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[Isobel Mitar]

1. The assumption that the cloning company can extract brain implants and put them into a fresh body does clearly not gel with the fact that the act of removing a brain implant seems to destroy it, or at least render it useless.

I suppose we will have to agree to disagree, because I think the opposite.

It makes a load of sense to me that one cannot extract an implant intact from a living, working brain without risk to said brain, but I just can't see why extracting an implant whole from a dead brain and putting it in a new one could not be possible with Eve technology.

[Saede Riordan]

1. The assumption that the cloning company can extract brain implants and put them into a fresh body does clearly not gel with the fact that the act of removing a brain implant seems to destroy it, or at least render it useless.

I suppose we will have to agree to disagree, because I think the opposite.

It makes a load of sense to me that one cannot extract an implant intact from a living, working brain without risk to said brain, but I just can't see why extracting an implant whole from a dead brain and putting it in a new one could not be possible with Eve technology.

But in that case, I should be able to jump out of that clone into another, remove the implants and jump back into it, so I have the implants.

[The Cosmopolite]

(Burning Life spoilers)

At the end of the novel, two characters confront a capsuleer in the flesh, after he leaves his pod.  And they threaten to kill the capsuleer, beat him to death.  And he is afraid for his life. This would indicate that if you die outside of your pod, you're dead.

Im curious how people play this, and what the general consensus is on this.  Thoughts, opinions, etc?

My reading was that their sabotage was the reason he wouldn't be recloned at all. So to my mind it doesn't suggest death outside pod = total death.

The author went through the usual tortuous hoops to introduce threat of death for a capsuleer*: it was indicated that this was that capsuleer's one and only cloning station and they had sabotaged it.

That being so, obviously death outside the pod is permanent death because actually death in the pod would be permanent death: they'd sabotaged the whole setup.

So on that reading, in fact the novel supports the idea (seen elsewhere in the PF) that death outside pod basically loses you the memories you had since your last backup but you get a new functioning clone using the last backup.

Cos

* Death is a major device in literature - I have seen CCP's various authors struggle in various ways with the fact that capsuleers really do not easily die. They don't really have a satisfactory answer to it. Note the Gariushi death device: all his eggs in one basket (essentially the same device used in Burning Life you will notice). It was ridiculous. So ridiculous that I suspect most people who've thought about it feel that Gariushi is probably still alive and lying low somewhere.

[The Cosmopolite]

In general, there is sufficient in PF, game mechanics and the whole complex of EVE background to indicate quite clearly that it is possible to reclone from backup after out-of-pod death.

This leaves it as a matter of choice.

If people want to RP that they will not avail themselves of the option to reclone on out-of-pod death, that's fine. It's their choice.

But they have to accept that people who want to RP that they can reclone on out-of-pod death are entirely justified in doing so based on the EVE PF.

Cosmo

[Isobel Mitar]

In general, there is sufficient in PF, game mechanics and the whole complex of EVE background to indicate quite clearly that it is possible to reclone from backup after out-of-pod death.

To clarify my view, I do not dispute the technical possibility of storing a backup of one's brain state. However, I feel the existence of such backups does not necessicate a "soft scan" technology that would leave the brain intact. Creation of such a backup would, in my opinion, be more likely a "side effect" of a burning scan and a transfer of conciousness from one clone to another.

Moreover, I have played so that backups are not generally stored and/or reviving people from such copies is not common. I have also assumed such revivals to be more or less illegal depending on the circumstances, because of the inherent multiple possibilities for abuse and fraud. (In effect making out-of-pod deaths generally permanent.) I do not know of any PF directly backing the previous up, though.

I'd be curious to know what other people in general think about the legality of storing such backups? Are they commonly made, and if so, how available are they to different people? How easy/difficult/impossible is it to get yours?  Does CRC lock them up in vaults or is extorting former capsuleer customers with "give us money or we create a copy of you and take it all" a side business of underground clone labs?

[The Cosmopolite]

The problem I see in your argument is that in order to argue against the possibility of a soft scan you have argued for the possibility of removal of implants from a clone on the basis of EVE technology allowing the latter. In other words, you seem to accept that EVE technology will allow one thing because that thing can be used as evidence (if it is so) for something else you appear not to feel should be readily-available using EVE technology.

Dealing with the 'implant removal' concept itself, you don't explain why, if it's the case implants can be removed from jump clones you would hold to be destroyed, we can't swap in and out implants of our choosing at our jump clone locations - particularly after jumping away from a given jump clone (which you say destroys it).

You also don't deal with the fact that a jump clone will be destroyed, implants and all, if one jumps from an active clone at that same location to another jump clone location leaving a new jump clone behind in place of the old jump clone (the explanation for this is not clear but it is so). If you're right, why don't we recover our implants from the destroyed clone?

The most likely explanation to all this is that jump clones are basically 'alive' (kept in a suspended 'ready' state), hence implants can't be recovered from them, and they are not destroyed in the outbound scanning process because it is not an emergency burning scanner used under extreme conditions. It's a non-invasive process probably using technology that you simply couldn't install into a capsule. The reason for having only one jump clone at one facility may be, I would speculate, that we maintain a basic link with that jump clone at all times. Certainly we can access the status of the clone via our NeoCom. Possibly a feature of the technology and the psychological limits of maintaining clones is that only a single link to a given location is possible (psycho-technologically). If that's so, severing the link may well effectively nullify a jump clone, explaining why a new clone in the same location would destroy the existing clone.

The other difficulty you run into is the legality question. Not all cloning facilities are under CONCORD control.

My organisation controls several facilities in-game, some mobile, and I can assure you we do precisely what we wish with them. Something that is forgotten sometimes is that for quite some time now many player characters have had direct control over the jump clone contracts of other characters in outposts and Titans (once Motherships too but of course they have been repurposed to Supercarriers).

One of the great things about EVE is that it is not an MMO where the background is set at the beginning and then it never changes. It has a real background in terms of social, political and, crucially, technological change. And these things are reflected, often imperfectly granted but reflected nonetheless, in the game itself.

In the end, I always view the shared RP background in the way that maximises choice for all other players consistent with the PF. People want themselves to die outside the pod? Fine. Matter of choice. People want everyone to die outside the pod? Not fine because there is no PF backing for that being a general rule all players should observe. Quite to the contrary.

Cosmo

[Zuzanna Alondra]

Wow - in skimming this over there's a large amount of range.

I had a scene were Zu was killed outside the pod and had her wake up in a clone vat from the time of her last podded death.  I actually pulled chat logs from between her last in pod death and the RP event and had her have no relocation of what happened.

Worked out great for the guy that killed her - she still don't know what he did to her.

[Gottii]

1. The assumption that the cloning company can extract brain implants and put them into a fresh body does clearly not gel with the fact that the act of removing a brain implant seems to destroy it, or at least render it useless. Beyond the hard/soft scanner debate, there is nothing suggesting that the body we jump back to isn't the same body that we jumped away from. If they are kept in clone vats in the meantime, it's because that's a tried and proven method for keeping unconscious bodies alive and healthy.

The problem with this argument is that it ignores the definition of what a "vat" is.  Here is the definition from Dictionary.com (and the only definition outside of a specific chemical science reference involving dyes)

 noun--
 a large container, as a tub or tank, used for storing or holding liquids: a wine vat.  

Which means for a Clone Vat to actually be a vat, it would have to hold clones in liquid form. Which would make it difficult for the clones to be alive and healthy. Vats, by definition, don't hold solid objects.

2. Is it not possible that Mr. Ancru started his clone jumping tour from a location that wasn't his home? I know I've flown around setting up clones in places I frequent so that I can jump to them whenever I want - so it's perfectly reasonable that Mr. Ancru had a fresh clone installed in his home system (and in Sizamod, and wherever else he thought he might like to go), then went somewhere else, and started his clone jumping circuit from outside his home system. That would be why he has now clone jumped back home, into a fresh body.

Well, actually the chronicle mentions that since he could jump clone, he had long given up space flight. Makes a big point of saying so actually.  And he was returning home, or at least to a home, so it would make sense that he would have been back at least once since having the jump clones installed.  So, even the context of the chronicle, it doesn't seem he flew somewhere else and then jump cloned back.  So therefor he was jumping back into a new clone from a place he should have had one on stand by.

[Silver Night]

Gottii: I'm pretty positive that the implication of clone vats are that there is a clone in there, in solid form. Suggesting that clone vats are containers of liquid clone is, I think, a bit of a stretch. Particularly considering that in the cloning article, parts of the process involved in building a clone is described, as I recall.

Of relevance:

http://www.eveonline.com/background/cloning/clon_02.asp

In particular:

Culturing a clone takes several months, but all clone stations store generic clones that are only put to use when a client buys it. The skull, and frequently other bones as well, is replaced by osteoplastic materials – soft synthetic bone polymers that can be shaped and then hardened by gamma laser irradiation. In this way, facial features and other body marks and textures can be applied very quickly. The process is very quick and is applied as soon as the clone is purchased. A similar technique is also used to adjust skin tones and give special skin marks, such as tattoos and scars. This means that the featureless clone is quickly transformed into an identical twin of the client.

Also of interest:

Because the scan must be instantaneous and efficient it brutalizes the brain in the process.

Which seems to state directly that the brutalization is a result of the scan needing to be instantaneous.

Been a while since I read that article.

[Louella Dougans]

Cosmopolite, what are your thoughts on the "backup" clone, as regards amnesia and therapy?

I posted earlier, about an example of a clone being activated in a non-standard way, and they did not know why they knew what they knew sort of thing.

What are your thoughts about that sort of thing? If someone activates a backup, having been killed out-of-pod, would it be more disorientating than the "normal" cloning method?

[Yoshito Sanders]

More disorientating? Probably not. For the waking clone, all that it knows is that it's waking up. There might be an "oh shit" moment if the clone was made from an out-of-pod scan, because once you realize you've just been cloned, and your last memory was lying down to make a backup mind scan, you'll know you were killed out-of-pod and have no idea who did it or the circumstances of it (such a scenario was the plot hook to one of my stories).

But I don't imagine you'd be any more confused or disoriented than a standard podded/cloned cycle.

[The Cosmopolite]

I agree with Yoshito. It's more a question of likely to be more disconcerting, for the reasons Yoshito outlines, than more disorienting.

There is an indication in the PF (specifically Theodicy) that someone cloned from a backup, and therefore not having any experiential memory of the circumstances of their last death or indeed the moment itself, should not lightly be confronted with the details of what happened. I would guess that there are some psychological risks associated with exposure to such information. So it's not as if cloning from backup is without some costs and risks.

Which is to say that death out of pod definitely has a price. It just needn't be permanent death.

Cosmo

[BloodBird]

I have not read everything here, so don't know if it's mentioned before, but in my pow, there is a clear answer to this in one PF part that's canon: The Broker

He's not a capsuleer, afaik, so how does he move about in multiple bodies and appearances? Easy; He's rich enough to have multiple non-capsuleer clones.

The difference that I've seen between a capsuleer and any normal baseline human is the ability to NOT be imprisoned in your own body upon leaving the pod. Anyone can be hooked into the pod. Only the select few found able to, can potentially avoid mindlock. These select few (I'm assuming this trait is found by genetic examening, I don't remember reading it anywhere) are those who can become capsuleers. Out of those who are found to be able and who are funded, (or pay themselves in some cases?) only the one's who don't fail or drop out during training (iirc the failure rate is very high) actually become full capsuleers.

So the only difference between a capsuleer clone and a normal one, besides who it belongs to, is the implants needed to simply connect to the pod, think plugs and holes ala The Matrix and such.

Still, nothing that I've seen says cloning is unavailable to the general public, only that it's cost prohibits all but the wealthy elite. How do these people get cloned? There is also the cronicle One man to many that explains how people can change appearance and appear duplicates of others, though it primarely explains about jump-clones, iirc one belonging to a non-podder.

Buy clone. Have it updated. You get dead, you upload into it. In theory the old 'you' is dead and the new one emerges, fully aware up until the point where your memory was backed-up. Shame on you if you only back-up once a year... Regardless, I think of this as less a 'cheap cop-out' and more like a legit PF-backed tactic to allow yourself to do sometimes dumb, sometimes reckless stuff in person, in stations or on planets or wherever out of pod, and possibly 'survive' it. Ofc 'you' don't survive at all but your replacer will pick up where you left off last.

Now if 'you' are really still alive or whatever much depends on your view of what being human means. Are you yourself with a loss of, say, two days worth of memory? I'm sure your allies and employees will inform you of what you missed. Or are you a copy of a copy of a copy etc. of some guy who got killed at some point?

Capsuleers are quasi-immortal. If they take the proper steps to prevent it death will be a temporary annoyance at worst. The 'quasi' part comes from the fact that all this relies on technology. Tech that might fail, or be denied you one day, or possibly... sabotaged.

*EDIT* Now that I've read a bit more from the tread, I'll have to agree with Cosmo. The question is not really 'can we do this?' and more 'do I want to do this in regard to my character?' Also, like he said, as a plot-device PF supports it, so if you don't like others doing it, sadly that's something you have to live with.

[Isobel Mitar]

The problem I see in your argument is that in order to argue against the possibility of a soft scan you have argued for the possibility of removal of implants from a clone on the basis of EVE technology allowing the latter.

I argued against soft scan on basis of PF describing only a destructive scan method, and said method being sufficient to explain jump clones.

From my viewpoint, the later discussion was more about how the different interpretations and game mechanics might fit together. (As opposed to proof one way or the other)

[Seriphyn]

http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=1058.msg12169#msg12169

From the "Jita 4-4" chron. Seems confirmed in PF there.

If people think about it, if you can transmit a piece of living data through space at multiple factors of the speed of light...then why can't you have a "last saved game" sort of clone?

A soft clone in this instance thus appears a couple hundred years less advanced than a capsule clone.

Not a hard process...implant notifies clone vat bay of death (a remote life reader common throughout a crapload of sci-fi)

Clone activated, with memories of last brain scan.