I always loved virus as both a villain and a plot device, and I used it liberally in both ways in my campaign but typically the worst things in space weren't the machines, they were the people.
The first strains I introduced in my game were relatively benign. An overhead crane in a cargo hold that had been turned into a nightclub, a PA system in a space station. Eventually the strains became more unusual and occasionally deadly, a lift system in a starport that went crazy, an orbital anthropology study center, and crazed cargobots with jury-rigged weapons, but it was always the humans who were the most dangerous.
I could never really wrap my head around why Sandman had evolved from a planetary traffic control network, i suppose the idea of keeping the people in the air alive might have played a part. IMTU the peacemaker derived from a kind of anthropological observation stations mainframe. It couldn't interact with its subjects but it could watch them and learn from them.
Derek Stanley
Sent from my iPhone...
On 2012-06-16, at 3:05, Todd Kes <> wrote:
> As to the first, the Traveller wiki has this Virus page:
> http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Virus/TNE
>
> For the Puppeteer virus, it looks like the progress was roughly
>
> Strain 1 (Suicider) -> Strain 1A (Suicide Inducer) -> Strain 2A (Destroyer) -> Strain 2B (Reproducer) -> Empire Builder (many platforms, one mind) -> Alliance Builder (works with other Virus) -> Puppeteer (infects other Virus with their own code)
>
> Oh, for specialist strains, I'm scared to imagine what a Virus that grew up in a massive government bureaucracy mainframe would be like. The DMV from Hell would probably be R&R compared to what it does.
>
> Todd Kes
>
>
>