Ghost in the Machine – Brainscans Transfer Skills to Mechs (and More)

Complex mechs can only be made by scanning brains, but turn out completely identical no matter what brain you put in them.

Not anymore.

With Ghost in the Machine, a piece of the donor lives on. Subcores that require a brainscan (Standard and High) will now directly copy the skills of the scanned pawn into the created mechanoid.

High quality scans achieved by destroying the brain may also copy… other things.

Performance Comparison:

Standard Subcores will allow you to give mechs the skills of the scanned pawn instead of their defaults, of course.

High Subcores have a number of advantages which may cause you to prefer them over Standard ones, despite The Implication:

• Skill Caps: Standard Subcores have their skills capped to 14, while High Subcores are uncapped. Configurable.
• Learning: Mechanoids with a High Subcore can improve their skills over time, possessing a 25% learning rate. All mechs have perfect memories. Configurable.
• Personalities: Certain traits will transfer if a High Subcore is used, for better or for worse. These traits may function the same way they did in a flesh and blood pawn – or not. There are many unique behaviors and traits that function differently in mechs. Some special conditions in the scanned pawn may also manifest as unique traits.
• Connections: Mechanoid with a High Subcore may remember particularly strong relations, which can lead to… interesting behaviors.

• Flexible Cores: The mod auto-patches mechanoid recipes, allowing you to use higher-quality cores than the recipe demands. Enable them the same way you enable butchering human corpses (theoretically).
• Ghost Identity: Cores and mechs will permanently display the original scan date and the scanned pawn’s name. Pair this with the vanilla renaming feature to name mechs after their donors.
• Psychic Awakening: Mechanoids now possess Psychic Sensitivity scaling with their complexity. Tiers are set at 0 (Basic), 0.5 (Standard), and 0.75 (High). Apocritons alone have 1.0, representing full sentience.
• Core Swap: You can select a Standard or High Subcore to insert it into a mech. If the mech has skills, you’ll also get the old core back.

Probably better than you’d assume, but I can’t 100% promise anything without seeing the other mod.

The changes should automatically apply to anything labeled as a mech and created in a Gestator from a Regular or High Subcore. They are designed to be compatible with mods that change other attributes of Mechs.

If it isn’t created in a Gestator, inserting a subcore with the gizmo on the subcore should still work on any mech.

Regardless, there won’t be any incompatibilities that crash your game or corrupt your save (unless something truly spectacular happens). But depending on what the other mods you installed do- and especially how they’re built- they may undo some of the subtler changes of this mod. I specifically built many of the less critical, skill related parts to be very precise, meaning they are highly unlikely to interfere with other mods but in turn are quite fragile themselves since they want to know exactly what they’re doing.

For example, mods that seriously change how sowing works may revert my change that allows mechs with higher growing skill than the fixed 10 to sow plants that require higher skill than 10. Such a plant doesn’t exist in vanilla anyway, but this is the kind of change that might get undone by conflicts.

Warning: This mod changes Subcore stack sizes to 1. If installing mid-game, please ensure your subcores are not stacked to avoid potential item loss.

Aside from that, the mod needs to be installed when you perform a scan / create a subcore for the resulting mechs to have skills. Otherwise, they’ll use the game’s default skills. Existing cores & mechs will behave like in vanilla.

I’ve added logic that means it should work if you install it midgame, even if you have existing mechs. But it’ll be better if you install it before ever scanning a pawn, and better yet before starting a new save.

Feel free to make any.

There’s a thread for bug reports, ideally do it there so they’re separate from other stuff.

If there’s anything that isn’t due to mod conflicts, I’ll try to fix it quickly.

If it is due to mod conflict, leave it anyway and tell me which mods in your load order touch mechs, I often change things to have better compatibility after seeing where the friction happens.

Owlchemist, whose background style I’ve used in the thumbnail.

He has been out of the modding scene for years to the best of my knowledge. But if he requests, I’ll take the thumbnail down, since it was inspired by him. I’ve also changed the font to something else since some people found it too misleading.

Please don’t spam about it in the comments otherwise. Black background with green title on top isn’t copyrighted (in fact, I’ve considered changing to blue, but that would just ‘copy’ Hob Took’s backgrounds instead). I assume given he has allowed all his actual copyrighted code to be forked and updated, and has forked and updated others’ mods in return, that he isn’t as possessive about ‘thumbnail background colors’ as some ascribe to him.

You can do whatever you want with this mod or any parts of it. Copy them uncredited, reupload them, boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew. You have my permission and blessing to update, patch and fork anything as needed. If you find a way to monetize something here, I will be impressed.

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