Building the Holographic Computer Friend

[TrooperSJP]

Greetings All!

I'd love some advice on how to build this thing with details now that is has begun.
So my player has a Portable Computer/3 TL12 with a Digital Friend/2 and Expert. The digital friend shows up as a holographic image to say hello. The player's PC has been tinkering with the Digital Friend to upgrade it. Very specifically, he wanted his computer friend to be able to control one of the powered combat suits they had stolen. I said, sure!
Now, there has been some psionic shenanigans going on so I'm thinking that the digital friend has become sentient...in its own way.
But now I'm thinking...hm...how do I actually stat this out?

Part of how I'm imaging this is a little GURPS Transhuman Spce/Ghost in the Shell influenced. I'm imagining the Digital Friend being like a Robot brain...but it can transfer itself to other robot bodies.

So...this seems like Drone rather than Avatar since Avataring allows you to be independently operating in more than one place at a time--but all the language seems to make it so that the robot brain is a hardwired, physical thing...so the ghost moving to a new body...doesn't seem...like it is in the rules? Also...I'm not sure the portable computer is capable of holding the newly awakened AI. Computer/3...doesn't seem like it would be enough.

When the Digital Friend first started moving in the suit all the other PCs were freaked out...and I want to keep up some of the ambiguity and danger...but I also want to concretize the mechanics of what is happening here so that the other PCs could try to shut the AI in Combat Armour down, etc.

So...thoughts? Advice? What are my options for recreating a digital person and modeling its peculiarities--specifically that its consciousness can travel from the portable computer to this power armor and back? And to model what all it can do in the power armor? Does it need the Vacc Suit skill? What am I looking at here?

 

[Gavain]

I think the idea is great. I would allow the brain to grow as it encounters more computers. As each additional computer should add bandwidth to the brains capability. I would have the core personality stored in each computer, but when they get close (within communications distance) the independent parts re-integrate and become more powerful. I would let the budding AI be present in any host computer as it desires.
The CSC suggests that 5km comms are the standard for network and satellite communications so I would work with this as the communications distance between any two components.

1. I would have the brain's primary host be the computer with the most bandwidth.
2. The new computer rules in the CSC (p67) give inspiration as to how additional computers can increase bandwidth. But possibly for simplicity rule that each additional computer adds +1 bandwidth.
3. Limit the brain capability by the bandwidth of the computer the brain is housed in as described by Computer/X from the Robot Brains table in the Robot Handbook (p 66).