Science labs, now with actual cloning

[Slax]

Say the occasional cloning room gets a DNA terminal. Say you jury-rig it to work. Say you give it a sample of your current DNA. Add a special “I’ll let the computer know if you die, bro” CBM and you have yourself a chance to come back from the dead. Whoa! Well, if there’s a working cloning vat still around. Could work, right? Time warp, wake up naked, bust out of the vat and hope for the best. Plus it’d be neat to have more science stuff in the labs.

(Screw up and you get a bunch of evil twins. OH NO!)

[KA101]

Bump for the CBM name. X)

Otherwise, it’s an interesting idea: will the player have the foresight to leave a gear stash near the vats? Might some of it be raided in the interval? Maybe reroll any mutations, based on category-strength?

Support.

[Hyena_Grin]

Something like EVE Online where you have some kind of implant that takes a snapshot of your brain and uploads it to a clone somewhere?

Fun idea, it fits in nicely with the other science fiction stuff going on. And there’s already cloned bits and bobs in labs, so clearly that is something they were working on. And it gives the potential for a second chance after a particularly bad mishap (sinkholes and landmines, anyone?), something that could be extremely valuable for long-lived characters.

[Mr_Lolz]

what happens if you fail the computer skill-check? A naked clone of yourself spawns and attacks you?

[Psiweapon]

Like the resurrect stations in System Shock 1 and 2

[Benedict]

Highly approve. I’d love an EVE Online style clone system. You die, and you get to live on as a reanimated clone of yourself, but with none of your gear, and only the skills you had last time you updated the clone.

Would make for a cool, high-resource project for end-game players.

[Slax]

Might want some rare cloning juices too so this won’t be an infinite loop. Machine runs out of juice and you’re screwed. Can of course be refilled.

[Nopkar]

The only problem is what if I wanted to play ‘Conan’?

Do I need a super high tech skill and INT to make this work? Suddenly only the genius builds get longevity through cloning.

Any suggestions on how to make this work for a non-genius character? maybe just some parts fetching where-as a mechanic or INT character could bypass the fetching and just make it work?

Maybe even a cook could ‘brew’ some of the special cloning juice instead of scrounging for it after multiple clonings

and one more thing, the ‘sample’ should be a substantial amount of health taken across the board so hurt players can’t abuse this by getting a fully healed character for little to nothing?

This may take a coding miracle…

[Psiweapon]

Make it trigger if you “commit suicide”.

[DrPoo]

This is just some “ULTRA RAER EXTRUH LOIF” sugggestion.
Go play Terraria if you want you extra lives.

[Iosyn]

Make it trigger if you “commit suicide”.

Hahahaha… Dear lord, this would be a classic.

That said, this is a roguelike, so stick it in, but make it fail horribly more often than it works.

[Slax]

You don’t necessarily need a genius build. You just might find a working setup. Draw some blood with a syringe or whatever, add to machine and you’re done. The CBM thing was just a suggestion. Could also be an implant or some such.
But yeah, the chance for things to go wrong needs to be there. This is science, after all.

You awake with a horrible, HORRIBLE migraine! You awake to find that your midsection hasn't been fully replicated. Your guts are falling out!

Oh, the possibilities.
Stuff like screwed up eyesight and alike should probably be common though. Labs are full of glasses for a reason now. HA! Not like it would matter though as there’s no light down there. Hm. [size=8pt]Implement emergency break lights?[/size] Or some sort of latent leniency period.

You get a brief period of light. Magic! You could also trigger this via terminal hacking, just to spare those flashlights.

[The_Darkling_Wolf]

The thing is, we have a persistent world, you can already just load up a place with a ton of good gear and go there to stock up if you die. So it’s not like cloning would instantly make the game lolsimple. If anything we could have it be more challenging, add a significant debuff to skills and stats while you get over your cloning sickness, and have skills totally degrade a few levels, as well as the high probability of mutations. The cloner would also be unable to replicate bionics.

[Nopkar]

The thing is, we have a persistent world, you can already just load up a place with a ton of good gear and go there to stock up if you die. So it’s not like cloning would instantly make the game lolsimple. If anything we could have it be more challenging, add a significant debuff to skills and stats while you get over your cloning sickness, and have skills totally degrade a few levels, as well as the high probability of mutations. The cloner would also be unable to replicate bionics.

The idea of a ‘Second’ chance is much more appealing than ‘make the same build, do the same things, go to the place i died and pick up all my stuff’.

at least this way I have a foundation of my former self, if a bit altered. Much more interesting concept for the longevity of the game

[iceball3]

When NPCs are improved eventually, you could also keep the relationships you have formed with them, just try to make sure they didn’t witness you die/find anything remaining of you or else it would be difficult that you are That Guy who they owe tons of crap too.
All the same, seeing you essentially come back from the dead might give you a pretty hefty intimidation (or heroic or whatever) bonus against the ones who knew you died/vanished, assuming you’re even recognizable or what you know is recognizable, for instance if you were killed by a mugger and came back and could recount their attempting to kill you, they may panic as they’d think you survived that bullet they put in your face. I’d think this would be abstracted for the most part, maybe with the text describing why they’re suddenly really scared of you.
The ‘what you know’ part could also to apply such as when a friend or trusted companion confide their deepest secrets with you, and upon resurection you retell it to them to convince them that “It’s really me! Honest!”

[GlyphGryph]

Have you guys noticed how poorly those cloning projects went?

In other words, I fully support a variant of this, but not as described.

Create a clone or a couple in the lab. Get to take over each one of these clones as a “profession” up to one time. Also, did I mention it might get a handful of mutations? Because it might get a handful of mutations. Starts in the lab with essentially the same stats (maybe shifted slightly up or down).

If you want it to ALSO carry over skills, then you’ll have to find a memory module cbm, or skill transfer cbm or something, and load it up. Which I think would be cool to have - not just good for clones, but finding one on a scientist and plugging it in and suddenly getting a good sized chunk of knowledge? Sweet!

Obviously, a failed implant destroys it.

But I love the idea of cloning, but I think cloning giving you the same character is stupid and unfun and against the spirit of the game. Cloning just gives you someone who is similar in many ways to the person who died, but has none of their experience, and I think if you want to carry over experience, that should be an additional task on top of it.

[Psiweapon]

Make the memory bionic implant a recoverable on butchering CBM that requires no power.

Scientists and previous survivors butchering galore.

Such black or grey boxes appear in:

Videogame: Mass Effect 2 (Kasumi Goto’s quest, storing the memories of a dead guy)
Books: Neuromancer (the Flatliner’s ROM I think it was called, storing the memories of a dead guy, used as a hacking aide)
Cartoons: EXO Squad (A character was cloned and rebuilt from a special black box in his exosuit, and a custom-tailored Neo Mega body, Alec DeLeon was his name I think)
Live-Action series and movies: one episode from Black Mirror, some movie from the '00s, in these versions they basically store videos of what you have experienced.

And probably a lot more I don’t remember or know about.

[Slax]

I get the feeling an installed CBM might be hard to recover. Not like it’s plug-and-play, what with all the available failed installations.
CBM tinkering, ho! Implement EVERY idea!

[Psiweapon]

[quote=“Slax, post:18, topic:811”]I get the feeling an installed CBM might be hard to recover. Not like it’s plug-and-play, what with all the available failed installations.
CBM tinkering, ho! Implement EVERY idea![/quote]

Make it a specialized CBM that works only for that purpose. A small thing that bores into your skull and clamps in there, making backups when you sleep, and then retracts and closes for easy recovery on brain death.

[Benedict]

This has to be a starting scenario:

[i]You wake up, shivering in pitch darkness, and naked. You flex your fingers and find that you can barely extend them, they’re so weak. In the pit of your stomach, you feel a gnawing hunger, and your mouth is dry as a bone. As you lurch forwards, your feet splash through a puddle of cold, fibrous ooze and broken glass. A cable sparks in the corner, and you glimpse a shattered tube, extending from the floor to the ceiling, and a hundred others, with pink, malformed shapes floating, foetus-like in a veined liquid.

Suddenly an image burns itself onto your retina, and your mind is filled with static. A voice cuts through the agony: “Alexander Jonasson. This is the location at which you died. You have three da… ys to implant your Memory Override Module before a re… placement is dispatched and… szzch… you… decom…szzchh…ioned.”

Everything is dark again, and only the dripping of cold fluid from your body breaks the silence. You have three days.[/i]