i havent had the opportunity to look in depth at how the game ai works with assimilation so i dont know if this is a thing but i think it would be cool if bots assimilated by a programmer (most likely 0b10) were made to follow it/added to its squad
it would be interesting to see a programmer with a hacked derelict or two in caves but it would be decently rare because bots usually die before being core disrupted
(https://i.ibb.co/SDc8hNcb/ezgif-20b492d07851ba.gif)
I like it! It's an interesting idea for theme, although one with little impact in the bigger picture since most of the time whatever they assimilate is quickly killed by whatever else they're fighting, combined with the fact that even if they survive, the are easily separated from other bots due to their speed (since they're not really meant to lead other types of bots, only follow bots or work with others of their type).
Such an action would also have to treat different assimilated bots differently (if the goal is to add some new flavor), since some types of things they assimilate would not realistically have a purpose to follow them, and should be doing other things.
Overall probably not worth the trouble compared to what is gained...
Another idea is to have a caves outpost that is staffed by beat-up 0b10 derelicts. The progs ran around fighting derelicts and ordered the ones that lived long enough to be assimilated to go fill in at an empty outpost. If you wanted to be evil you could have the Unaware derelicts move around like normal derelicts in an outpost do to fool players using sensors/seismic, but I don't know if progs are smart enough for that level of planning.
even if they were too slow it would still be interesting to see barely functional (might fall apart the lightest sneeze because of being shot like a million times) reprogrammed derelicts patrol caves as a minor threat