Science labs, now with actual cloning

[GlyphGryph]

I don’t think the time limit is strictly necessary to be honest.

[Benedict]

Really? I think it’s an awesome idea. Makes it that much more of a challenge to find your original body and bring it back (from whatever killed it originally), because you can’t just train up slowly until you’re ready. You have to take the challenge head on - probably still with cloning sickness/lower stats - or face losing your extra life.

[GlyphGryph]

I don’t think requiring you to go out and find your body is actually fun, though. It limits the cloning mechanic solely to being a strict extra life. It really robs it of the majority of the fun and potential, imo.

Instead, let’s do this: Instead of the memory implant boosting your skills, it completely overwrites them. So any time spent doing stuff or learning stuff will end up being wasted.

It also makes for an interesting story when a player first finds a memory storage transplant, and inserts it, only to have their skills and name completely reset, and find themselves with a character very very happy their PREVIOUS character was kind of stupid. Heheheh.

[Benedict]

Instead, let’s do this: Instead of the memory implant boosting your skills, it completely overwrites them. So any time spent doing stuff or learning stuff will end up being wasted.

I totally agree. I meant this too. Sorry if that wasn’t clear

I don’t think requiring you to go out and find your body is actually fun, though. It limits the cloning mechanic solely to being a strict extra life. It really robs it of the majority of the fun and potential, imo.

Hmm. Perhaps it could be a specific starting scenario, then? (i.e. a profession, although that’s not the best word for it :P)

I just think the idea of having to race to your body would be so awesome. I mean remember the Journey to the West mod (I think it mighta been creidieki’s) which made you live on the run? It was amazing, because you just didn’t have time to stop and gain skills or gear. You just had to run, and run, and run, or the horde would catch you.

This could be the same but MORE INSANE!! (and with the added creepiness of a robot talking in your head as you are born into a dark laboratory with no idea who you are, but maybe I’ll write a story about that instead of fantasising about it in a game)

[Slax]

Having your old body come back to life seems incredibly fun though. Some sort of side-effect of having your DNA shared? Maybe the machine has to do some wonky scanning instead of you just needing a needle with some blood. You don’t run into yourself every day in the wasteland. Random secret boss fight?

[Nopkar]

Why not after cloning for the first time, a new mob is spawned: Rogue Replacement Clone. armed with anything from naked+stick to full tactical gear+m249? (even a 1 in 10000 chance for an armed mini nuke?)

These clones will ‘find you’ (spawn nearby in the loaded cell) and follow to kill?

[The_Darkling_Wolf]

Cloning could also provide a nice use for the fuckton of meat you get from hunting, make it so you need to supply biomass to the facility before it can clone you, if it runs out of biomass then its game over, no more clones. As well, there’d probably be a lot of repairs and optimization that could be done.

Basically I’d like to see cloning be a nice project for a player who’s secured survival, something to act as a bit of a resource sink and give you something high level to do, and in exchange you get a real tangible benefit, in that you can now totally risk taking on that Fungal Spire you were avoiding, or raiding that Triffid Grove that’s been getting up in your grill.

[ted]

I think it would be cool to let you clone yourself to get an ally who’s guaranteed to be competent and initially friendly, but naturally won’t have any capabilities you lack. Letting you start as a fresh clone in a semi-functional lab could also be pretty cool.

OTOH, a “cloning” machine that just gives you a new body when you die is basically just a save game, and not interesting at all.

[KA101]

It’s a new (hopefully without too many problems) body, possibly with some of the old one’s skill levels, and with whatever gear the player had the foresight to leave for it.

(Remember! gear stashed for your clone may be gear that could have helped you avoid needing the clone in the first place!)

Regarding cloning as resource-sink: I’m thinking of the ol’ Good/Cheap/Quick standby. Clones can be Good (minimal deviation from the sample), Cheap (maybe only 10 chunks of meat needed at absolute minimum*), or Quick (your clone’ll be ready in a week**).

*Such a low price would pretty much guarantee some nasty starting mutations and probably still take a while.

**If you die before the clone’s ready, you can’t check on it, ensure that the gear’s there, update its skills, whatever. If a week seems short, recall that Cata-years are about 8.5 weeks long.

Accepting a longer growth cycle and/or supplying more materials could thereby give the player a more-capable clone, which provides an incentive to invest in the project.

[Slax]

Cheap cloning. What could possibly go wrong?

[KA101]

Which is why you should invest more Chunks of Meat, probably some Purifier, and if you’re really that amoral, some chunks of Human Meat* in the process! Cheap cloning done Quick ain’t never gonna be Good!

*If you’re looking for human-type resources, they shouldn’t come much better…

[The_Darkling_Wolf]

The meat is purely there to make up the body, so skimping on that would result in your clone coming out sans an arm or two.

[iceball3]

[quote=“The Darkling Wolf, post:42, topic:811”]The meat is purely there to make up the body, so skimping on that would result in your clone coming out sans an arm or two.[/quote]Add too much and the clone comes out with cancerous growths/malignant tumors?

[TheRealTenman]

[font=impact]How about this? Watch “6th day” for the cloning system I have in mind-ish.

Enter a "Cloning Lab"
Find-(fix)-(reprogram)-Refuel Cloning machine[/font]

[font=impact]Finding a working one means “Muscle men” can use it.
Finding a broken one means Mechanics feel special.
Finding a secure/deprogrammed one means Smarties aren’t neglected. Either hack\reprogram.
Maybe include a “Cloning disc” for the latter. It automatically reprograms the CM (solving one problem) but doesn’t hack it (leaving smarties feel…smart.)

All of these have there own pitfalls, bar "Perfect working order"
All faults can mess up and release all clones, ruining the facility for a long time\permanently.
Mechanics can be shocked and fry the circuits/them. They now need to reprogram as well.
Programmers can mess up and make a common fault among all clones.
Security can spawn turrets(like asploding the front door.)[/font]

[font=impact]Begin “registration”

Find “scanner chair” in the same room[/font]

[font=impact]Again this is in perfect-repair-reprogram conditions
Glitches kill instantly[/font]
[font=impact]>Sit in “Scanner chair”

Scanner implants “Brain computer” automatically (Think plug-heads from the matrix)
Chair downloads current brain data (skills and stuff for a CBM free Cloning)[/font]

[font=impact]This eliminates any surgery for dim characters.
It would also allow for easy downloads of skills for the clones.[/font]

[font=impact]Begin generation or template conditioning.

Machine now starts Creating-conditioning-programming-readying the clone template[/font]

[font=impact]Templates are DNA free bodies.
The machine can be empty\damaged-stocked-filled-conditioned with templates
Each takes more supplies to refuel.
Create a new template then condition it for environments[/font]

[font=impact]>Fuel the machine with biomass

wait and add fuel as necessary

Optional

load more memory into it regularly (at a cost of something (shit ton of batteries?))
find a CBM:Memory data disk for auto logging.

Benefits of each build.

Mechs can put CMBs into the cloning machine to install the into the next Clone.
Sci-guys can tweak stats (Too powerful IMO) or clean all mutations (not add them mind you)
Super smart guys can clean certain mutations
Dumb characters get nothing good because this is a mechanical and scientific process…they know how to deal with science not make it.[/font]

[Miloch]

I’m thinking the information from your brain would take up a large amount of storage. More then should be currently mobile. Probably several rooms worth of server farms to say the least. I’m more a fan of using a chair or some other machine to upload a snap shot of your brain. The quality of the clone you receive could be affected by several variables. One of the ways to get better at cloning might be to raid other labs for various
Basic Cloning: Basic cloning involves creating a fetus of stems cells with your DNA. Failures could create mutations, degradations of stats, or even be fatal. High success would mainly just keep errors out. This cloning is the most basic form and it takes time for the clone to mature. Massive amounts of nutrients are required to feed the clone while it’s maturing.

Findable in non cloning labs: (This ties in well with my lab themes suggestion)

Human DNA Study: The human DNA study would give you a road map and would help you understand and repair any errors that creep into your clone. At the higher end this could also allow modification of traits. This also could allow gathering samples of human DNA to harvest traits to adjust yours. (this is known as genetic engineering) This could reduce errors in your cloning. Taking time to study your own DNA could allow you to reduce errors further. Studying could allow you to identify your traits/mutations within the DNA in question and attempt to remove them.

DNA Merging Research: A study on how to merge DNAs from different creatures. This is difficult and requires a complex study of the subjects DNA. Over time one should be able to identify various traits in the DNA. Once a traits is identified, merging it into another DNA could would take a massive amount of lab and computer work.

Genetic Engineering Research: This involve taking specific traits from one set of DNA and implementing it in another. This would require studying both DNAs quiet a bit and should be excessive time consuming. Failure could result in the obvious list of things.

[Endovior]

Nah, it should totally be possible to fit all the information in a brain in a relatively portable state. A brain’s information normally fits in something the size and mass of a brain, so presuming it is possible to extract that information, there’s no need for ‘several rooms worth of server farms’. After all, this is the future, and storage has presumably increased along with everything else. I’d expect, in particular, that a CBM designed to copy and store your brain state information could be used as part of the cloning process to restore your skills.

[Williham]

You’re forgetting something critical about how the brain works:

A lot of the information isn’t actually stored in the brain, but rather on the brain; or rather, encoded in the physical structure of the brain, which brain cells connect to which, etc.

Storing all that information in a linear, homogenous format would increase its bulk, probably significantly.

I can’t find anything specific relating to information density (except some estimates in the exabyte range), but I’m guessing on the order of several hundred gigabytes per cubic centimeter, with a guessed lower bound of 50~ GB per cc.

There might of course be a lot of points of commonality that can reduce the amount of information that actually needs to be stored, and it would likely compress well, but yeah, nothing portable, for sure.

[KA101]

GURPS was thinking somewhere between 10-100 TB for human brain capacity, but that was 3d edition so there’s probably newer research. Bio-Tech did point out that the hyper-smart character’s brain was the size of a swimming pool, though. (Said character was a one-off sentient tree that the school field trip could tour.)

[TheRealTenman]

Cata is based in 2050 isn’t it?

That should be plenty of time for data storage improvement.

…More then should be currently mobile.

[font=impact]I agree. The CBM in my post is a data sender only…Sending new data constantly back to the lab.[/font]

The quality of the clone you receive could be affected by several variables.

[font=impact]I reckon it should be accessible to all types of chars but not easy by any means.
Finding “Upgrades” for the process is cool IMO[/font]

[b]Basic Cloning[/b]:

[font=impact]Yes! More uses for the fetus!
[/font]

The rest

[font=impact]I like it! Support
[/font]

[Nopkar]

I don’t know if external links are allowed, but here’s a report > http://gizmodo.com/5978581/you-can-squeeze-22-petabytes-of-data-into-one-gram-of-dna

It states 2.2 PETABYTES of data per gram of dna. this is 2013. that tech would be available by 2030, no telling in 2050.

storage at this point is moot I suppose.