Intergalactic Summit

Greetings IGS.

As a medical researcher, occasionally I am interrupted in my work, by capsuleers seeking advice on raising a clone army, with which to no doubt impose their will upon some small segment of the universe as part of some heinous scheme. I'm not entirely sure of the psychological mechanisms behind it, but it would seem that installing a capsule interface in an individual has a not uncommon side effect of causing megalomaniacal delusions.

Anyway, the point is, that clone armies, and to a lesser extent, cloned starship crews, are, for the purposes of capsuleers at least, pure science fiction. It's quite easy to clone bodies, but far less easy to create sufficient minds for those bodies.

To illustrate, let us examine the typical scenario that the average delusional capsuleer wishes to use a cloned army in:

"I need a cloned army, in a few weeks time."

What this would require, due to the short lead time, are adult clones, with a full personality. Now, there are a few ways by which you may attempt this.

1. Cloning an individual, or group of individuals, many times.

This would generate the required numbers quite quickly, and, by being existing individuals, they would have a known and consistent skill set, resulting in coherent performance.
The problem is, that by being copies, they would have the same memories as each other. This causes a number of issues, with how the individuals interact with each other, and their self-identity. Inability to distinguish between each other often leads to paranoia and psychotic behaviour.
Particularly when the capsuleer desiring the cloned army wishes for their own template to be used. How anyone expects that to work out, I have no idea.

2. Cloning a large number of individuals, into cloned bodies.

This has the advantage of minimising the problem of the clone's self-identity, but the similarity of the cloned bodies leads to problems with recognising other members of the unit, and consequential problems with how the clones interact with one another. The skills of the existing individuals are also variable, with an impact on unit cohesion and consistency as a result. There are also inevitable problems with differences between the original and the cloned bodies. The new clone requires some physical retraining to cope with how their new body moves. This increases the training time before the unit would be ready to deploy.

3. Synthetic personalities

Artificial personalities are somewhat possible, by recording a brain state, and editing and randomising several parts of the data, before that brain state is uploaded to a new clone.
Theoretically, this allows an infinite number of personalities, which would reduce or eliminate problems of self-identity.
However, the random nature of the memory editing means that unpredictable mental disorders are guaranteed for some proportion of the clones. This clearly having an impact on unit cohesion and performance.

So, as you can see, there is no solution to the request of "I need a cloned army within a few weeks".

"But what about those cloned mercenaries ?", you ask. Or "what about the Takmahl mass-cloning device ?". Well, I'll tell you. The cloned mercenaries, DUST troopers, as some call them, are a utilisation of option 2, on a vast scale, beyond anything that is realistically available to the individual capsuleer megalomaniac. Meanwhile, the Takmahl mass-cloning device, which is employed by some outfits, such as the Church of the Crimson Saviour, has the same issues as option 3. Those problems are simply swept under the proverbial carpet, a management issue that I have repeatedly warned them about.

Now, let us increase the lead time of when the army is ordered, to when it is required, to the order of many years. E.g. 21 years.

This allows the clones to be grown from embryos, and develop their own personalities over the time they take to reach maturity.
This is not entirely dissimilar to the Caldari State Tube Child project, and has similar difficulties. It requires a substantial amount of infrastructure, and takes a long time to achieve the result. Those problems cannot be worked around.

Capsuleers rarely seem to think more than a year ahead, expecting them to wait 20 years for a result is... optimistic.


But, let us assume that somehow, a clone army is created. That is not the end of the problem. The problems are just beginning.

First, let us consider the effects of attrition and replacement amongst the cloned army or ship crew.

As individuals become casualties and are replaced, the replacement causes a number of issues with the rest of the crews - the replacement clone will resemble the casualty, but will not have all of the memories of the casualty, exacerbated by the length of elapsed time since the clone backup mental state was recorded. This causes alienation and paranoia in the replacements, and in the survivors, as they become increasingly unable to hold conversations with their fellows in a non-combat environment. This has impacts on unit cohesion and morale.
This problem of integration of replacements, exists in normal armies and ship crews, however it is greatly magnified in cloned units, because of the physical similarities of the replacements to those replaced.

Secondly, let us consider the clone army and its motivations.

Being created from nothing, the clone army exists largely apart from society. This causes problems with morale and motivation. Why do I exist ? What is my purpose ? These fundamental questions will be grappled with by the clone, and the straightforward truthful answers are "To serve the Master's will", which requires a degree of subservience in the individual, which is not always compatible with military performance. A clone that is unable to come to terms with their existence as a functionary, is likely to either rebel, or become psychotic. This has obvious impacts on unit performance and cohesion.

But Miss Doctor Valate! Isn't that exactly what the Sansha Nation deals with on a daily basis?

Can you refer me to a cave painting to clarify what your words mean ?

Negative.
Would you prefer instead to get yourself a nurse that speaks fluent morion?

You forgot that Mister Kuvakei is not concerned, at all, about ethical issues or clone degeneracy or psychosis amongst his clones. He just sticks his chips into their heads and then order them to do whatever he wishes and leave them to figure how on their own. Any and all personality is safely locked away in their head to scream and not be heard until oblivion takes them.



This is exactly the reason why there aren't any legally-sanctioned projects for making clone mercenary implants capsule-compatible.

That is precisely why those projects operate outside the Yulai Convention, and why there is already a degree of technological compatibility available. Only an exceptional infantry soldier has the necessary skill set and genetic markers to be both a pilot and a ground soldier. And even those lucky few never excel at either skill set.

Every time such individual is created, the Maker tosses the coin in the air and New Eden holds its breath to see how it will land. Half the time, the result is a raving mad fool. And even the sane ones eventually lose grasp of reality.

One such person sells Nova Knife Blenders for a living and uses high-grade explosives to prepare roasted fowls. Take that as you will.

That guy's implants do not work in both capsule and in the dropsuit, I believe. He uses two different sets of clones, one for infantry work and one for piloting work. In no way are the implants in his head compatible for both dropsuit and capsule. He has to switch from the capsule clone to the merc clone if he wants to do surface-side operations, and vice versa. Yes, the infrastructure exists.

The Nova Knife blender is just him being eccentric and you do not need implants for that.

P/s: I have you know that the Nova Knife blender is very effective in mixing carbide-ceramic paste for emergency patch-up purposes.

simply build yourself a time machine.

Then travel back in time 20 odd years, to begin creation of the clone army that you need for your plan.

be sure to study sports history, so that you can gamble heavily on sporting events.