Ok so I have a question regarding the lore behind the cloning process.
From what I’ve been reading around I’ve seen some of you have clones modified and as far as I can tell that seems accepted generally by all. So my question is this. If a person has a disability (blind/mute/mental issue/drug or alcohol addiction problems with limb or anything that could either be from birth or from your life path) when they pass the tests and become a pod pilot ( or make new clones) does the new clone still have said disability ? Is that something that’s going to be automatically fixed ? Does the pilot need to request it or refuse it (I’m assuming here someone might not be comfortable living differently than what they’re used to. for example someone who was deaf and finds the world too noisy) ?
Another thing I see is pilots with glasses ( not shades). If a clone is usually cleared of disabilities normally they wouldn’t need glasses afterwards no ?
Basically I’d like to know what’s the standard accepted idea behind this type of thing.
p.s: I apologize if this has been asked before but I couldn’t find it.
The way I figure it, the imperfections are cosmetic. They’re so people remember who they are. You could get rid of them easily, but they’re to help root people.
wait are you saying bad eye sight would be reason to be disqualified from training ? That sounds kinda fishy to me considering when you’re in a pod you’re plugged in and interfacing with your ship mentally …
So basically you’re saying people are choosing to keep their slight imperfections for their own reasons ? Kinda like someone who’s eye sight now requires glasses thinking ‘hey I kinda look good with these’ ?
I would say re: neurological/psychiatric/neuropsychiatric conditions, it would vary. The whole idea of the cloning process is to take a snapshot of the mental state, and I would assume based on handwaving and some RL science that if you basically transfer the whole package of memories, personality traits, recent emotional states, personal attachments, likes & dislikes, a lot of things like mental disorders, addictions, brain damage affecting the use of limbs etc would/could also be transferred.
I also think that if you clone to get rid of being drunk/high or hangover, those states actually do transfer with the mindscan, because they are part of your mental state. They will probably disappear faster than if you stayed in the body with the substance still in the blood stream, but not instantly. Similarly, you cannot just avoid the need for sleep by jump cloning every eight hours - the state of tiredness is part of your mental state and will follow you.
Some mental/neurological disorders are probably curable by “editing” the clone, though. As a trivial example neurological damage affecting the use of a limb on a lower level than the brain would likely be fixed. Getting rid of a substance abuse problem could be easier in a clone that never used it, with some physical effects missing. Etc.
So basically I’d say whatever your story demands, you can likely make it plausible as far as cloning itself goes.
Making it plausible that you get into capsuleer training and out of it with a license with a serious handicap is a different issue.
According to lore (EVE Source), part of capsuleer training involves rigorous, grueling physical training. My explanation for this is that you need it to grow the neural pathways of muscle control etc that the capsuleer implants will then hijack to use for controlling the ship.
Eyesight is probably not an issue though. Tech exist now that makes it possible to fix most trivial eye-sight issues. We also know that blindness can be cured by eye implants in the EVE Universe (it’s referenced in the chronicle about the Defiants, who choose not to do it, iirc). The cost would probably be trivial compared to the cost of capsuleer training.
ok so this makes sense and aligns somewhat with my original thinking on the subject especially about mental conditions. For the record the reason for my question was rather trivial (speech impediment) but I still wanted a broader understanding on the subject
@Steve_Ronuken not to draw a false equivalency between disabilities and transgendered folks, but it does have me wondering; if capsuleers are infomorphs than how prevalent are gender fluid and non-gender conforming pilots within the capsuleer community?
One would think cloning technology would be a huge dream to anyone even slightly gender fluid, allowing people to pick and choose the body and characteristics that they identify and feel comfortable in. CONCORD even seems to offer a “clone re-sculpting” service for a fee yet as things stand it doesn’t seem like character resculping allows you to change your character’s gender.
As characters evolve and grow through the game, I don’t think its really a valid excuse to simply write things off as “well just make a female character” when EVE is suppose to be about writing your own legend and building your character over the course of years in a work of living science fiction. As a lot of people say “EVE is real” and beyond limiting peoples ability to tell a story with that level of transformation (especially considering cloning technology would make transitioning as simple and “not a big deal” as changing your clothes) there are also at least a few players that have changed their identity since starting EVE decades ago that would like that to be represented in their character as well.
I realise this may be a huge can of worms (especially in-universe considering the Amarr and Caladari’s conservative leanings) but this has been something that’s bothered me for a while now about infomorphs that I haven’t heard anyone address in the lore, and I think discussing it could lead to a convincing conversation about opening up character resculping to changing gender as well.
After all, if scars and other disabilities are lauded and picked designer by capsuleers as a part of their identity then players should have the ability to make a more substantial impact on their characters evolving identity as well.
(inb4 “stop trying to make my video games ‘political’”)
My answer is not a 110% accurate. For that you would need an ISD or a developer that deals with lore. However, I have come to understand a bit of the “mechanics” lets say behind that.
I will say the obvious, that there are some who RP differently these things out there and all that, so let’s cut to the chase.
The way I believe the lore views these things is highly separated between the psychological aspect and the bodily aspect. This is backed by the three aspects that cloning in New Eden deals with; clone manufacturing, brain growth & storage and clone quality.
Now at the beginning of the game if you didn’t have the correct clone grade, upon death(podded) you would lose SP. This was justified by lore in the brain growth and clone quality aspect of it. Today however the lore stands as is despite how there isn’t any loss of actual SP.
So that means that despite how the cloning process tries to recreate the brain and body as it was, every time our characters come back to life, they come with a…let’s call it lagg interval. They will have their brain, in the new clone, eventually grow back to what it was but it will take some time and when it does, memories will come back(the most frequent technique used by RPers is dreaming or revisiting same places) instead of being fine tuned like you can recall things you did yesterday and such. This also is tied with the clone quality and the after shock(death) treatment your character undergoes.
So actions such as being shown video footage, writing the story somewhere, keeping an item to serve as anchor. All come into play. Even keeping your own deficiencies, like the disabilities you describe, will help your character remember faster and more steadier who he/she is. So its not a straightforward issue despite how much people usually don’t think about it.
An analogy I and my character use is that with every death, you have a puzzle that represents your soul(be liberal with how you mean that-I mean it the self encompassed by both biological and psychological aspects but let’s not focus here) and bits of it get taken away every time you come back. For the pieces to regrow, it takes some time as established by the lore. But the more you experience shock and death, the more pieces may fall out while the others haven’t regrown and thus you are borderline into not being the same personality as time moves on and you don’t respect the process of recovery and taking time.
The most unidentified aspect from the lore is the impact implants and clones and usage of the pod have in our characters and not only. You see for example the Amarr elite, prolonged into life, not experiencing that so many extreme shocks(say death) and yet with time they fall into slumber. This is for writing reasons as well to showcase how non natural all this is and how humans of New Eden have violated the natural aspect of the life cycle. How the progress of time and natural decay plays into it. Also you have to realize that you can’t technically, wipe out all diseases. One of the most famous incident is the Turit disease which affected the Amarr Emperor Heideran VII. The lore states that had it not been for implant technology and such, the poor fellow would have died years earlier than he did. So technically, if a whole Emperor of one of the strongest factions could not fix himself, your character likely can’t as well and could fix much less than you might think.
The Turit disease incident is why lorewise I never bought into the ludicrous assessment that anything that has to do with cloning and restoration and body modification would be cheap just because our characters deal with ISK(Emperors have all the ISK in the world after all)…but thats more of an issue I have with the perception of ISK by players and CCP itself so I would go off topic and I wont. But the reason I mention this is because you can certainly be more liberal with that narrative since the ingame mechanic of paying clones to maintain your SP count is lifted.
It’s possible to corrupt an infomorph so that a disease carries on clone to clone- this happens on the Angel epic arc. Just my 0.02 ISK (even though the question may be related to corpus based disabilites in general).
If you get blown up in T3 Cruiser you loose some skill points do to the mental trauma you get
because T3s are a little to advanced for us in some way.
And we have stories in the lore of disease that transferred to new clones
yes and no. the training process for a new pilot is extremely expensive. you are trained as a capsule pilot by a naval academy. you could not just decide to pay to do this.
Most of the standard population can only dream of owning a clone. the in game fix for this is the gallente federation who use video and portable holographic devices to modify their appearance. there are some great chronicles and old EON stores that talk about this in depth.
the problem with gender reassignment through cloning is that genetic manipulation is outlawed in Empire space. and part of the cloning process requires source genetic information to be delivered to the clone along with the consciousnesses imprint thus tieing a blank clone in to its genetic gender marker.
it’s funny you mention that because I actually know someone to whom this exact thing happened and she asked ccp to be able to change her character’s gender and was denied. In the end she had to remake her toon.
This brings on another question. If all that stuff is so highly managed by concord and all that jazz. Why are outlaw pilots allowed to keep clones at all. I mean those real bad people, those who are known affiliates with the pirate factions or those who have -5 to -10 security status. How are those people still able to make clones in lawful (high sec) empire space ? Should legitimate cloning facilities refuse them contracts ? I’d have thought it would make sense that someone should only be able to make clone contracts in stations owned by allies ( like player structures or pirate faction stations )…
Genetic manipulation and a pilots standing with concord are separate things.
a corporation will maintain a clone for the pilot regardless of standing and sec status.
concord only prohibits the use of transport and combat capable hulls for pilots with negative status. the empire navies are tasked with tracking down these individuals to deal with them. concord will show up if the pilot actually commits an offence in breach of the concord flight and aggression regulations. of if one of these negative status pilots enters concord owned systems
there are plenty of Pirate factions that would offer cloning facilities. the serpentis corporation are heavily involved in this regard as they initially started out as an R&D devision of the gallente federation before moving away from the core systems and engaging in Drug and booster manufacturing among other things. with no combat ability in its self the serpentis corporation looked to the angel cartel for assistance in designing and maintaining a fleet of combat capable vessels.
oh yeah I understand what you’re saying but what I wonder is why are they so strict about the genetic aspect about it but not so much about a pilot’s criminal status. I just find it curious that’s all.
concord and the empires place a limit on any capsuleer with sufficiently low standings/security status. they stand to lose more than they gain if they start killing clones. (a death clone is a basic “human right” for a capsuleer) or anyone what has under gone the process of becoming a “post-human”
