I hope I have a decent grip on your vision regarding the gameworld, bots, stats and such. About half was gleaned from hastily skimming through the thread, and the rest from playing, so not exactly an ideal info source. For some reason discord hates me and won't "accept invite". You might consider compiling a bit of a FAQ then adding some of your lore ideas to reign in some scope of the plentiful requests and eventual disappointed complaints.
I like that the "Model Rating" is tied to the overall value of the bot. Like Beauty was the limiter in Jx9, but in DSCS the potential of models to emulate the most subtle of human behaviors is limited by their... Model. (I really want to use "Chassis" there, but you've chosen to use "Chassis" as "State of Disrepair" referring to the lowest durability score of their list of components. So far, that's really the only thing I really wish I could change your mind on.
) So, with a high-end chassi-err... Model, upper tier components can make full use of their individual purposes. A bit like... the Base Chassis is a computer, and the components are useful applications. Only instead of bloated programs running like Fortnite on a Commodore-64, the components simply don't have the finer tuned electronic/mechanical infrastructure to make their processes seem fully authentic, much less graceful. I don't know, but that's just my thoughts.
I played on hardcore for about 10 minutes, when I realized I'm not actually a masochist. So, I'm grateful for that bit of self-discovery there. Truly punishing RNG, and I'm REALLY trying to quit my filthy save-scumming habit.
How close to Event/NPC modding are we? I mean... A sliding scale generic buyer or "bot wanted" missions would be really nice to reward some of the currently possible masterpieces with 75-150k or so. Dump events, combat possibilities, etc... Just to fill in the blanks while you work on fleshing out your vision, story and pacing for the game. I also wouldn't mind writing or rewriting some of your less robust scenes, in place. Thanks again for your game, so far!
I made a quick mod with a Model-A using AGMX-9's old assets and then played a bit more. I also added a few components, and I tried to make them make sense, and not be totally game-breaking, but they are higher ranked than what's currently in game. At this point in development, that alone is basically game breaking.