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[Esna Pitoojee]

As for soft-clones, I'm sorry, but no. Losing your memory for however many days is not "not a significant permanent effect".

Player A explodes, "killing" player B. Player B's soft clone loses only the memories that Player B wishes to.

I don't see how that is a significant permanent effect, it's entirely up to player B.

That presumes Player B is willing to adjust their last softscan date at will to match the RP. While some might be okay with doing that - softscans are, after all, primarily a means to get around situations like this - some other might have defined times at which they last softscanned. If I say my character gets a softscan done once a week, and 5 days in he gets killed in person by something like this, it could be a fairly serious issue.

[Aldrith Shutaq]

I've actually heard that there is no PF to support the existence of a soft scan. In fact, logically it does make sense that the only neural scanner actually capable of capturing an infomorph is the neural burner.  Conceptually the only way to accurately map a neural pattern is to do it almost instantly, and the only scanner that can do it that quickly is the kind that also melts your brain. Hence, if you want to ‘backup’ your infomorph you’d have to discard whichever body you made the scan from.

Sources: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Transneural_burning_scanner http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Cloning

The transneural burning scanner utilizes a combination of magnetic resonance imaging and emission tomography to quickly acquire a detailed scan of the brain down to the quantum level. In order to have a complete and accurate map of the brain and retain the all memories and personality, the scan must record the position of every atom.
 
Because this process must be completed in a matter of seconds, the process is incredibly damaging to the brain's grey matter. It causes numerous lesions and cell death, reducing the brain to little more than a blob of biomass. Because of this, the transneural burning scanner is only utilized at the moment before death.
 
The information obtained from the transneural burning scanner is then transmitted to the cortex constructor, which uses the data to reconstruct the brain.

The moment the capsule sensors detect a breach in the capsule they activate the emergency uploading of the mind of the person in the capsule, as described above. The capsule makes an analog scan of the brain of the person. This extraordinary snapshot records the exact state of the mind, including every neuron connection between every brain cell. Because the scan must be instantaneous and efficient it brutalizes the brain in the process. In early tests, the subjects were left with permanent and severe brain damage after being scanned, a fact that is impossible to escape. But as the person is about to die in any case, this unfortunate side effect has little consequences. All modern capsules are highly tuned to when to take the snapshot – if it is done too early there is a chance that the subject will not die at all, but live on in a vegetative state. And if the snapshot is taken too late there is the risk that the scan will fail or even that the revived clone will remember its own death, a very traumatic experience that can introduce severe psychological and functional problems in the clone.

I've heard that even jump clones have to ‘die’ before you can leave them, and the only reason why you can get your implants back is because this death happens in a controlled environment where technicians can make sure the implants are not damaged. They then remove the implants and put them into a new body that is waiting for your infomorph’s return. Trying to find a citation on that one, but I'll get back to you.

But anyway, it seems to be in the lore now that the only way to get a useable infomorph scan is to die. This isn't to say that an infomorph can't be backed-up, as it is just a bunch of data, but apparently there is no way to do it without losing at least one body in the process.

[Esna Pitoojee]

There's also been IC and OOC CCP statements implicitly and explicitly confirming softscan clones, so it's... wibbly.

[Samira Kernher]

Correct, Aldrith, Jump Clones kill off the original with a burning scanner just like the pod (last paragraph in the Cloning section of the Death article on EVElopedia).

However, CCP Falcon has spoken of soft clones existing in a (relatively) recent post.

[Ciarente]

Yeah, it's wibbly, and it's also one of those areas of PF where CCP has gone back and forth a little over the years, which leaves players who have integrated soft clones as part of their RP (including those who would be quite dead without them) and players who have gone with the 'can't be done' equally up a creek depending on whether the day has a 'u' in the name.

I tend to think it's unfair to assume that all players should RP their characters having backups, since there's things in the PF that seem to suggest not; and equally unfair to assume players shouldn't RP backups, since there's things in the PF that suggest it's possible.

And for my money, if people want to consensually explode each other, good luck to them. Cia is so paranoid about security even people she knows well get scanned and quizzed on their way into her hab-unit (in case of clonejacks); she's not about to visit any establishment without a wall of personal security between her and everybody else unless it has Last Gate degrees of precautions. That's an IC decision, not an OOC statement on how people run their channels, and it shouldn't really be a thing if people RP security conscious characters.

[Natalcya Katla]

I've heard that even jump clones have to ‘die’ before you can leave them, and the only reason why you can get your implants back is because this death happens in a controlled environment where technicians can make sure the implants are not damaged. They then remove the implants and put them into a new body that is waiting for your infomorph’s return. Trying to find a citation on that one, but I'll get back to you.

If that's PF is sounds like an exceedingly poor explanation to me. This implies that

a) you should then also be able to unplug your implants without destroying them using that same method, without plugging them into a new body.
b) jump clones require constant replacements, while remaining completely free (discounting the original token 100 000 isk installation fee). The idea that jump clones are vastly cheaper than medical clones while operating under essentially the same rules strikes me as utterly ridiculous.

Punching two holes in people's (or at least my) suspension of disbelief in order to plug one is just silly.

[Samira Kernher]

I've heard that even jump clones have to ‘die’ before you can leave them, and the only reason why you can get your implants back is because this death happens in a controlled environment where technicians can make sure the implants are not damaged. They then remove the implants and put them into a new body that is waiting for your infomorph’s return. Trying to find a citation on that one, but I'll get back to you.

If that's PF is sounds like an exceedingly poor explanation to me. This implies that

a) you should then also be able to unplug your implants without destroying them using that same method, without plugging them into a new body.
b) jump clones require constant replacements, while remaining completely free (discounting the original token 100 000 isk installation fee). The idea that jump clones are vastly cheaper than medical clones while operating under essentially the same rules strikes me as utterly ridiculous.

Punching two holes in people's (or at least my) suspension of disbelief in order to plug one is just silly.

It is PF, as I linked in my previous post.

So-called "jump cloning" works in much the same manner. Once a jump contract has been agreed upon, the customer can enter any cloning facility at any station, whereupon they will be brain-scanned, their originating bodies effectively flatlined, and their consciousness transferred to a waiting jump clone at their requested destination. Any implants in the originating body are carefully picked out by machines and just as carefully inserted into a fresh clone waiting at the original jumping-off point. Once the owner finally jumps back, from their point of view, they are returning to the same body, with the same implants and all, when in actuality it is a new clone.

a) It's a lot easier to safely unplug implants when you can tear apart and destroy the brain while doing it.

b)

Well, what you're generally paying high amounts for - in terms of regular, non-jump clones - is 24/7 upkeep and data transfer services. It's easy to do a proper, non-degrading cloning when you're safely nestled in a machine inside a station; it's rather harder to get it done when you're out in the middle of space and when the timing has to be absolutely perfect, so that kind of thing costs rather more money.

As for the cost of using a new clone each time, it's a good point that's been brought up by others as well, but honestly, it isn't that expensive. The main reasons for this are that a) biomass is cheap and easily available through various means, and b) the process has been streamlined to eliminate efficiency. There may well be, uh, yeah, some meat-recycling going on, but that falls under the same purvey as the adage about law and sausages.

--CCP Abraxas

[Saede Riordan]

If that's the case, why can't implants be removed and resold using that method?

[Natalcya Katla]

a) It's a lot easier to safely unplug implants when you can tear apart and destroy the brain while doing it.

Then you should have the option to have the implants unplugged and not reinstalled when you clonejump, instead saving them for later use. That option, however, does not exist.

I accept that it's PF, then, but it's still horribly immersion-breaking PF IMO. As far as Abraxas' explanation of the price discrepancy goes, I find it entirely unsatisfactory in light of several factors, among them the sheer immensity of the cost of medical clones and the fact that planned medical clone activations happen all the time, with no cost reduction at all.

I suppose I'll just have to avoid IC discussions that touch on the topic from here on. Or just ignore that particular piece of PF entirely.

[Morwen Lagann]

Again, as Cia said, CCP refuses to take a specific stance on it, and continually changes it.

See this older version of the same article: http://wiki.eveonline.com/wikiEN/index.php?title=Death&oldid=155537#Cloning

That was the version from the launch of the Lore Portal, up to October last year.

You want to go with a whacko logic-defying system versus the original, internally-consistent both with lore and mechanics one they had, go right ahead.

Don't expect everyone else to do so.

[Ciarente]

For my money it's not even a question of which is more "logical" - a huge amount of my RP (and that of others) has over the years depended on the old idea that your jump-clone was still there to come back to . I'm not the only player who has had a pregnant capsuleer jump clone out of that body for combat, and return to it; and I know that keeping an original body, voluval intact, safe has been a huge deal for many Minmatar characters.

If people go with the 'jump clone is biomass' for their own characters, yay diversity etc. But as is the case for many things that CCP has changed over the years, some longer-term players have had to decide whether to dump all their previous RP in the crapper  or to go on with what is now possibly 'doingitwrong'.  I, along with others, have chosen the latter course. 

[Natalcya Katla]

For my money it's not even a question of which is more "logical" - a huge amount of my RP (and that of others) has over the years depended on the old idea that your jump-clone was still there to come back to . I'm not the only player who has had a pregnant capsuleer jump clone out of that body for combat, and return to it; and I know that keeping an original body, voluval intact, safe has been a huge deal for many Minmatar characters.

If people go with the 'jump clone is biomass' for their own characters, yay diversity etc. But as is the case for many things that CCP has changed over the years, some longer-term players have had to decide whether to dump all their previous RP in the crapper  or to go on with what is now possibly 'doingitwrong'.  I, along with others, have chosen the latter course.

+1

[Gwen Ikiryo]

When I started playing, I was originally roleplaying that Gwen was still in her original body, until somebody informed me OOCly that everyones original bodies were killed upon having the implants installed. So I changed to go in that direction, until it came up again and somebody told me that that isn't actually how it is, and that people both keep their firsts until they are podded, and can also transfer between bodies like sets of clothes.

I'd already estbalished Gwen no longer being in her original body by then, but I saw some interesting RP windows in it still being "about", so I switched to her having just been jumped out of it upon becoming a Capsuleer and it still being stored.

...Until somone else corrected me again, recently, stating that bodies can't be "jumped between" and are just killed, which resulted in someone countering them with older PF that they were using...

Yeeeeeah. I'm not sure what can be done other then simply avoiding the topic in public RP, at this point.

[Ava Starfire]

As a person who RPs a weak, unmodified (aside from capsuleer bits) and rather lax about her security character who spends a LOT of time outside of her pod, does not keep a soft clone, and even ocassionally gets into fights, i can say:

The cybornetic enhanced peeps, exploding stuff peeps, and so on do not bother me a bit. More power to them. It makes RP more interesting IMO, and adds a layer of depth to what I have to decide for Ava to DO in those cases. No harm, no foul.

[Aldrith Shutaq]

Yeah, clearly CCP needs to get their story straight on this. I was assuming Aldrith also had an original body on ice somewhere, but Samira pointed those articles out to me and I was like "WELP".

Now I'm not sure what to think. All we know is that being killed outside of pod is possible, but you do not remember anything from that time to the time you last updated your infomorph.