I feel like someone is trying to jedi *handwave* me, but I wouldn't think they were out there dragooning people, just being not quite all honest with their recruitment. Not as evil/bad as the movie "Coma" with Tom Selleck -- (ugh, that was 1978? must have caught that in syndication)
The Domini weren't all that brain-washy, though they did create more than a few unwitting agents they could use (like Donner the Detonator). The operatives who got all those implants and suped-up prosthetics had to be unabashedly and utterly loyal to the cause (they were, after all, being asked to go out, commit genocide on an interstellar scale, and die if necessary to achieve it).
How about a MD with artificial limbs that simply gets a shunt plugged in, and the MD tells his system to provide the output through the shunt instead of to the physical limbs?
Similarly, artificial eyes get data input directly from the sensors. The MD is not looking at the sensor screens, they are receiving the sensor data.
Hopefully surge protectors are included to avoid the bug zapper special
The artificial limbs would be removed before entering the ProtoMech interface; it's simply how the system was designed to work. They would only need prosthetics when outside the machine, after all. As to the surge protection...they couldn't use buffered VDNI, which mitigates pilot feedback. Nothing is said about the Pain Shunt, though. The rules ran as follows:
Rules Level: Experimental
Available to: PM
Tech Base (Ratings): Inner Sphere (E/XXFX)
The Word of Blake’s ProtoMech interface enables the use of ProtoMechs
in the same fashion as Clan warriors with EI neural implants, but requires
that the pilot be fitted with a standard (non-buffered) VDNI implant. The
implanted pilot may not possess any limbs—prosthetic or otherwise—but
may be equipped with other cybernetic modifications including dermal
armor and cybernetic eye, ear, and other internal organ replacements.
In gameplay, a ProtoMech operated via an Inner Sphere ProtoMech
interface will function in the same manner as a standard ProtoMech.
The interface lacks any form of ejection or escape systems.
Bottom line: the system plugged a VDNI-equipped head-&-torso-only subject directly into the ProtoMech's onboard systems, at which point the pilot functioned just like a Clan proto pilot with EI implants. They perceived the world around them "naturally" through the machine's sensors, and experienced its movement and damage as if it were their own bodies. (And in Necromo Nightmare, they went feral while inside their machines thanks to a bio-weapon, and thus the players could encounter bestial ProtoMechs acting just like animals, complete with attempts to "eat" them, even though the machine couldn't actually do so.)
So, to also answer SD501st's comment: yeah, the WoB Proto pilots likely got basic prosthetics for out-of-cockpit activities, though we never saw very much/any of them outside the Necromo Nightmare, and thus it remains vague just what their quality of life was.
- Herb
