xerxes. This could be visualised as a hacking interface on a Xerxes column, with a door opening into the column after a successful hack.
SHODAN herself asks you to hack into it, in order to wrestle control from Xerxes. As you step inside Xerxes' memory the entrance vanishes behind you and you find yourself alone within a tiny cell that looks like a cyberspace version of Nikki's sim booth. Nikki gives you a lap dance and you decide to stay there forever. Screw Korenchkin! Screw tau Ceti 5! Love technology!

You asked me for dialogue pieces but I still have no idea in what kind of situation these would be used and hence what their content should be. 

Anyway, through the cyberdoor of Nikki's cyberbooth you see a cyberdroid cyberpatrolling. Nikki asks if you wanna cyber. You agree but you keep watching the droid. Three days later you realise that none of this is real and open the door.
Cyberdroid says: Xerxes we have a normality!
You say: Did you ever realise that Xerxes is sexreX spelled backwards?!
Cyberdroid: ???!?!?!?!?
You: Like a sex king. Get it?
The cyberdroid overloads and explodes while you spread your arms and soar to the sky of the matrix. You throw your infinite memory chip into the maelstrom of Xerxes swirling data and it explodes. You float back down but Nikki is dead and so is everyone else. You cry. Then you take a gun and kill everyone else. You leave cyberspace and find the real Nikki in the real booth. She says: Why are you here? You say: I wanted to rescue your cyberself but I failed. Nikki says: No Googles, YOU are the cyberspace!! Then you realise that you didn't leave your bed this morning and it was all a draem. Then you die. The End.

[674478a2726e5xdiesp]

Tomorrow I'll come up with more details, at the moment I'm tired out of mind. Yesterday I envisioned the quest room like this:

- There's an inconspicous trapdoor or grate beside the Xerxes pillar at the beginning of Ops2
- You climb down a ladder and into a small tech chamber, like Mother in Alien: here you can hack a Xerxes computer
- You get the vibe that the cyberspace level is dead, at first. Like entering Rapture and finding the remains of the new year party
- There's a free introduction dialogue when you first meet Nikki, one for each new piece you bring, and one final one for all

[674478a272b88xdiesp]

Back from the dead. My own style of modding is hybridization, taking the game in different directions. Experimental stuff, some works and some don't: but all the changes are variations of the pre-existing. In example, the Marie companion is an amalgamation of the player's relationship with Delacroix in the final level + the apparitions. When I replayed the game after some years, I had completely forgotten about the final level and it intrigued me to extend that relationship backwards in the campaign.

I was prepared to implement a little fetch quest where you fix Nikki. With the Cyberspace option, however, you can tell the whole story of the AIs and Nikki's would be just a protagonist. The way I see things, this could be a way to extend the story of Xerxes or Sarah. If the AIs live in Xerxes' mainframe, they were kept constricted by UNN programming before and are held hostage by the Many now (and Xerxes was never fully realized a character). If they live in Sarah's buffer of protoreality, that's a Tron mainframe with also real people, then you can talk about the real Von Braun too: the AIs might be useful to save the stored people, or maybe that's the place where Sarah saves the minds taken over by the Many... write your own fanfiction idea.

You asked me for dialogue pieces but I still have no idea in what kind of situation these would be used and hence what their content should be.

That's the thing, you have to invent them yourself! I can tell you the limits of Infinite's lore (rule no. 1, "this story doesn't end"), but I'm completely burned out on creative jobs for a while. I can double check things, that's it. I guarantee that writing up to 7 logs can be difficult, so only try this if you're committed to pain and humiliation: otherwise let's stick with the fetch quest. A good way to start, would be laying down the lore of what happened that we must tell in episodic format.

[674478a272d05Kolya]

My original impulse was to do something with the sensual stim unit area, because it's practically unused. The history I made up for the stim characters was just meant to be a background story for Nikki, not a "Free The Stims"-quest in cyberspace. I understand that you naturally want to tie this in with the Infinite mod. And I thought a lot about how to consolidate these different directions today, in fact I spent way more time on this than I had planned to, down to writing logs and stuff. But in the end I came to the conclusion that I may have to write my own mod or whatever. I hope that's okay with you. Feel free to use anything as you see fit of course. But I'm out of it.

[674478a272f50xdiesp]

Post anything partial you've written, or tell what you were thinking and discarding: I've been threading new ground for a while, I know it's full of traps and problems. You'd be amazed at the kind of bullshit that flies around, trying to decide what happens in Infinite's next video when CapLKL and I are desperate!

About the sensual stim units area, I always considered a given that the characters inside the cyberspace would be Nikki, Lance etc. Would the area still be important? It can be, if i.e. Lance's area in cyberspace requires his card: the player would have to think and realize that these npcs in Cyberspace, are actually those from that area and go search there. It would also be necessary to complete the quest, if the rooms are progressively unlocked (you need to complete Lance's to proceed on the next etc).

If the AIs live in Xerxes mainframe, you can mostly steer clear of the Infinite lore. I'm not forcing you eh, it's not like I don't already have more than I can chew on, but I thought this was a chance not to miss as the framework of a single map with progressive plot progress takes less than a full mod.

edit If the first thing you try is to write a log, you're going to have a bad time. They require established lore, which is the ingredients for your soup, and then some nice narrative to cook it. If you understand too late that the lore needs changing, you'll have cooked for nothing. In example, I had written this to exercise myself with writing a story mod for SS2: getting the 3 logs the right size was hard... telling everything I needed to, establishing some personality traits etc. I had a much easier time, later on, dropping lore bits on a big page and letting it react sponatenously.