Transportable Clones, Storable Implant sets: CRYOPODS!

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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  • Have you ever wanted to move a bunch of implant sets in one trip to a new home station?

  • …of multiple characters, all at once?

  • Have you ever wished you could pay someone else to do the dirty work of transporting your jump clone to the other side of the universe so all you have to do to go anywhere is ‘jump’?

  • Would you like to experiment with a lot more implant sets but still feel restricted by the limited number of jump clones even after maxing out all of the ‘Elite’ Infomorph Psychology skills?

Rejoice, because all of these things are possible with CRYOPODS!

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CRYBEuW6aUrR1024×1024 206 KB

Pictured: Gerard Amatin’s Cryopod JC-GIQ8, storing an implant set for transport and later use.

Cryopods are the latest technology in New Eden, capable of taking jump clones out of their clone bay with implants mostly* intact! Cryopods turn jump clones into a mobile transportable unit by freezing the clones, intended for transportation or long-term storage.

Cryopods:

  • are no longer connected to the jump clone network
  • thus cannot be jumped to
  • and do not count towards the jump clone maximum!
  • are tradable items of considerable (500m3) volume
  • can at any time remotely be re-installed as jump clone into the matching capsuleer’s own jump clone bay (if a clone bay is present at the cryopod’s location)
  • and are useless to other capsuleers (except to get paid for delivery, or ransom)

*New skills!

  • Cryopod Operation - To increase the number of implants that can successfully be frozen it is recommended to train this skill for a random two extra implants saved per level upon freezing. Level 1 allows Cryopod creation, level 3 is required for the next skill:

  • Cryopod Efficiency - Reduces the 5M ISK creation cost by 15% per level.

Conclusion:

Cryopods add a lot of new possibilities to EVE from personal taxis, convenient move-ops to easy deployments, extra opportunities for transporters as well as for ransoming pirates, and give capsuleers significantly more space (haha, ‘space!’, in a space game! Get it?) to experiment with the few dozen different interesting implant sets that are available to us - all without losing jump clones for it! Because now you can have a hundred frozen copies of yourself in your hangar.
Alive frozen copies this time.

Who wouldn’t want that?

:cold_face:

Of course all this is just wishful thinking. I think it would be awesome if CCP could add this.

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Better way to transport clones with implants
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Put your implants in an interceptor or covops and fly out there, install all the jump clones and implants you desire. Your issue is solved.

The idea of mass moving clones of other people is just ridiculous, and completely antithetical to every change CCP has made over decades to reduce how fast you can move large groups across the map.

Try not being scared of everything, that helps a lot.

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You kind of missed the point.

Yes, I can fly my clone with implants in a covops and fly it to a destination.
What I cannot do is fly my 5 clones with implants, or those of friends as well.

Very little changes to how fast people can move across the map, people will still be limited to jump clone cooldowns.

In addition to that, someone still has to travel there so you cannot instantaneously get a group of players anywhere either.

In other words, you’re still as slow at deploying somewhere and moving an entire fleet somewhere as before, except now you can offload the job of moving jump clones to a single player instead of having all players move for every clone they need at the destination.

It doesn’t change force projection at all, and I wouldn’t have suggested it if it did.

The other part of the suggestion is that this allows many more implant sets to be used by a player as you can now have a clone for every implant set, bypassing the jump clone limitation by storing the clones offline from the jump clone network.

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Oh, I’m well aware of what you want. What you want is such a terrible idea that it’s difficult to express just how dumb it is and not get the comment removed by ISD.

What you want is to move 5 alts. What will be done is it will be used to move 500 alts of an invasion force.

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And how is that bad?

Right now it requires 500 people to fly over in shuttles and install clones. With this, one person with a Jump Freighter can do the job if everyone contracts them a Cryopod. I think that’s nice.

What exactly is the issue?

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I still wish I could use more implant sets without it counting towards my limited number of jump clones.

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That is exactly the issue.

Not all of null is Sov space, there are several chunks of if with NPC stations. Want to cause mass shenanigans in NPC space? Getting ships is easy, just JC them in, but getting pilots is more difficult. 500 neuts filtering into the area in shuttles is likely to be noticed by the locals, but with this idea, the first clue anyone has is when everyone mass jumps to their clones.

That’s just one example. Another example would be using a spy alt to infiltrate jump clones into an hostile krabbing system and contracting them ships. Wait until they start scratching those krabs, then clone jump to the waiting fleet and undock from the station they’re running to. Again, no one knows you’re there until everyone clone jumps, gets in the waiting ships, and undocks.

This isn’t the first time this suggestion has been brought up.

You can have 15 jump clones. How many implant sets do you need?

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With 15 jump clones I use:

  • 1 clone at a second location for my alliance to jump to if needed
  • 1 clone at the location I’m doing blops stuff at
  • 1 HS clone in Jita
  • 4 different mindlink clones at my home for whatever links my alliance needs
  • 1 clone at the location I’m doing PvE at at the time
  • a training clone
  • a virtue pod for scanning
  • a couple of spare clones for specific ship setups (extra cpu or pg)
  • a spare clone slot in case I ever need it without having to destroy one of the other clones

And if I had the option I’d have extra mindlinks too at my blops location, or the alliance forward staging. Or extra implant sets to have fun with.

Hitting that small 15 jump clone limit is easy.

Increasing mobility isn’t my intention of this suggestion, so I’m not asking for more jump clones. I just want spare slots that don’t count towards the jump clone limit so I have the freedom to use more of those implant sets.

There are 23 different implant sets as far as I know, of different tiers too.

And I ignore most implant sets simply because we do not have enough clones.

I think it would benefit the game greatly if players could store spare clones with implants without it counting towards our jump clone limit.

You’re right, people could use it for surprise actions like that. They can already do so by sending shuttles at a quiet moment of the day, but my suggestion makes it slightly easier.

Could you explain why that is bad for the game? Is it bad that people can use my idea for surprise attacks?

Personally I love unexpected situations and well-coordinated surprises like that in this game. They create some of the best stories.

Easier clone transportation and storage of implant sets for later, I’d love to have both.

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Only under the following conditions:

  • transporting the a clone needs a specialized hull , so everyone who sees it, instanty knows that a potentially high-value clone is transported.
  • this vessel is designed around the stats of a hauler: slow, bulky, unable to warp cloaked. Simple T1 version for up to 3 clones, tankier T2 version for up to 5 clones.
  • you can only ever transport your own clones. Not those of other people.
  • if a clone is loaded onto such a vessel, it cannot be bridged, filamented or stored into a ship maintenance bay. It has to use gates or wormholes.
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I’d love to be able to transport the clones of my alts though, or let my hauling character transport those of my main.

Besides that I’m OK with it requiring a specialized hull, although I would prefer the transportable clones to simply be very bulky instead so it requires a large hauler anyway.

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  • Point is: 500m³ isn’t “very bulky”, you’d still get all 15 clones into a single BlockadeRunner and move them pretty much without risk.

Sure, I’d love to have free beer all day long, but we both know that isn’t good for me nor the world.

I personally think that all geography-skipping insta-travel mechanics are part of the huge power-projection problem EVE has. And tbh I don’t want to see any of that buffed in any way. I personally would rather nerf every single aspect of power projection for the good of the game, clones and clonejumps being part of that.

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Okay, then make them bigger. 1k m3? 5k m3? What kind of size would you think is fair?

I agree I wouldn’t want to see insta-travel mechanics or power projection to be changed.

This is the reason I’m trying to come up with a way to increase the clone limit for implants but not for jump clone locations.

Jump clone cooldown isn’t changed, and people still need to physically move one of these clones to a new location for them to be used, so that should still put the similar bounds on power projection that there currently is when it comes to jump clone mechanics.

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It isn’t only about what is “fair” but also what is “reasonable”.

I want a game to be designed full of immerson and lore that does somehow “make sense” - even in a sci-fi environment. I don’t want a game just pure mechanical, it should have a deeper inner structure.
A Clone Vat Bay for capitals or a Standup Cloning Center for structures has 4.000m³ - and thats a complete cloning facility. How much sense would it make to have a single clone for transport require 5.000m³? Would look odd to me. Isn’t good design.
But any lower value would result in, what I already said, clones being transported in a Blockade Runner and that means they are 99% safe if the user simply knows what to do. Too safe imho for that amount of value and the savings of effort that comes with it.

It makes it easier to set up a new “next strategical base” for clonejumping for large groups. Means there will be an Alliance order that everyone “has to” contract one clone to the alliance, the logistical department moves those silently to some strategic location and “on demand” they can bring in thousands of players to that location in the blink of an eye - without anyone being able to notice that beforehand. Because the transports can all be outsourced to alts, it’s only a few ships with unknown cargo that need to slip through.
You might not be able to imagine how large groups might use it, but I can guarantee you, it would shift the balance even more towards large groups and against medium and smaller ones.

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Having lived right next to NPC stations we just assumed that all major groups had jump clones and fleets staged inside, which was true.

This suggestion is not adding that much of a surprise. And in the rare case it’s a surprise that surprise only applies once.

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Well I have also lived next to NPC stations and we never assumed that. Because it’s unreasonable. No major block would send thousands of his members to make strategic jumpclones in every region. Each one of those would eat up a permanent clone slot.
Which after your suggestion is no longer nessessary. Their members would simply need exactly one “deployment clone” which can be used as quick intervention clone only in preparation of a strike. The difference in organization between “make many hundred or many thousand members all individually go to XYZ and leave a clone there” and “everyone is required to contract one clone to the alliance” is magnitudes.

But, look at another scenario: I siege a wormhole. The inability to easily get out all their clones put pressure on the defenders, because if I can hold Hole Control, they might slip out an expensive clone - but then they cannot get back in to fight or get the other ones. This means they have the highest imaginable pressure on them to actually defend their home, else they will not only lose their assets (which they can partially store in logoff haulers), but also all their stored clones there (which they currently cannot store in haulers, but with your suggestion, they suddenly can). Or, in my favour: some of their members actually try to bring their clones out in a number of runs and I am able to roll them out, weakening the defending force. It has a strategic use not to allow an easy clone evacuation.

It removes another tiny bit of taking responsibility for your decisions. Just like with assets. In case of an emergency, your suggestion offers an “easy way out”, just bling your clones and if bad things happen extract them from the stations and log them off. Nope. Not what I want for EVE. If you want to bring multiple bling clones to a station, make sure you can get them off if things go south. Else face the consequences of your own decisions. You wanted the comfort and performance while things were good, now have the effort or the pain when things go bad. It’s a principle.

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Depends on if your region is strategically interesting then.

Back when my alliance lived in Delve last year as part of the Imperium we had both Panfam and Winterco staged in the NPC station in our midst. I think only Initiative wasn’t staged there, but they lived in the region nextdoor so they didn’t need it to get to the location within a few minutes.

For wherever you may have been living there might have been a single surprise deployment with use of such clones (which also is possible without my suggestion by the way), but for me it wasn’t even a surprise at all to have Panfam or Winterco fleets spawn in the middle of our space from that NPC station whenever a big ship got tackled.

About your second argument in the context of the ability to pull more bling clones out of a structure under siege: is it bad if people can pull more bling clones out of a structure like that?

You’re right that getting multiple bling clones at once out makes it easier to evacuate the structure.

But what you forget is that people currently are severely limited in how many bling clones they can realistically have. I’ve got one. I guess I could have 2 or 3 more until I really run into my current jump clone limits as I also need a bunch of them for other purposes (jump clone locations, mindlinks, specific fits).

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if such a wormhole station allowed a player to have 5 or even 10 bling clones? That it even allows a player to have 20 clones stored for various kinds of use if they wanted?

You could have so much more value of clones to catch during an evacuation! So much more value to fight for!

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Not if they could just put them all into boxes, load those boxes into a hauler and log that hauler off.

:person_shrugging:

I think every game needs limits.

The old system of POSes being only anchorable 1 per moon, limiting the total structures in a system was better than the current Upwell system allowing unlimited anchoring.
The old system of POS hangars having limited storage capacity was better than the unlimited storage of Upwell structures.
The old system of limited physical space under a Forcefield was better than Tethering and unlimited docking.
The old system of limited production lanes with reserved queues was better than unlimited production and an arbitrary SCI.

And so on. Everytime CCP removed limits, the game got worse because the already strong groups got even further ahead of everything else. The vets got even further ahead of the newbs. The large even further ahead of the small.

Every good game ever invented by humans had a system of limiting factors that somewhat leveled the playing field and prevented one player from being able to get so far ahead during a good streak of events, that it is basically impossible (or not reasonable) for others to keep playing. Chess, Poker, or when it comes to videogames: StarCraft (best strategy game ever made), every shooter, every buildup game, RPG… everyhwere are limits how much equipment you can wear, how much army you can build, how strong you can become, how fast you can produce etc. Limits are important, they shouldn’t be lifted more and more. The game doesn’t become better this way.

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I disagree that limits shouldn’t be lifted, but you make a good point that we need to look at the kind of gameplay that becomes possible when limits are removed.

On a side note I never liked the idea of hard limits like ‘one POS per moon’ as it makes it too easy to exploit such limits defensively and saturate a system with POSes to prevent invasion. Issues with Upwell Structures aside, I much prefer their design which allows players to place more of them without hard limits like POSes have, only soft limits like maintainance costs, which could be increased if structures are spammed too much.

That said, I realize that lifting limits on storable jump clones, even if not connected to the jump clone network but in ‘cryopod’ state, could be abused by players if it has no limit.

“How could this idea be exploited by players” is a common question to ask for any suggestion and in this case I know what I could do:

Create an unlimited amount of crypod clones and store one in every NPC station in any region of space that has NPC stations.

Then, I could remotely install one of the clones and instantly jump to any region of choice.

This would in my opinion increase mobility too much. Even though the jump clone cooldown limits it to once a day, being able to instantly teleport anywhere in the game where you have one of your (limitless) cryopods feels wrong to me.

Right now you can do something similar but you are limited by the limited number of jump clones already installed in those stations. This limit seems removed if we can install clones remotely from an unlimited number of prepared cryopods and immediately jump to them.

I think that may be the biggest flaw of the suggestion at the moment.

Any ideas how to fix that?

Preferably while still allowing:

  • remote install of cryopods
  • transport and storage of cryopods
  • a large number of cryopods
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A couple ideas I have are:

  1. Add a limit to cryopods too. So no unlimited number, but still enough to move a bunch of clones and store spare implant sets that won’t count towards the jump clone limit. Maybe one per level, 5 total? 10?
  2. A delay on remote installation of cryopods. Even though I want players to be able to pay someone else to ‘taxi’ them to the other side of the universe, this doesn’t have to be fast. Maybe let it take 5 hours to fully thaw/install a crypod back as jump clone so that actually flying somewhere is still faster, so this feature only increases convenience, not mobility?

What do you think?

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Well it’s not a fully functional and operational facility. It might be packaged.

A cryopod might have a full operational cooling and monitoring system attached, so it’s not that strange if it is large, lore-wise.

As to the size of a cryopod, what would make sense gameplay-wise?

I wouldn’t want someone to be able to stage 12 clones of a small gang in a single blockade runner (12k m3), or move many of their own blingy clones at once, so I’d say 1k m3 is too small.

On the other end I think something like 5k m3 is still doable but perhaps too large? Could fit two of those in a blockade runner.

How about 2.5k m3, so the size of a packaged frigate? Or 3k?

People could fit 4 of those in a BR, and staging jump clones for a fleet of up to 20 fits within a Deep Space Transport. Sounds like a good number to me.

A valid concern, for wormhole space.

As I’m not well known woth WH space this is something you know better:

How many people have more than one blingy clone in a hole?

And how hard is it to get those clones out in an eviction?

I can imagine that my suggestion has an impact on such gameplay, but it could also allow wormholers to have (and risk) more blingy clones in their hole so this might balance it out; on one hand people can save their clones more easily but on the other wormholers will be able to bring (and thus risk) more implant sets inside, and cryopods could allow you to get kills on haulers carrying multiple blingy clones worth billions each!

Could that extra risk and clone kil opportunity balance out the ease of safely logging off clones, you think?

Worst case, cryopods usage could be turned off within wormhole space like asset safety if problematic, but I prefer not to have such exceptions.