Did you play x-com 2 ? It reminds me of the andromedons. Frail aliens inside hulking power armor; the damaged power armor gets its own life bar once the biological pilot has died.
Yeah, that's a good point, Hac Tao/Swiss Miss may not have been the best example for hyper-optimized HI. But we do definitely need to pay attention to the effect of HI-supportware on those highly-optimized HI. Need to make sure the highly-optimized HI don't go to broken. Another good set of point! Nah, this was the Fallout Trauma Override Harness zombies:
Mechanically I get where you're coming from, but I feel like that has some severe fluff problems as a generally-accessible program.
It would be pretty genre appropriate, cool, and give hacking a more integrated role in the game to have some more 'wetware' style support hacks - giving select troops a new skill (martial arts, climbing+ etc) for a turn or something.
I dunno, if potentially giving all 2W HI Dogged is too powerful, make it like Possessed is for a TAG, with a much-reduced profile. 4-2 MOV, BS12, and any fancy camo drops to Mimetism.
Like I said, I have fluff problems with it. I could maybe see it as an upgrade program for certain factions or named characters, but I can't imagine a major power installing this in all their hacking devices by default. It's not going to be good for morale to know that if you go down, the support tech might turn you into a meat puppet.
I kind of love this idea and also your take on the fluff implications ... If the program were to exist, I agree it should probably limited, but I'd love to see it as something you could choose to target your own HI, or your opponent's with. I'd also think it was cool if it could just be used on any HI in a Null state or who had been previously immobilized.
Yeah, there's a heavy level of horror with it, but the original idea (walk an unconscious casualty to the aid station) is good.
I got the idea more from the Daoying, what with it being an "operative control unit" and the IA being so (supposedly) heavily focused on heavy infantry. Although an ISS Zhanying 'waking up' one of his Wu Ming entourage to force him to complete his mission feels pretty fitting.
On the other hand, with the Cube tech, they may be told something like "once you're considered dead, and thus that old body is not really yours anymore, we'll use it to help finish the mission, giving you the credits of it, while you get a priority resurrection" With some good propaganda and story telling, that should be acceptable for covert op and professionnal soldiers, especially if they had been brainwashed with things like "honor, duty, self-sacrifice"
Moving around a suit of armor with a dead or nearly dead body in it really makes you question the utility of having a live body in there to begin with... My (very similar) idea was that the hacker would utilize the onboard medical systems to provide a medical shock (think adrenaline or something similar) to rouse the unconscious trooper. If the trooper has a cube, the system can be better regulated, so that trooper enters the NWI state. If the trooper doesn't have a cube, then there's no good regulation, so they enter the dogged state as they get a burst of consciousness before their body succumbs to the OD. In either case, the trooper doesn't gain the Valor skill (ie, they can get up, but they can't ignore retreat or get any of the other bonuses that Valor provides). Fluff-wise it may be a bit less problematic, as the soldier is just being roused, not controlled.
Basically, for the same reasons we have living pilots and operators inside combat vehicles despite combination of remote control and combat AI being a sufficiently good replacement or even outperforming local control in a number of situations today, in early 21th century. Same goes to having drones on the filed instead. Pretty sure lore department can make something up :P
Well, I don't think you'd question it if the Puppeted trooper profile is using the Possessed profile and if it can't react in ARO. Even more so if the program has Hacking Area as range.
Yeah, those would be some good limitations. On the other hand, Su Jian and Karakuri are already a thing. The human body is providing something OTHER than a skeleton for the powered suit, and just animating an unconscious/dead trooper probably isn't getting you what you want, tactically, from that power armor. I'm not totally against the idea, just, like toadchild, I think it would be rare just because of it's limited utility.
Su-Jian have vast amounts of servo processors that are specifically made to pilot the chassi and is in a direct remote neural uplink to an operator while I think the Karakuri are hosting a rudimentary AI in a mechanical body. What the mumbojumbo for a Puppet program would be is that a hacker connects to the suit's muscle assists and assumes control over them - those assists are weaker and the connection isn't purpose-made (see why Yu Jing doesn't make Remote Presence TAGs, that tech is very difficult). It'd sort of be like a limited form of Overlord hacking program or Puppetactica control, except it targets friendly HI/TAGs :)
I dunno, but that's what nearly all Remote Presence are. I suppose it has more to do with their mobility and that the integration to the pilot is more complete and the AI better with the Karakuri, Su-Jian, Betatrooper, etc
