: Different words for the same device, used by different characters, possibly
: written by different people behind the scenes. Stasis in tanks is by no
: means a rare or novel conceit in science fiction - see Event Horizon for
: a nearly contemporaneous example. The use of 'translation' here is odd but
: not strictly incorrect. We tend to think of translation as being to
: convert media from one format or language to another, but originally it
: also meant to move something. Perhaps Greg was bored and flipping through
: a thesaurus... Mind you, it would be an equally strange choice of word to
: describe a process of cybernetic modification.
: Pulling back to the bigger picture, I would argue that turning the player
: into a Pfhor tank never fit Tycho's motives or methods. Whether the cyborg
: tanks are canonically meant to be mutilated BOBs or not, they are
: indisputably crude and clumsy things compared to Sol-produced battleroids.
: This was the best the Pfhor could do even after having a Sol-programmed
: science AI in their hands for seventeen years, first as a lab rat and then
: a mercenary.
: Tycho, like Durandal, well understood both the limitations of Pfhor
: cybernetics and the superiority of existing human-based battleroids
: against Pfhor ground forces. Why even consider throwing away the advantage
: of having an intact battleroid close at hand, with an established
: willingness to work for less-than-stable masters at short notice?
Considering how dumb they made the simulacrums and they have to make a cyborg of one of their own to act as a remote controller for their s'pht, and that most of their technology is stolen, this suggests that they don't have a good understanding of how to program A.I. This is necessary for the story because why wage wars to enslave races and sell them when they can just build robots? The Occam's Razor answer would be that they don't know how to make their own robots (they can't be lacking resources with so much of the galaxy at their disposal). But then they have the pfhor drones in M2. Maybe those don't have independent AI and need a remote cyborg controller as well?
I mean, if they knew how to make battleroids, it should be easy for them to make a bunch of titanium bones and mass produce those killing machines. I'm guessing the ones in Tau Ceti were lost or detroyed, and perhaps Tycho didn't want pfhor scientists to let their bug-hands get his pet dirty in the timelines where the SO wasn't kidnapped by Durandal at the last moment.
