EVE Fiction

Yes, and I seem to recall the tech in their heads was being researched. Why don't we just all agree to plug a pager into our neck sockets whenever we leave our pods? Not as effective as the capsule's aggressive photocopier but it can at least say "Hey, new clone, old guy just died. Time to wake up. Oh, and by the way, here's the abridged version of what happened over the last 16 hours since he left his capsule".

I feel like the Broker has plenty of soft clones, active at the same time.

It also seems like death is death, capsuleer or not. If you were to transfer this brain state info to a clone without the death of the original, you'd have two people, the same people, alive at the same time.

I'm fairly sure CCP had repeatedly stated that there will be no combat in stations.

Also back on Capsuleer clones, this line in the official Evelopedia has always confused me.

Evelopedia Entry
--
Therefore, the instant the egg begins to crack, two things happen: the wire-cap on the pilot’s head injects an instantly lethal nanotoxin into his bloodstream and the scanner sends its piercing light into his skull. Scarce seconds later, he begins the muddy climb towards consciousness in a new body, light years away.
--

In that, they make it sound a lot more like traditional immortality.

Actually another thing that has always confused me is the fact that we have to have our medical clones setup in advance, and that they are an exact copy of us at that moment and not at the moment we die.

YET, another Evelopedia entry
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Despite the advances made in cloning tech, in almost every single environment retransplantation of the mind at time of death is still risky ground. The crucial element in the process relies on a brain-scan snapshot being taken at the precise time of death and transmitted to the waiting clone, and so the transneural burning scanner required to do so needs to be mounted somewhere close to the person at all times. Since the snapshot itself causes massive physical damage to the gray matter, there can be no margin of error; it needs to be done at the exact time of death.
--

If the snapshot of our brain, knowledge, etc is taken at the exact moment of death, then why is there even a need to setup a clone in advance with an imprint of what we knew at the moment the clone was created?

The clone contract you purchase has nothing to do with scanning you prior to death. It is instead simply a body that they alter to look like you and seed with your DNA (if you chose to have that service performed). The quality of the material used to make the body determines if your brain can hold all your skills. Low quality clones are made using lower quality biomass.

Who knows what the future might bring. Right now the DUST and Capsuleer implants are incompatible, but seeing they basicly stole it from the Sleeper I can imagine that over time with the Empires reverse engineering them they might find ways to resolve that issue as they begin to understand how it really works.

Looking at it, the Sleeper implants makes them able to connect to their virtual utopia world. Some information has to pass between them and whatever system is running that VR setting when they are connected. It wouldn't put it in the realm of impossiblity that eventually they might find a way to change it to accomodate data passing between ship and implant.

The biggest problem that could interfere may be that, considering the history the Jove and Sleepers have, the Jove put in certain safeguards or something to prevent those technologies to mix out of fear of what it might unleash, like the Other for example. Of course as we know that didn't exactly work out.


And something I recently thought of in the Soft clone debate. In Theodicy Grious sort of sacrifices himself, and when later Faus sees him alive again and Grious warns him not to tell him how he died. Seems to point to Grious making a softclone of himself, dying, coming back as the soft clone with no memory of his death and not wanting to hear about it either.

For me the existence of jump clones has always confirmed that brain states can be scanned slowly and non-destructively. The idea of cyberware being picked out of a brain ruined by a burning scan and re-used on return to that body just seems odd. Especially as it is made clear that usually you can't remove the stuff without destroying it.

Some feel that being able to soft-scan and save the results makes the setting less grim. However, it could be the case that on returning to a jump clone you are overwriting the mind state that previously was in residence, thus murdering an earlier version of yourself. Now is that grim enough for you?

Either that or anyone using jump clones has their mind state stored on a cloud server, and the body is a drone that is run via the fluid router network . Come to that I rather like that last idea, very Solid State Society don't you think?

Soft cloning is quite odd. Unlike what happens in pod cloning or the new sleeper tech in DUST clones, the conscience isn't transferred. Soft cloning is basically like a backup hard drive on your computer.

It's quite possible to even consider soft-clones different from the original person. They are merely look-alike bodies with your memories and personality meant to carry on your work after death. If a soft clone is activated without this backup, it's essentially a new person that just looks the same as the old one. Empyrean Age touched up on this a bit.

There's a public thread on the Electus Matari forum that seems relevant here: Compilation of all PF referring to clones / brain scanning.

At the time that thread was started CCP was asked for a statement about the key aspects of cloning, including soft cloning. CCP Dropbear said that CCP itself didn't have a clear shared idea of how cloning worked. (There's a reference to this in the thread itself, but I'm currently at Fanfest and the Icelandic version of net-nanny that my accommodation uses has decided that the page on the EVE forums that that links to is Not Something I Should Be Seeing.)

A year later there were entries published in EVElopedia which we thought at the time were CCP's response to this, stating clearly that soft cloning was possible. Quotes with links (Icelandic net-nanny again...)

I admit that after that I'm surprised to hear CCP Eterne saying in this thread that CCP is still not sure, and to hear that the EVElopedia articles have had the clear statements edited out of them. It would be lovely, and much appreciated, if CCP could reach an agreement and move on, in a way which is not susceptible to staff changes and "but I never really agreed with the definitive statement we published last time".

If soft cloning isn't a thing, then that invalidates everything that has to do with Incarna and WiS, because a capsuleer would never want to leave their capsule, ever.