1: Go re-read the Memetic Filtering section. It gives a defense roll that wouldn't normally exist but in no way even implies that a roll will be removed eventually.
I'm sorry, but that's just wrong.
[X] [Memetic Proxy Filtering 1]: 275 Tinker Information, 125-100=25 Research. (+186 Bonus) Memes. Memes everywhere. How do you protect yourself from their corrupting influence? You can just not come with contact with any, but that would mean not learning anything, ever. So how about splitting off, then telling that other you to catch those bugs, see if you want to keep them? Obviously not ideal, as you'll need to keep a distance from that other self. Even then it can fail, if a meme is virulent/proactive enough. Also it slows down research and communication speed.
Note: This skill must be turned on and off. Activity will be tracked. "I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
- [ ] [Better Memetic Separation]: 200 Thinker Information, 350 Tinker Information, 450-150=300 Research. Keeps more insidious memes out. More complete defense. Also cripples your ability to perform research! Strongly limits communication skills. Note: This skill must be turned on and off. Activity will be tracked. "Good thing I wasn't paying any attention to the outside world just then!"
- [ ] [Memetic Proxy Filtering 2]: 200 Thinker Information, 350 Tinker Information, 450 Research. Toggling your defenses… it feels almost like a Bad Meme. Keeps your defenses constantly running, without affecting your Research speeds as much as the base skill. "Wait, what was that, again?"
- [ ] [Automatic Memetic Screening]: 200 Thinker Information, 350 Tinker Information, 450 Research. A much weaker form of Memetic Defense. Likely won't stop much… but it will give you time to react or enable a better defense form. This skill is permanent and doesn't affect your research or communication in any way. "I can't believe people pay attention to this stuff..."
What I take away from this is that we're currently looking at a "defensive mode" that makes us immune to weaker attacks (
[Memetic Proxy Filtering 1]) at the cost of severely lowered research and communication speed and lets us defend against stronger attacks with a better roll (as I understand it) or lets us be undefended against them (Even then it can fail, if a meme is virulent/proactive enough), necessitating a natural roll. This can be upgraded to completely defend against stronger attacks than our current option (
[Better Memetic Separation]), make it constantly active for a lower speed cost (
[Memetic Proxy Filtering 2]) and a passive upgrade that buys us time to engage active defenses whenever we're under attack (
[Automatic Memetic Screening]).
Nothing in here says "you get a roll you otherwise wouldn't", it just says we're defended. Heck, in Better Memetic Separation it even says "More complete defense". Like, as in a complete defense applying to stronger/more varied memetic attacks. So long as our Filtering is up, we're completely immune to anything it defends against. The current additional research options heavily imply that we can eventually have our defenses up constantly with less and less penalties, too- no reason we won't eventually be immune to everything another shard could throw at us. Remember, we're actually using basic programming skills to interact with shards, a skillset not even the entities ever attained. Mostly because they didn't ever think of it.
There's no way Vhal's going to let us Research perfect defenses, because at that point the quest becomes guaranteed to win.
It makes zero sense for it to work the way you're describing, and it has zero support in the text.
I hope I've given enough support in the text by this point. Also, saying Vhal won't let us makes no sense. Researching the Stranger Danger tree lets us eventually hide from even entities, how is that any less overpowered? Not to mention, just having perfect defenses is not an auto-win for the quest. We'd still have to deal with Zion, where being immune to stuff helps, but if you're going to complain that researching defenses makes us harder to kill/infect/modify/whatever, then what would we even bother researching it for?
That's making the assumption the activation condition was Taylor triggering. It could have been something like "activate once Taylor is in range of allied shard/other resource". Because there are/were major risks in trying to attack us via the Corona connection to Taylor. This includes but is not limited to us simply cutting the connection, frying Taylor's brain by shoving massive amounts of energy into it, or even just teleporting a rock into her skull once we detected QA was attacking us through the connection. She wouldn't have known what we would have/are capable of when she made that super brain.
And why would QA give a fuck about the possible side-effects? It's a shard. If killing off Taylor lets it take control of itself back, then that's completely acceptable from an average shard's perspective. I mean, there's no reason for QA not to take this gambit; if it doesn't work and it loses this copy of itself, it's no worse off than before. Also, if it had a way to attack us without a direct connection,
it would have done so way before we wiped out the mystery personality data. Again, no reason for her to wait until some mysterious conditions are met.
Finally, putting QA in control of a host body makes no effective difference to when it was sleeping inside the back of Taylor's head. It would simply allow us to directly communicate with our predecessor via one of our avatars. The only possible way for her to attack us in that situation would be if she had programmed some kinda code into us that let the data we could investigate via Administrative Archeology take over. Which is useless once we're researched Administrative Archeology and are actively defending against memetic hazards anyway.
No way for her to contact any other shards in this scenario, either, as she's not a shard. If hosts could communicate via the shardnet, I'm pretty sure we'd know about it.
We already know that entities can be harmed, and even killed. Entity level defenses are meaningless against gods, and QA was trying to fight a rob.
So we invent better defenses than entities. There, problem solved. Not to mention that it's unlikely we'll fight a ROB through our specific anti-shard tools. We'd likely need magic and/or psionics for that. For the time being, I'm completely fine with being immune to entity-level bullshit, also making us immune to QA's stuff. Remember, it was TRYING to fight a ROB. It lost, otherwise we wouldn't be in it's body.
This. Even if we don't need to roll via the research just granting us a static level of defense that does nothing to stop our defenses from being overcome through force or skill. There's a reason these defense skills have levels on them.
Yeah, and once we've reached max level we're immune no matter what kinda memetic shit is thrown at us. We work our way up the ladder, becoming more and more immune to attacks of differing intensity, making it easier and easier to defend against stuff above our immunity threshold.
