EVE Fiction

I know CCP has said as much and yet I can't help but wonder how much different they can be. Ok the Empire made versions of the implants may be not as advanced but the Sleeper version, the ones used by the First gens, is what allows Sleepers to plug in and live inside virtual realities so advanced they seem like the real thing. I find it very hard to believe that it would be impossible to create a few control interfaces to operate a ship that takes advantage of the same mechanics that allows one to enter a VR world. There has to be transfer of data happening to get the experiences from the VR environment, replace that with the data feeds ships send out. Afterall when a capsuleer plugs into a ship it's always described as becoming the ship in a way.

Yeup, Kourdus.

We know that there was cloning before capsules.
Therefore, presumably, there is very likely to still be cloning tech available outside of a capsule, even for a capsuleer.

Capsules are special because they're the combination of cloning and neural interfacing that allows a ship to be piloted more effectively.

It seems to be a common misconception that cloning is only as old as the capsule is, and that's what makes them special, but it's made repeatedly clear all throughout the lore that cloning has been around for a long, long time.

One distinction that might be drawn in types of cloning is how well memories are kept. In the capsule rebirth, you remember everything up to the moment of death. A non-capsule rebirth might only restore the memories that were "backed up" during the last brain scan, or whatever. Or there may be ways to "transfer" memories even while out of pod, as is suggested in at least one chronicle.

The point remains though; this tech exists. It had to have; it was the precursor to cloning tech - the same technology they based our eggs on.

Whatever the barriers to access "non-egg clone tech" might exist, be they financial, physical, whatever...a capsuleer is uniquely suited to overcome them. Need a different genetic code to use them? No problem? Super expensive? No issue. If average planet-dwellers can get access, a capsuleer should have little issue.

It all seems a very simple, straightforward question to me, and I don't see the ambiguity and uncertainty others talk of sometimes on this topic.

I have to object here. The thing is that both the capsules and the sleeper implants are manufactured locally in Empire space, the former by Ishukone, and the latter by biotech corporations under the aegis of their respective national authorities. The same goes for capsuleer and DUST clones, both of which it seems are assembled around their implants.

The ability to construct an object requires that somebody involved in its production has to have a theoretical grasp on the technology. This becomes increasingly true the more advanced and sophisticated a technology becomes. If we were to somehow send the precise schematics for, say, the ATLAS detector at CERN back in time and delivered it into the hands of NASA round about the time of the moon landings, they wouldn't be able to build it. They'd have a perfectly good idea what it was for, but the microcircuit technology, nanoscale engineering, computer processing power and so many more necessary technologies simply weren't available at the time.

That's not to say they wouldn't eventually manage it. Merely by reverse-engineering the ATLAS schematics, they'd be fast-tracked down technological paths we've already explored the hard way. But that process of learning how to build it would itself bring the technological and theoretical understanding of how and why it works, and the ability to apply those principles elsewhere.

If a technology hinges on the "spin" of an electron, then it's no good handing the blueprints to somebody who doesn't know that electrons can have a property known as "spin". Even if you attempt to exhaustively and precisely describe every step of the construction, there are certain basic assumptions you have to make about the engineer's understanding of the world. Archimedes might have been able to decipher the structural mechanics of it all, but if the schematics called for Molybdenum then he's screwed because that element was only discovered and isolated in the late 18th century. And the circuitry diagrams would have been utterly incomprehensible.

In short, for it to be possible for Ishukone to manufacture the pod without relying on an import of sealed black boxes from the Jove Empire, then they must either have had a solid grasp of its operating principles in the first place, or else the blueprints must have contained a comprehensive codex of scientific and technical knowledge sufficient to give them said grasp.

The same especially applies to the DUST implants. You don't create a "second generation" version that eliminates a serious flaw with the first generation without understanding quite a lot about how the technology works. Even if the implants are a copy of the sleepertech, eliminating a teething problem like that requires an in-depth theoretical understanding of their operation. You certainly don't successfully interface it with other facets of your technology such as the fluid router network, starship tactical strikes, and so on, without knowing all the important bits.

Who builds the machines that build the machines that build the machines? Who wrote the algorithm that writes the programs that program the robots?

Somewhere along the line, an actual human has to know what they're doing. Or something similarly sapient, this being a sci-fi setting after all. They might be insulated from the actual product by two or three layers of CAD/CAM, but they still have to understand the science behind it or else they'd never be able to correctly produce the machinery necessary to build it. Would you be able to design a drill without knowing what a hole in a piece of wood is?

Advanced technology hinges on scientific understand. You can't build a nuclear reactor unless you understand the fissile nature of atoms. If some aliens transmitted the schematics for a space elevator and an FTL engine to us tomorrow, the very act of deciphering those schematics and building them would advance our scientific knowledge to match.

Thank you.

You can't have it all, people.

Acutally never being able to leave the pod would be in my opinion the most radical and satisfying solution to this question. It would be the ultimate price you pay for being immortal.

The consensus seems to be that capsuleers are not immortal outside their capsules, but what about the Broker? In the empyrean age he kills himself several times outside of his capsule and yet he continues to be re-cloned. Yes he runs multiple copies of himself, but if his copies are just clones then how does he retain what was learned through his conversation with Tibus Heth after he kills himself at the foundry? If the DUST implants are not compatible with capsuleer implants then he cant have DUST implats because he pilots the capital ship into the Ishukone station.

The Broker, as portrayed in The Empyrean Age, is unfortunately more of a walking plot device than a character. He displays several technologies (the freely clone jumping among them) that are borderline magic even in the context of New Eden's technology.

An ancient and mysterious lost technology known as a "microphone".