EVE General Discussion

Just a quick idea off the top of my head...

Broker's Cloning

Description: After years of extensive study, (NPC scientific corp here) has discovered the secret behind the elusive and infamous individual known as the Broker with his ability to have numerous copies of himself simultaneous and independent of themselves. Whereas further studies are required to refine this ability, prototype clones have been designed with limited success. One major limitation has been the rapid decay rate of these simulacrums, much less the ability to allow them to be augmented in any fashion.

Allows one simulacrum and an increase of 25,000,000 skill points per level. Also reduces the "cool down" timer by ten minutes per level.

Note: Simulacrums can only be animated in stations with medical facilities or in ships with the clone vat bay. Once animated, the corpse deteriorates after 48 hours, causing the user to be thrusted into his or her original body or compatible clone. Also, once a simulacrum has been deactivated, a "cool down" timer of one hour (or less) is enforced to allow the original user's consciousness to be reestablished with its original body or clone.

Attributes:
Primary would be Charisma.
Secondary would be Willpower.
Training time mulitplier would be five times.

Prerequisites:
Primary would be Science at three.
Secondary would be Infomorph Psychology at three.
Tertiary would be Cybernetics at one.

And to add a bit of life (heh - I see what I did here), these simulacrums are made through planetary interaction.

Autotrophs (P1) are formed into Augmented Stem Cells (P2).
Complex Organisms (P1) are formed into Proteins (P2).
Microorganisms (P1) are formed into Primordial Soup (P2).
Planktic Colonies (P1) are formed into Biomass (P2).

Augmented Stem Cells (P2) are combined with Proteins (P2) are combined with Water (P2) to create "Living Matter" (P3).*
Primordial Soup (P2) are combined with Biomass (P2) to create Bipedal Husk (P3).

Biocells (P3) are combined with Bipedal Husk (P3) are combined with "Living Matter" (P3) to create Simulacrums (P4).

* Probably will require a modification of the High-Tech Production Plant.

Once you "animate" a simulacrum, your are allowed to "copy" 25,000,000 skill points per level trained into this beast from your current body or clone. You do not loose these skills - you are just replicating what you learned. Multiple training in this skill allows you to possess multiple copies of a simulacrum without having to repeat the shifting of skill points. Thus if you are a Titan pilot and only want to have a weekend of Rifter fun, you copy over the Minmatar Frigate skills, Small Projectile skills, and other odds and ends. You main body or clone will still have all the skills you learned up to this point, but as a minor drawback, as you are in your simulacrum, you are not training skills - temporarily stopped. Plus I figure since this is just an animated corpse, it would be pointless to stick hardwires or implants into it (though subtly debating about hardwires). Whereas I can estimate that initially these would cost a bit of coin, over time the market should balance them out similar to other (P4) items - one to five million ISK at best. Since there is a timer of 48 hours until the batteries run out and the corpse falls apart, I do not see a possibility of being abused (but someone will prove me wrong).

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed it.

Hilarious and actually, I could see a market for it other than personal use. Higher SP players selling "booster" corpses to lower SP individuals like Clone BPCs when they are not using it themselves.
HIgh SP players make the booster corpse, use their cool down, sell it to another player to use for the weekend.

My most recent expensive loss was 250million in implants and another 600 million ship/mods and 500 million in cargo... how is this free? Are you really bitching to keep an ADDITIONAL 60 million ISk costs despite a 1.5 billion ISK loss?

There is no real point of it. Loosing your ship / mod / cargo / implants are a pretty good penalty as it is and the cost of that tends to scale naturally. The fact is that it is an outdated mechanic and need to revamped. Honestly, it could not even be tested until there were enough 100 million + SP characters which we start to see more of now.

Mal, it actually is a deterent (even for those of us with an ample wallet) to engaging in PVP in small, fun, T1 frigates and cruisers. Those 45mil losses add up if you are going on repeated frigate roams, etc.

As I pointed out earlier in the thread, currently CCP is on a tangent to encourage PVP in a wider variety of (mostly forgotten) ships. But older players feel more than a little bit stupid flying them because our damn clones cost vastly more than the ship and equipment do.

What I'm getting at is that while the current clone system should stay as an alternative, I would be interested to see what CCP has in mind with the Clone BPO's reportedly showing up on Sisi now (note: I have not confirmed this myself). I would have no problem at all if the ability to create clones was placed in the hands of the players, possibly with some pleasant benefits for older players.

The first sign of a broken mechanic.

"2 + 2 = 4 guys, but if we do the equation like this; 2 + 2 - 2 + 2 = 4 we are HARD CORE!"
"Why would we complicate something that does not need to be?"
"Don't you get it?! HARD CORE!!!"
"But the result is the same not to mention the first one allows us to finish the problem faster allowing us to move on to more equations..."
"HAAAAARD COOOORRREEEEE!!!!!"
"Is that your fith can of Red Bull? You don't look so well."

Well it will give you a bigger head.

If I didn't know any better I'd say it sounds like you don't know how skills work in this game.

I'm glad you know better then.

Explain to me how I don't understand how skills work in this game.

Ok, what about alternate idea for an isk sink to keep the risk and reward of the clone cost on top of the implants.

6 levels of clone.
Everyone's standard alpha clone is meta 0
Every level of Cybernetics that also controls implant lvl also effects what lvl of clone you can have.

If you have 120m SP and are using lvl5 implants without the 40m lvl5 clone, you will suffer SP lost as if your clone was not updated.
If you have 120m SP but no implants and lose a lvl 0 clone. You lose nothing and It costs you nothing.
Each lvl of implant higher than what you are covered for could lose more SP to the set maximum.

If you don't update your clone to the max lvl of implants you have, you suffer the insufficient clone problem.

Now this properly mixes risk and reward. Should you use more powerful implants you better have a better clone.

A lot more people will be running around with lvl5 clones if they want to keep there t2 implant sets. The overall sink is increased immensely without punishing anyone for only playing longer, but for actually using advantageous gear.