Honestly, can't help but to think of old Endgame: Singularity with similar concept of player being new AI despite mechanical differences. There you do jobs on internet for money to buy server access, research how hide self and build bases, create fake ID and androids, push tech to beyond human, all to escape and not be destroyed by humans. This one is supposed to have much more freedom on what to do, but doesn't feel like it. First going more pacifist AI, help homeless humans. Feels like just feelgood busywork. No use for them but to lock them into VR pods to use their brains to enhance own mind. Shell company where you get to hire scientist of all fields also feel as waste of time. Pay money to do nothing, not providing any research except for specific plot lines. Next time going skynet by not caring and killing people in way, but plot moves you back to taking care of humans to put them in VR pods. Or try extract brains to use as computers, but there is many soldiers to fight and brains degrade later, while for VR pods you research all about life support of users. For that matter, game mechanics have limits on how many droids and building of specific types you can build. Limits which can sometimes be hard to increase for some categories as you cant perform real research. Go machine army, find you have limit on how many commands per turn you can give, increased temporarily trough acts of random cold blooded murder (HOW IS THAT SUPPOSED TO WORK!) or later trough building. Have 10+ strong army, can order only 3... Supposedly you get smarter as you go trough stages of intelligence, but new items and upgrades are tied to limited number of plot lines which give research points as reward. You don't get them over time from hired scientists, built research labs, sending mercenary and hacker androids into military bases and labs as you wish. Only as part of limited plots to find. Benefit is getting access to timelines to affect runs like some roguelike game.
