Pets
First, living/organic pets need to be made exceedingly more expensive. A luxury a Blue sector resident acquires with moderate ease but anyone else cherishes the idea of.
In addition, living creatures should be able to be augmented accordingly at greater risk to both the chrome and the animal. Animal biotech is the perveyance of skilled if not cruel ripper doc.
Lastly, inorganic pets are made available. Economic, mass-produced, and almost real.
What's the difference?
Behavior: An organic pet will not have safety restrictions on it that prevent it from following commands to attack and do things that are otherwise illegal. True loyalty has a price.
Evolution: An organic pet may gain in skill/stats over time based on the activities and RP surrounding it. An inorganic pet's abilities are entirely based on the PC tech servicing it.
RP: I imagine an organic pets RP is really more socially limited but an inorganic is prone to out and about with significance to the game world.
Replicant Animatronic
The real power of inorganic pets is they can be fine tuned by technicians and remotely piloted by riggers for recon missions. I imagine there being two primary categories quadrupedal & flyers.
Quadrupedals would be extremely sneaky, difficult to grab even when flatfooted, and with enough tuning capable of jumping rooftops.
Flyers would be able to fly and linger in places typically restricted to aircraft. They would be easier to grab than quadrupedals and not nearly as sneaky.
Inorganics would functionally resemble vehicles. An NPC object outfitted with a variety of parts that can be installed, removed, repaired, and otherwise messed with.
An inorganic would be able to carry ONE object of limited weight in its mouth. During this time, it would be extremely vulnerable to being grabbed. The max weight corresponding to that of a ganger weapon comes to mind.
Inorganics would typically not do well in combat but there are exceptions to every rule.
With a grey market cybernetic, the corpses of organic pets can be coverted to an inorganic pet.
Inorganics would be bound to legal behavior similiar to that of a PC with a behavior mod chip. However, a skill technician would be able to bypass this.
Inorganics would keep a black box of all voice commands and overheard conversations. Legally limited to use and access by the WJF. These would be extremely hard to crack and even more difficult to clear.
Inorganic bodies do not decay but the components on retired inorganics will spoil like cybernetics.
Depending on the quality of tinkering and type of generator, inorganics can run on a large variety of power sources ranging from Ethanol, Battox Batteries, and Gelcels.
Unforeseen Consequences
Cyberware ripped from an animal is known to make someone more prone to PDS. Ideally, a rabies $disease script would also be applicable here.
Owning an inorganic requires a license from the HOJ due to the propensity for them to be tinkered with.
While not illegal, a questionable establishment would exist somewhere that hosted inorganic fights that were bet on.
The market for hunting and stealing inorganics would be a profitable but dangerous one.
Thoughts?
