Von Neumann Weapon

[Steel Mirage]

Yet another hare-brained idea from a dud modder:
To make a long story short John von Neumann was a theoretician, a genius really, who made many contributions to science. Significant here is his concept of a "self-replicating machine" AKA Von Neumann Machine. Now imagine this at a very small scale, along the lines of the latest remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Here's the question:
Could a weapon/unit be created that could transform other units into copies of itself, which would thereafter do the same to other units, ad nauseum. I imagine it happening like the Battle Fortress, but instead of being crushed, the unit is absorbed and transformed into another Von Neumann machine.
Would some variation of the slave miner code work? I haven't given up on exploring code and writing for myself, but life for me has backed up like a Soviet toilet beneath a fat sweating Texan. So I'm a throwing this out there, to see what ya'll think.

[MRMIdAS]

you could make this already with brutes and infdeath 9.

it would also be possible with certain death anims too.

[Steel Mirage]

The Genetic Mutator logic could be one option, but would it be able to work on tanks and vehicles? I acknowledge that I'm asking without doing any research myself, but I'm more just going for discussion for its own merits... I think this could be a very interesting super weapon or super unit, because unlike the genetic mutator, this would be self propagating, entirely unlike mind control or the one shot GM. It would of course have a weakness, like it would get fried by Tesla tech or Prism tech or... I dunno, Magna Tech or Flying Saucers, but it could add an element to tactical game play.

[Graion Dilach]

You can only mutate infantries. Ares allows you to create as many player-controlled mutations as you like, so you may can create an untrainable infantry which's mutation anim is the Von Neumann Machine's warhead anim. You may also create another unit which starts the mutating... like a Neumann Tower or something.

I already planned experimenting with warhead-spawned infantry, however I only have the time for it after I'm done with the 0.2 stuff. So we'll see.

[Steel Mirage]

Damn. Oh well.