Eh? Don't know how happy I am with the "they're all sentient" thing - particularly with the "protect or leave to their fate" aspect - with the degree of penetration these things are going to have in the applicable culture, it gets too close to mysticism/divine, too quickly. It feels like this works better if we keep it *away* from being a magic system. This would also cut out a bit of the "adapts to thought patterns" aspect.
Personally, I like the idea of Strange Biotech Goop. It lets you have reactions and interactions that are odd and potentially unpredictable, but doesn't fall into Appeasing The Gods of the Plot Device. It's not that they don't *like* you, it's that you're not *watering* them enough, and this particular strain reacts poorly to loud noises.
As implied, if we really crank up the mutation/adaptation rate, we can get different strains, families, and so forth. People can trade them back and forth while technobabbling unintelligibly about hybrids and crossbreeding. You can have hull integrity and life support handled by just plating your Conveyance Of Choice in the stuff. It maybe has some degree of awareness - up to about housecat level for large blocks. Full AI is then explained by the Nuku-Nuku effect, turned around a little. On the other end, you get delightful little bits like a propulsion system that wants you to *sing* to it while it works.
- there are some basic things that everyone can do (lift into orbit, establish hull integrity, basic life support, tool around the solar system to a degree.) These things are fairly reliable, though they may have one or two minor quirks.
- There are a lot of poorly understood ways of doing that work for one or two people, or a very small number of people. This should be due at least as much to technogeekish wizardry as anything else - and these things are flaky as hell, so figuring out what'll make it work *consistently* is at least as challenging as getting it to work the first time. (I really liked that image of the guy trying to stay as still as humanly possible in order to maintain his network connection. It appealed to me.) It also has to do with the way people treat their personal patches of goop, and the general nature of the goop in question. You *might* be able to duplicate something that guy over htere just did - or you might not.
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Side note: I have this image of a *hard-core* Giant Robot enthusiast who built an actual ridable mecha, complete iwht heavy on-board computational assets and a speaker system, and then liberally dosed it with goop.
"I live! I live, and my powers are like unto the gods. In honor of this, you may call me Deus. Deus Ex Machina."
Personally, I like the idea of Strange Biotech Goop. It lets you have reactions and interactions that are odd and potentially unpredictable, but doesn't fall into Appeasing The Gods of the Plot Device. It's not that they don't *like* you, it's that you're not *watering* them enough, and this particular strain reacts poorly to loud noises.
As implied, if we really crank up the mutation/adaptation rate, we can get different strains, families, and so forth. People can trade them back and forth while technobabbling unintelligibly about hybrids and crossbreeding. You can have hull integrity and life support handled by just plating your Conveyance Of Choice in the stuff. It maybe has some degree of awareness - up to about housecat level for large blocks. Full AI is then explained by the Nuku-Nuku effect, turned around a little. On the other end, you get delightful little bits like a propulsion system that wants you to *sing* to it while it works.
- there are some basic things that everyone can do (lift into orbit, establish hull integrity, basic life support, tool around the solar system to a degree.) These things are fairly reliable, though they may have one or two minor quirks.
- There are a lot of poorly understood ways of doing that work for one or two people, or a very small number of people. This should be due at least as much to technogeekish wizardry as anything else - and these things are flaky as hell, so figuring out what'll make it work *consistently* is at least as challenging as getting it to work the first time. (I really liked that image of the guy trying to stay as still as humanly possible in order to maintain his network connection. It appealed to me.) It also has to do with the way people treat their personal patches of goop, and the general nature of the goop in question. You *might* be able to duplicate something that guy over htere just did - or you might not.
----------
Side note: I have this image of a *hard-core* Giant Robot enthusiast who built an actual ridable mecha, complete iwht heavy on-board computational assets and a speaker system, and then liberally dosed it with goop.
"I live! I live, and my powers are like unto the gods. In honor of this, you may call me Deus. Deus Ex Machina."