Allow players to take their installed clones out of the clone bay as an item
Currently players are with good skills limited to 11 clones, clones which only exist as the player (pod) itself or as a jump clone installed in a clone bay.
My suggestion is to allow players to take out clones from the clone bay as an item, which cannot be jumped to but also does not count to the jump clone limit.
What do you mean?
My suggestion is that players can take jump clones (with the installed implants) out of the clone bay as an item which you can keep in your station hangar.
These items can be stored, transported and traded.
To be able to switch or jump to such a clone the item first needs to be installed again as jump clone in an active clone bay. This can only be done by the original owner of the clone and can be done remotely.
(As only the original owner of the clone can reinstall the clones as jump clone, this will not be a way to trade implants!)
What is the purpose of these ‘jump clone items’?
Implant storage: Do you have 4 different mindlink clones, a virtue pod, snake set and training clone, as well as some ‘regular’ jump clones in Jita and other stations? A total of 11 active clones is very limiting.
If we could turn clones to items we could store a much larger amount of them in inactive mode until we need a specific clone, at which point you can reinstall it in the clone bay in order to make it possible to switch/jump to it.
Clone transport: you can now more easily transport multiple clones to another station as items in your cargo. Or you could make a courier contract so other players can transport your clone. For a deployment one blockade runner could fly a bunch of clones of your group to a station with clone bay to get everyone a jump clone in that system.
Details:
a new player-made industry produced ‘empty cryopod’ could be introduced as an item that is required to take out a clone from a clone bay.
no, you will not be able to trade installed implants this way, only the original owner of a clone can use it.
clone item maximum size would be good at 5m3 or 10m3, so that a shuttle can be used to ferry clones.
the item itself will be similar to what a corpse currently is: just a name of the player, and if it is destroyed you get nothing. In the case of these clones you also see a list of installed implants which cannot be interacted with until the owner reinstalls the clone in a clone bay.
Conclusion:
Allowing players to store clones as items allows more flexibility with implant sets as it gives players access to a lot more clones without increasing the jump capabilities of players. It also opens some interesting new possibilities of clone transport that aren’t currently possible.
Currently IIRC the only ships that can do this are rorquals, titans, and supercarriers. CCP seems to think this is some form of ‘end game’ ability or something. That in mind, it’d be a pretty huge step change to go from that small set of ships all the way down to shuttles. I’d be a little hesitant about going that far down the chain, but also don’t want to just randomly choose ships that can or can’t haul clones because lolreasons. Rather than an item, I think I’d be more amenable to a module so such a thing could be better modulated through PG or CPU requirements. Say, a low power module called Cryostorage or something that requires 500 power to fit or somesuch.
The other question I’d ask is kind of the why? Shuttles are interdiction nullfied now, right? If your group is moving for whatever reason, it’s not hard or expensive to build shuttles and just jump clone cycle your way out. Or board your corvette. Normally here in F&I we shred ideas if even one ship in the game can kind of sort of do something, so why is this so very different?
Now, that being said, my position tends to be ‘can I see a way it breaks anything beyond acceptable tolerance? No? Okay, go for it. Add more tools to the sandbox because a sandbox should be about adding tools, not taking them.’
So, outside of my concern about the huge step change - and as a dudebro who was one of those 4+ ML clones - yeah, I don’t see a way it breaks anything, too severely. So what if your corpbros all contract their clones to you and you take them out to wherever? The ‘1 remote jump a year thing’ is pretty old and outdated and can go as far as I’m concerned.
As I never used the clone systems of those big ships (Rorqual, Super, Titan) myself, I looked up what they do, but I don’t think they are entirely similar to my proposal.
While yes, they too work with clones and allow you to move a clone, the main benefit of those big ships is that they also allow you to jump if I understand correctly.
The clone items I’m proposing won’t allow you to jump without being reinstalled in an existing clone bay, so doesn’t have the strategic or tactical clone jump advantage that those capital ships bring.
The main goal is to allow multiple spare clones for implant sets.
A secondary benefit is that it would allow you to bring multiple clones over in one travel, or let someone else bring over a clone for you. That isn’t the main purpose of this suggestion though, but I do like the potential.
That’s mainly my viewpoint as well. And as much as I’m thinking, I cannot find ways to abuse my proposal as you will still be limited by existing clone bays and clone jump timers for any strategic advantages.
Interesting point, this could mean that a newbie who joins a new corporation but already used his ‘1 remote medical clone a year’ thing (and is older than 30 days) would have a new method to get to his new home station: he could let someone else shuttle his jump clone over.
It wouldn’t be a big difference though, as anyone can fly a shuttle these days.
I’m not opposed to increasing the size of the cryopods, even if they were 100m3instead of 10m3 they could work well as implant storage and for transportation.
Just wondering, why is it that you don’t like shuttles to move pods around? I guess because of how easily available and hard to catch they are?
I agree, shuttles are cheap and hard to catch. On the other hand, they’re not impossible to catch (well timed smartbombs will get them) so it would be a risky way to move expensive implants. And thematically I love the idea of using shuttles to, well, shuttle players around.
But again, if the cryopod size were for example 100m3 I would be happy as well.
Players, yes. Heck, I’d be fine with multiple actual players in a shuttle if CCP would ever allow multi-pilots in one ship. But maybe it’s cause I’m old and most of my Eve career shuttles have been pretty well useless and unable to move anything of size, etc, but it just rubs me the wrong way. And, maybe, too, because they are so hard to catch, letting them move around freely and move other players around with such little ‘risk’ just doesn’t sit right with me either.
If I were to move expensive small stuff around I’d use a blockade runner or T2 explorer. Cloaky, nullified, almost instant align and enough hitpoints to survive some smartbombs. Pretty much impossible to catch, if piloted well.
If players could use a cheap shuttle instead to move their high grades crystal set around, my guess is that many players would and we’d see more cryopod killmails.
You can do that. Just jump into the clone, move the clone to the new location, jump into an empty clone, death clone back wherever you came from. Done.
However, I think you missed the main part of the suggestion: the possibility to have unlimited backup cryopods for much more flexibility with implant sets, cryopods which you can reinstall as jump clone without being limited to the maximum total of 11 jump + implant clones that we have now.
The ability to move clones more easily as items is merely a nice side-effect, but not the main point of this suggestion.
