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[Aria Jenneth]

Hey, all.

So, there's an issue with DUST 514 PF. Originally released distributed in multiple locations, it overlaps PC timelines for the DUST universe. CCP did its last character reset back at the start of January, meaning that people (including me) involved in the closed beta have characters facially predating the events of these Chronicles.

"Sirens of Fear and Sense" (it's on the DUST fiction page, now) is a neat chronicle, one that I would like very well if (1) it hadn't killed off every DUST PC who predates late January and (2) thereby made both the existence of my mid-January-born DUST character (Tarquin Markel) and my current background setup for Aria flagrantly uncanonical being as they're both (A) Caldari, (B) first-generation, based on the related chronicle "Speaks and Walks," and (C) alive.

I'd like to hear some interpretation and some suggestions about how to deal with this.

Edit:

"Sirens of Fear and Sense"

"Speaks and Walks"

Note that, while the recent news stories and such suggest that "Speaks and Walks" is only clear-cut canon for the Amarr, the architecture in the story art is Caldari. You can see why I'd be a little confused.

[Aria Jenneth]

So, here's one idea.

Cloned mercenaries predate Heth's purge by a fair piece, on the one hand. They also flip pretty easily from one end of the cluster to the other, transferring literally from one end of lowsec to the other on a few seconds' notice. Presuming Heth-haan's orders were followed to the letter, probably CalNav wiped out every State-side cloning facility and so on it had access to. What's more, this seems to have happened AFTER the State got access to the tech needed to cleanse the first-gen implants of Sleeper influence.

Thing is, if the clone troops could establish relations with any one of several other organizations that might be willing to provide safe harbor (and being as we regularly take contracts from the Guristas, Blood Raiders, Angel Cartel-- everybody and his dog, really-- who's to say we couldn't), the simple answer for a first-gen facing local obliteration is just to establish friendly relations with an outside entity and go mercenary on the spot. Send in the resignation letter from someplace in Amarr space with the reason for resignation, "You tried to kill me," and get on with life.

A lot of this is contingent upon DUST soldiers having a good deal of control over where their consciousnesses are sent, but it would explain handily why all these people are mercs, rather than regular soldiers: they didn't get cut loose, they went AWOL in lieu of being forcibly decommissioned and received safe harbor from people with use for their services. Canonical hole, neatly filled.

Thoughts?

Edit:

I just noticed, this is my 541st post. Serendipity says I've got something backwards.

[Aria Jenneth]

Further contemplation:

It's nuts, just plain nuts, to let entities like DUST soldiers out of your control freely. The technology is way, way too powerful. The sensible approach is to establish blocks, limits, to keep your clone soldiers on a tight leash and ensure that they can't just pop over to the Federation (or Curse) for a night on the town on a whim.

Thing is, the base technology of these implants was intended to attach the user to a virtual civilization. This does not bespeak tight control, so any effort to limit consciousness transfer is probably analogous to installing security patches to Microsoft Windows: the system can be made more secure, but never actually secure.

Add to this the point that every DUST soldier on the field is a hacker with a military-grade tool kit. Probably it's the expert systems doing most of the work, but the animations make it clear that it's an active process on the soldier's end, as well. Odds that some of them didn't hack their own consciousness-transfer protocols?

One gap here is the availability of the DUST implant itself. Based on clone prices, it's cheap and easy to produce once you've got the schematics, costing maybe as much as a very basic capsuleer stat-boost implant. However, it's also a (nother) technology you have to be insane to let loose. Even if your own soldiers don't go AWOL, anybody who has the implant is free to make their own. Basic cloning tech ain't rare; grow a few combat-specced clones with pre-installed DUST implants and you're good to go as soon as you can find a soldier willing to die in order to inhabit them.

Letting that kind of tech proliferate? Crazy.

Thing is, it's also highly desirable for outsiders. Even if the original data-dump to the empires only went into official in-boxes, what are the odds that every government, every megacorp, every even slightly militarized entity in New Eden hasn't cranked up the old espionage engine to get its hands on the schematics?

Once they have them, it's a short hop to have a stable of clones ready for any abruptly highly-motivated-to-desert clone soldier to negotiate a path into.

This could explain something else, too: the ready availability to clone soldiers of "militia" gear-- it's what the Caldari military, the Federation, and so on, issued as standard equipment, designed by the lowest bidder and set up to be usable by any Gomer Pyle who can put on a dropsuit. Clone soldier gear appears, by implication, to be nanite-manufactured on the spot as the clone activates (a stock of very physical rifles would not instantly teleport across light years in company with a DUST soldier's consciousness, yet there they are right where we need them). Some basic milspec gear, then, can be freely produced; the schematics and construction rights are tied to the soldier's identity and just came along for the ride when the soldier went AWOL.

Higher-quality gear, above the level of the old standard issue, has to be purchased through private contracts. It's purely private sector, unrestricted by unit-level budget concerns, and clone mercs can acquire schematics and construction rights for even tech that's currently considered prototype gear, for the right price, "the right price" being pretty damned high in many cases. The less-finished next-gen tech requires a more knowledgeable user to work around its quirks (Advanced gear being in beta, Prototype being exactly what it says on the label). All of it is milspec plus, superior bang-bang for the current-gen clone soldier looking for a next-gen edge without waiting for the purchase to be approved by a committee.

/worldbuilding brain dump.

Thoughts?

[Ghost Hunter]

There is apparently a genetic limitation factor for DUST implants, similar to the Capsuleer one. It is a rare few who are compatible with the DUST technology, thus artificially limiting the proliferation. This also installed another way to make certain that you can't be both - the genetic viability for one invalidates the other.

This is the excuse that was sold to me, I am not certain if it is canon or not. I raised the same topic of "you'd have to be insane to let this technology in the wild" when the idea of DUST troopers first came up.

[hellgremlin]

It should be kept in mind that while some powers (Heth, Roden) are intent on putting the lid back on Pandora's box, there are also definite factions interested in the proliferation of this technology to all corners of New Eden.

Every event that happens in Eve Online is a small step toward the end of all things we know. The gradual loss of control over unpredictable technology, the growing divide between baseliners and the now two flavors of immortal running about... I imagine this is what the last years of the previous Empires, now merely relics for us to explore, looked like.

[Aria Jenneth]

There is apparently a genetic limitation factor for DUST implants, similar to the Capsuleer one. It is a rare few who are compatible with the DUST technology, thus artificially limiting the proliferation. This also installed another way to make certain that you can't be both - the genetic viability for one invalidates the other.

This is the excuse that was sold to me, I am not certain if it is canon or not. I raised the same topic of "you'd have to be insane to let this technology in the wild" when the idea of DUST troopers first came up.

I also heard this, but I've seen no source for it, so my current feeling (as evinced by the fact that I've ignored it) is that it's purest speculation. Even if that weren't the case, the solution is one clonejack away, and clonejacking is PF.

The "genetic lottery" theory for capsule viability seems to me to be related almost entirely to being able to tolerate capsule training-- it's suggested that the technology's alien sensory input induces severe nausea in most, and then there's the danger of mind-lock or wetgraving, both of which I presume are, again, products of the capsuleer's mind-taxing cybernetic interface.

Cloning tech, on the other hand, shows no sign of being a genetic problem. If there's any kind of "genetic lottery" to be won, it's related to dropsuit control-- but I defy you to find me PF on that. The dropsuit is an anthropomorphic device on a human scale with human movements and abilities; there's no reason to think that the interface would be troublesome for the mind to process in any significant way.

The best reason for not being able to be a capsuleer and a DUST soldier at the same time is simply that whatever cybernetic rigs are required are mutually exclusive. You can't have both a capsuleer rig and a DUST rig installed at the same time. Even if you could theoretically switch back and forth ...

(1) Any such switch would probably require highly-invasive, delicate surgery. Most capsuleer implants go around the periphery of the brainpan, but both the capsuleer neural shunt and the DUST insta-clone device appear to be kind of in the middle of things.

(2) Capsuleer stat implants and hardwire setups are non-transferable (and even if they could be transferred, they wouldn't survive the first death).

(3) All DUST skills are hardwired. "Learning" them means increased integration with the inhabiting consciousness. These are apparently installed as modifications to the clone during consciousness transfer, and are thus most likely outgrowths of the primary DUST implant.

(4) DUST soldiers presently seem to inhabit what seem to be genetically-uniform (or genetically irrelevant) stock clones. Those that have their own "faces" have had a clone modified for casual use. This, also, militates against there being a "genetic lottery," since the only question would be whether the original DUST implant could be installed. "Oh, no, his immune system is rejecting the implant. Oh, well-- just go ahead and stop the heart now, let him wake up in his new clone. He'll get over it."

Has the stock clone won the genetic lottery?

All of this makes the notion of switching back and forth an issue of practicality, not literal impossibility. A capsuleer would have to fully retire (get all capsuleer implants removed, up to and including the pilot rig), then somehow arrange to get the DUST implant implanted.

I think I did an okay job of explaining that with Aria.

Now, why aren't we seeing people all over creation getting DUST implants installed?

Well, first of all, the clones are subjectively cheap but objectively expensive. Entire planetary districts need to be controlled in order to produce them, a few dozen at a time. Equipping the citizenry with them (or replacing military regulars) would take a lot of time and a lot of money.

Secondly, there's a good deal of indication that long-term usage leads to serious psychological problems, which you don't want your whole security service suffering from. If it's not PTSD, it's recklessness disregard for one's own safety, and possibly that of others.

Third, there's the finicky nature of getting the implant installed to begin with. All indications are, it's a bit of a tricky procedure-- the implant goes kind of right in the middle of the brain.

That said, we'll probably soon see the rich and powerful getting technological immortality installed in their heads. The next person to assassinate a Ray of Matar may be surprised to find that shooting for the head is not as effective as it once was.

Edit:

Also, the "genetic lottery" thing never made much sense on its face. Otherwise, the Caldari tube-child program combined with some successful DNA samples would be a license to print capsuleers. I'd cast it more as a combination of environmental and genetic factors resulting in a certain particular sort of mental toughness or adaptability-- not willpower, necessarily; just a strong ability to accept and adjust to coherent yet highly alien sensory input and modes of action.

[Sepherim]

It's nuts, just plain nuts, to let entities like DUST soldiers out of your control freely. The technology is way, way too powerful. The sensible approach is to establish blocks, limits, to keep your clone soldiers on a tight leash and ensure that they can't just pop over to the Federation (or Curse) for a night on the town on a whim.

Yes, it is, but same could be said about capsuleers. It's insane to train a pilot, give him the pod and free basic frigates and ask nothing in return... but they do it. For some reasons (gamplay reasons, obviously, but actually very hard to pin down in PF) all Empires seem content to let pod pilots losely under the control of CONCORD (that is, in low or hi sec space, because no control exists in 0.0).

I imagine that, in the long run, a similair approach will be used for dusters. Makes no sense in the universe, but it's the logical road to keep player freedom.

[Aria Jenneth]

Yes, it is, but same could be said about capsuleers. It's insane to train a pilot, give him the pod and free basic frigates and ask nothing in return... but they do it. For some reasons (gamplay reasons, obviously, but actually very hard to pin down in PF) all Empires seem content to let pod pilots losely under the control of CONCORD (that is, in low or hi sec space, because no control exists in 0.0).

Agreed, but I don't have a good explanation for that one.  This one?

Well, what do you think?