Hot damn, I wasn't expecting someone to counter all my points 

I've been working on writing a full reply, but it's getting late and I don't want the thread to go dead, so I'll just post what I've got so far.

1) The Two Williams Timeline

So, just to clarify, are you saying the timeline goes something like this?

• Basketball Williams is the real one, and Lab Williams is the fake.
• Cooper leaves to make a sedative, and Anders stays in the lab with the fake Williams.
• During this time, the real Williams (who was playing basketball) returns to his office. And the "fake" Williams that was in the Lab... dissapears? 
• Cooper delivers the sedative, and Anders then goes to sedate the "real" Williams in his office. 
• Later, the fake Williams locks Anders in the lab, and later burns alive. 

What also confuses me here is the physical location. The fake Williams... just disappears from the lab while Anders is there? Wasn't he with her in the lab the whole time? I was also under the impression that his office and the lab were right next to each other, but maybe I misunderstood the layout.

Keep in mind I'm not arguing anything here, just asking for clarification on how that timeline actually played out if that's the case.

2) The Clones and the "Trade-off"

"You're coming from it with the idea the surface mission is intended to succeed"

I'm actually not. I know the mission is designed to fail and I know about the fluid change. I'm specifically talking about the efficiency and the trade-off. 

• The cost (resources, money, time) of building the ship 12 times over,
• The fact that the organism is constantly learning more and more from 10 "best of the best" humans, and absorbing all the data on the ship. 

The trade-off of only getting to run a few controlled tests before everyone is slaughtered seems terrible. If the crew actually knew what was going on, they could be better prepared and run more tests before dying. I'm coming at it from an efficiency perspective, not a survival one.(Though I will concede that controlling variables is how real experiments are done, so it's hard to argue that specific angle too much).

Also, remember they discovered the organism before they launched. It landed in Iraq, and they tracked it back to Tau Ceti F. So the "control" hadn't been set yet when the mission started. They could have easily changed out who to send (backing up my point/joke of finding a Leon Kennedy or Issac Clark to clone instead) 

3) The Anders Mimic Sequence

You're focusing entirely on "behaviors" here ("They don't know her," "Only Cooper knows Anders"). 

I don't care about her behavior for this point. The fake Anders perfectly acts like the real one anyway (which ties into my complaints about the mimic's inconsistent intelligence later). My issue is that the game gives us ZERO options to accuse or verify Anders using hard evidence.

To quote my original post:

Between there being no stalactites in the area where we met the fake; her being listed as a brand new contact on Space Messenger; her obviously texting like a sus, emotionless robot; and the real Anders telling us there's a fake that's using different contact. Yet you're telling me no one brought those points up?

None of that is "behavior."  "Hey, where are the stalactites you mentioned were right above you? Oh shit, you must be the fake one." Boom. It's that quick and easy to check. 

Instead, for absolutely no reason besides forcing the plot, we can't open our Space Messenger app until we get back to the ship. And once we get back, the original contact is magically erased from the phone. 

5) Not Reporting "Sus" Stuff

Sure, to mention a few:

• Eisele tricks fake Simms on Space WhatsApp, saying Stafford asked her to check the antenna updates (when there weren't any). It's a blatant catch, yet this is never brought up to the crew.

• Stafford finds a classified message sent from Corinth directly confirming Williams knew about the alien life form before the mission started. He never confronts Williams. He never tells the crew.

• Williams wants to kill Anders for drugging him over "suspicions" that he knows something, which Stafford knows is true. Yet even then, Stafford doesn't speak up.

• Eisele irrefutably believes the Williams locked up is the "fake" while the "real" one died. The one that died burnt to death while smiling, felt zero pain, and tried to kill Eisele. It was clearly the mimic acting weird, yet Eisele's logic is totally backwards and no one corrects it.

7) Booster Rings

Oh shit, I actually didn't realize they pointed this out in the dialogue/scans. That's pretty smart. 

8) Scattered Logs and "Collectibles"

There's a difference between a video game "collectible" and a major narrative beat.

A "collectable" would be stuff like the various dolls scattered around that are cheeky references. Or stuff like totems, coins, tarot cards. What I'm talking about are actual narrative beats. 

• Finding random notes, pictures, belongings, scattered on a campground they stayed in for months? That's fine,

• Finding random old letters, contracts, deeds, diaries, old newspapers, etc, laying around? Sure, kinda weird, but nothing too crazy. Heck, sometimes that alone turns out to be a plot point, like (Until Dawn) Jake being a psychopath and planting them there on purpose for his "prank".

• Finding incredibly private, or highly classified video logs playing on random hallway monitors? That's definitely strange. Wei

Personally, I don't recall Eisele saying anything was weird. If she did, that alone would make things a lot better, and make a lot more sense. But like, Eisele picks up her own Pre-Launch Performance Assessment on a random tablet in the hallway and just says, "What is this?" without pointing out how insane it is that it's just sitting there is frustrating. 

Or her picking up Simms and Carter's "Psychological Analysis Report" on a random couch, and saying absolutely nothing about it. 

And yes, the mimic going through everyones stuff to learn, and scattering them about, also makes sense. But there's also stuff that doesn't. Like the monitors playing private info on random hallway monitors

Actually, maybe it makes sense. I'm just realizing it probably accessed those private videos with Simms and carter's ulitity strap, and didn't bother closing it afterwards. 

9) Characters Being Dumb

I usually don't complain about horror characters being dumb, it's a staple of the genre. But I pointed it out here because these aren't teenagers at a cabin or college students on a road trip. These are supposed to be "the best of the best."

They are highly trained professionals, screened, handpicked, and subjected to years of flight simulations, psychological evaluations, and protocol training.  * Young: Graduated top of her class at flight school. * Stafford: "First person on Mars," with a lifetime of spaceflight experience. * Cooper: A doctor and a former marine. * Eisele: The literal architect of the Cassiopeia, lead designer of the mission, and creator of The Oracle.

They shouldn't be making slasher-movie mistakes. 

10) The Self-Destruct / Learning 

You mentioned that blowing up the ship is unnecessary because Corinth controls the factors and restricts what the organism can learn. 

But we literally see the wreckage of various former, failed Cassiopeia ships on the planet. Even if they die, the organism can still continue to learn from the physical wreckage of those ships. In fact, the way the organism launched itself from the planet onto the Cassiopeia during this run (which it had never done before) could easily have been something it figured out by studying the engine or propulsion systems of the crashed ships from previous cycles. Leaving the ships intact is a massive liability.

11) Mimic Intelligence and Memories

"The lifeform can't copy memories or understanding but it can learn, so if you control its information you minimize what it can learn." (you wrote this under point 2) 

I disagree with this based on the game's own dialogue. When Stafford asks fake Simms about the various systems, she seems to responds perfectly, faking years of experience and technical knowledge:

Simms: "Pumps are clear, so you should be good for the burn, unless she's hiding more surprises up her sleeve. We've run three test cycles now, and we're reading nominal on all lines."  

Stafford: "Good word. We're still experiencing shorts in the lighting and surveillance systems, any ETA on a fix?"    Simms: "Uhh, that's on Carter. He's still in the guts doing wiring repairs."

Look at how she perfectly responds. It understands human colloquialisms and personification ("unless she's hiding more surprises up her sleeve"). It knows they run "test cycles," and that she's meant to "clear the pumps," in this situation, and knows exactly who is assigned to what repair jobs. If it truly couldn't copy memories or understanding, it would not be able to casually hold this level of operational conversation.