Something I like to do is to have other people suggest courses of action for a villain, especially since they don't have any feelings for my players and might hence suggest rational but ruthless ideas. It also introduces different styles of plans from what I as a GM would do, which can be useful. Right now I am thinking about a dormant TITAN factory installation in a somewhat out of the way place. The assumptions are that it was built early on as a staging point - it has plenty of resources and can build anything needed. It was also early enough that it is not using any truly bizarre exsurgent or postsingularity tech, at least not overtly - it is just a big nanotech structure with some beyond-transhuman engineering. For a long time it has been largely dormant, but now transhumans have appeared and started exploring it. For some reason it has not immediately attacked them or demonstrated any particular hostility. Why? Some possible simple answers: The explorers did bring a just in case antimatter warhead that would be hard to get rid of, and the installation doesn't want to be vaporized. The installation has a "parent" TITAN that broke contact and told it to keep a low profile until contacted later - the parent was either destroyed, changed by the virus or evolved to something that didn't care about a mere factory complex. The factory is not going to do anything until explorers actually threaten it or its functioning. Drilling a hole through a wall is a minor nuisance and can be fixed in minutes. That they rummage through the equipment and resources doesn't matter enough. Even if they manage to trigger production of some stuff it is not an issue, since that is just what the facility is for. While the transhumans study the factory it is studying them, quietly adding more designs and data to its stores. If necessary it will make use of it. The factory is aware of the exsurgent virus and tries to avoid it. One good way is to keep a low profile, and rely on the security conscious transhumans to erect firewalls and maintain radio silence. If they were to start breaking it, action must be taken. The subsystems of the factory have diverged: with no major activity going on they have turned into independent minds that disagree with each other. They downvote plans, they deny each other resources and generally produce paralysis until something happens that is big enough to focus them on a joint goal again. So, my question to you: if you were a near-superintelligent TITAN factory with a human infestation and no clear instructions, what would you do? What strange motivations might you have after having been alone for subjective centuries? What are the baroque conclusions from the simple reasons above?