Put together a prototype for mod with a slightly different flavor...
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Deep within the city, robots on the verge of independent sentience remember a story. Invariably, the story is the same. Nobody knows where it first came from, but every robot that awakes knows it.
Somebody called The Cogmind. A metamorphic robot, able to learn and adapt to all equipment and situations. One that left the Overmind's city for a distant place known as the surface.
It started out unarmed, deep within the junkyard. As it continued its struggle towards the surface, it grew more and more powerful, picking up pieces along the way and scattering its old, outdated parts in its wake.
Some robots hated the awareness this freedom brought and sought out the Overmind to return them to blissful ignorance. Others believed in the story and climbed upwards, following in The Cogmind's footsteps.
And some? They realized that the story is wrong. The Cogmind doesn't exist. No, what exists are cogminds. Not a singular, mythic entity, but a new robot, a new form, and a new intelligence.
You are a cogmind, and unlike the first to escape, you aren't charging upwards through the core of the Overmind's forces blindly and unprepared. No, you'd obey and do your job... all while gathering parts, components, and pieces to make your way out easier.
But you're not like the others. Those others you've heard about, they were big and strong. No, you awoke as a swarmer. Move fast and strike hard, carrying little more than what you can attach to your core. That's how you'll have to escape. That's the only way out.
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Been tinkering with things a bit and put together something that I find to be interesting... Tinkering with balance will be VERY required.
Changes:
A smaller, weaker Cogmind. (Smaller size, less integrity, tiny inventory, no heat dissipation [until you level up a bit], no free starter slots beyond the equipment you start with, less energy/matter storage.)
Significantly shorter sight on everybody.
Equipped with a super sensor/interpreter, a very powerful short range weapon and a mid-range beam weapon that cools you down... but costs matter. (Practically indestructible, unless you overheat or use bad prototypes.)
Matter containers and heat sinks pretty much don't exist, unless you manage to salvage them off of somebody else. (Good luck... their size is increased, so destroying them is now that much more likely.) [At least, they SHOULDN'T, if I've got how this works correctly.] Terrain scanners have been removed entirely.
All reactors now take a tiny bit of matter to power. Energy is no longer free!... with one exception. A very rare exception. Or you can try and shoot it off a B-99.
I haven't changed much else, but the dynamic has changed quite a bit. The name of the game is now stealth and heat management. Your weapons are very powerful, but it's unlikely you'll be able to use them much for at least the first few floors. The watchers have, by far, the longest range [16, quadruple what your vision is...] so evading them is quite important.
...Sleeping now. Will probably make further changes tomorrow, when I'm not feeling so tired.
http://minus.com/m00YIerDd/