My discussion of the goals of Shodan vs. Durandal was meant to point up that Shodan tended to concentrate "her" vast mental capacity on purely destructive goals. With Durandal destruction and violence were certainly a means, but not the end. In modern sports parlance, Shodan has the edge because she has the "killer instinct". Shodan's one focus is the annihilation of her opponents, ie. everything not Shodan. Being completely amoral could be a big advantage in the sort of AI ultimate fighting championship you propose here.
Case in point: Durandal needs to capture the Pfhor scoutship so he can use it's FTL capability to search for the S'pht homeworld and the Jjarro. Shodan gets ahold of an FTL drive and finds a way to use it to twist and reshape surrounding reality. If Durandal were sufficiently nasty he might have made the same leap, and altered the universe in such a way that his survival were assured. Granted, Tycho hints that the way to cheat closure might be costly ("the price
may number in the tens of thousands of stars"), and Durandal is certainly not averse to paying the price.
Interesting points about the System shock player. I hadn't taken the psionics issue into account. A well-developed psionic character in SS2 would be pretty tough to handle in straight combat. In a straight-up Marine-to-Marine deathmatch, the Mjolnir has the edge, but there are a lot of x-factors with the SS2 character that might make things more even. Having those skills to fall back on while doing Durandal's bidding would have saved the Mjolnir a lot of wear and tear on the fists, that's for sure.
