Roboticist
The Roboticist
The Roboticist is a specialized Medical department profession concerned with building, maintaining, upgrading, and overseeing the station's population of Cyborgs and lesser Robots. They do not have access to any other restricted Medical areas, such as the Medbay, and are generally somewhat apart from the rest of their department. Due to the man-machine interface powering Cyborg units, however, Roboticists are often just as much surgeons and medics as they are machinists. Roboticists start the shift in Robotics proper alongside any players who are Cyborgs from the start, located due north of the Medbay lobby. If there are any Cyborgs present they will often ask for basic upgrades such as enhancements to power cells, speed boosts, or propulsion capabilities; while it is ultimately your call, generally speaking, these requests should be met.
Roboticists are equipped with a standard lab clothing and a Medical Headset that has perhaps the least-used special communications channel available to it, as well as standard radio features. The most use Medical Headsets see are coordination between researchers, mostly. Nonetheless, using the special channel can be accomplished with :h, like any other specialist headset. Note that anybody in close proximity to your headset will be able to hear it. Roboticists also possess a mechanical toolbox which contains various tools that will come in handy when making and fiddling with 'Borgs 'n' 'Bots. An incredibly helpful upgrade for your job, available from Robotics autolathes, is the Machine Translator Implant, which is described below but basically allows a human being to participate in the robot talk comms channel, sending and recieving messages this way. Savvy Roboticists can be counted on to implant themselves with this device, and may even prepare a few for Heads to facilitate better communications.
Metal Man Making: The Basics
The Roboticist, as stated above, is concerned with building and maintaining Cyborgs and Robots. How does one go about that though?
'Borging- 'Borging, borging, or cyborging: the art of making man into machine. The procedure is relatively simple. First, the Roboticist must craft the Cyborg shell. The parts can be made via metal loaded into the Robotics autolathes. The parts required are:
- a frame
- right arm
- left arm
- left and right leg/treads (treads are a popular mobility choice)
- chest
- head
Load some wire and a power cell into the chest and then pop everything onto the frame save the head. Now you need the parts from man, the parts in question being a part, and that part in question being the brain. The brain, as well as other bits of man-flesh, are retrieved via surgery (see below). Once you have a brain pop it into the head. Thne place the head on and use a wrench to turn it on. Presto! Your basic 'borg is active and free to roam the station, wreaking havoc or actually helping. Cyborgs can be upgraded and fiddled with using the cyborg docking stations. Experiment with making things and applying them to the Cyborgs.
Cutting People Up- This is the more medical part of the Roboticist job: surgery (or more accurately fucking about with people's insides). Surgery is performed on the table located in the almost-center of the Robotics lab. A patient is placed on the table and then slicing and dicing with the saws and scalpels provided begins. The most elementary surgery of the Roboticist's career is the brain removal. The most simple way to remove a space-man's grey matter for 'borging or just to toss around like a meaty bouncy ball is to:
- grab a saw and a scalpel
- target the patient's head
- now use your tools in this order: scalpel-saw-scalpel-saw
The brain should now be out. The human body can have other shit done to it and other bits removed, so if you have a surplus of un-rotten corpses and/or "volunteers," try hacking away and take notes written in blood and lymph on what you learn as you go!