---
# System prepended metadata

title: Holospheres

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## DISCLAIMER

This is mostly silicons spitballing ideas. This is not a hard mandate; if you decide to work on this, you have creative freedom - however any too "wild" ideas should be ran by the maintainers first.

## Niche

pAIs are kind of "cheap ghostroles". That's cool and all but I don't want to have the only holo-species be those.

On one hand, this is a bit weird to have because lore-implications of hardlight is kind of yikes.

On the other hand, this is Citadel RP and we go by rule of cool. This can't be worse than the other whitelisted species, balance wise.

## Naming

Holospheres are just an operating name for in-development purposes, we don't want to call them literal holosphers.

## Concept

They're basically cores. They have some kind of high-density power storage system with the ability to hover around. However, they can't do this without assembling their hardlight shell.

They're far more solid than pAI hardlight shells.

## Body

Their limbs are holographic - silicons will deal with the med system shimming/integration for this at some point. They have shit for all health but they obviously don't feel pain.

They can *rapidly* regenerate limbs, **but**, they lose cohesion with every attack. They should completely have their body shatter with say, 100 damage.

- They take radiation damage directly. They don't gain radiation, they *directly* lose cohesion on afflict_radiation.
- Electrical stuns obviously fuck them up very hard.
- They are *highly* affected by item slowdowns, so no carrying heavy armor. Silicons will do the carry weight system for this.
- They can't slip.
- They are very vulnerable to ZAS / air pressure because they're super light.
- They move as fast as runspeed, unlike pAIs which are slightly slower.
- They can't fly, but it's not like a fall will kill them (lol).
- They **can** move around in space like a pAI can.
- When their body is shut down, they get cycled off for half a minute to a minute while they regenerate.
    - Or better, have them fall down as if in crit and flicker while they regenerate. Further damage (50-100 more) will cause a full destabilization and shut them down for a minute or two.
- Unlike pAIs, they have full usage of hands.
- They will have 0.5x outgoing melee damage and **very bad ranged instability** (silicons feature to implement later).

## Balancing

So this is sounding like an immortal creacher.

We have to make them not just a pain in the ass call of duty get-up-and-continue-shooting.

I can't really decide on what's the best so here's some ideas:

- Their core can't deploy if it's not on the gronud. If they're on someone, that someone can just keep moving; they have to resist out to deploy. 2 minute resist from container, 10-20 second resist from hand.
- Getting damaged slowly makes them strain their holoprojectors, which requires repairs with welding/nanopaste/etc.
    - They *can't* repair themselves, maybe (?)
    - They can still deploy with critically damaged projectors, but their melee damage is basically crater'd & they can't fire guns at all
    - They can take direct damage to projectors, and this makes resisting out far harder.
        - Maybe have the resist mechanic take seconds if not damaged, and way longer otherwise?
    - Direct damage = someone shooting/bashing them while they're in sphere form.

## Gear

- They can project holographic clothing like a pAI can
- (Experimental) They have a **rudimentary, weak toolset without a welding torch.**
- They have a powerful (2.5-3 tile, which is fucking OP compared to anything else on new lighting LOL) flashlight.
- They can obviously wear clothing but if they de-project their body everything drops.

## Power

- They can charge from APCs and cyborg chargers innately.
- Their power consumption differs based on what they're doing.
- Running out of power has the same effects as damaged projectors.
    - Flickering
    - No melee / weapon usage abilities
    - Disable tools / other powers?
- Can be recharged via inducers
- or by directly siphoning from cells (?)

## Remote Control (silicons)

marked silicons because rig rework that no one else can/should touch.

i'll let them pilot rigs, much like a pAI can \:)
