Help me design a massive shape-shifting alien race template?

[the adventurer]

As I continue to plug away at my GURPS Macross campaign, I've begun to develop my main alien antagonist race. I've decided to set my campaign after Space War I, and away from the other major cannon conflicts (no Protodeviln or Vajra. Probably no rouge Zentradi either). So my players will be making first contact with a brand new hostile alien threat.

My idea is an ancient defense system (probably an abandoned Protoculture experiment) of what seem to be inorganic balls of matter. Which, when threatened, mimic technology and weapons of the hostile force. For example, when first encountering a Valkyrie VF-1, it will take the shape of a Valkyrie VF-1. It has the limitation that it can't replicate technology it hasn't directly experienced yet, so if it takes the form of a Valkyrie, it can't imitate the Valk's weapon systems until the actual Valk fires its weapons. These things also learn, and store what they've replicated for latter use. Also they share their learned forms with other members of their race. Also, once they've encountered enough things to mimic, they can start mixing and matching what they've memorized.

In their standard state, they are a gelatinous white ball of dense goo. And though they take the shape of things, they don't necessarily replicate things like armor or super structure. They just continue to be made of super dense goo. Which, in my mind, makes them difficult to deal with. As if you blow off an arm or gunpod, they can grow a new one until they run out of fresh matter.

At first, these creatures, seem lifeless. An automated system, like antibodies. But eventually they will have the potential replicate human form, which will give them a way to express intelligence.

Like everything in Macross, these creatures will be natural giants (SM+4 minimum). But can combine to become much larger. With enough merged together they can get to the size of full size Macross-class ships, and in extreme cases possibly even fullsize City Islands.

So I guess I'm looking for help developing a very basic template for stock enemies.

I suppose the first major goal is properly defining and pointing its basic Shapeshifting(B83) Advantage. In this case it probably should be the Morph (B84) variation, with the Unlimited(+50%) Special Enhancement and the Mass Conservation(-20%) Special Limitation. Since I want the creature able to mix-n-match templates I should probably take the Improvised Forms(+100%) Special Enhancement from GURPS Powers(75). Also Flawed (-10%) because regardless of what form the creature takes, there is some visible difference from the actual thing its mimicking, either in color or detail.

So...

Morph (Unlimited +50%, Improvised Forms +100%, Mass Conversion -20%, Flawed -10%) [??]

Morph already has it built in that the creature will have to see/touch what it wants to mimic, but say its replicating a fully armed Valkyrie, will it automatically be able to use the craft's weaponry unless it witnesses them being used? Because I really want it to not be able to.

Also, I put question marks in the final point cost, because I'm not sure how many character points should be sunk into it. Morph seems to say it starts at a base of 100 points just to have the advantage. But in order to morph into templates that have more character points then the character's base character points, you have to sock more points into morph? So if the creature has a total of 300 points for everything (stats/advantage/skills, etc..), it can only morph into a template with a maximum point total of 300?

Also, when Morphing spaceships that use GURPS Spaceship design rules... are there any special rules?

Also, the mimic memory thing based on IQ... I don't see these creatures having a large IQ (at least to begin with). Is there a retention Enhancement that could circumvent this limitation? Or perhaps invent one?

Anyway, I'm rambling now, I'm basically looking for a good point cost for that morph ability to start. Other advantages like Duplication (for splitting and combining tomfoolery) will definitely be needed too.

Thanks for any advice or help.

[vierasmarius]

My first response to this must be the obligatory "Don't use points for this!" It sounds like you're making a purely NPC race, and one which is vehicle-scale, to boot. GURPS doesn't assign cp costs to vehicles for a reason (though it can be done.) Using Morph for this ability would require coming up with cp totals for all vehicles you want to use... but it sounds like you want this creature to be able to replicate anything of the right size, so you'd need to give it sufficient points for the most expensive vehicle possible. It really doesn't seem worth the effort.

Perhaps you could instead handle it by making it a Superscience biological spaceship. Give it a set of "generic" weapons, maybe an array of different guns in a Reconfigurable slot. Do the same with engines, sensors etc. Or, just create a new system type, a superscience "Morphing Module" which can replicate any spaceship system. Depending on how much of the subject's properties it copies, split the design slots between controls, armor, engines and Morph Modules.