Could we remove cloning?

[Guest]

it's not like we have people who play clones, some of which have been clones for over ten years, and this wouldn't affect anyone because then we'd never see anyone playing clones

Oh wait. We do.

The backlash is depressing, I admit, but I can see both sides being valid. It's not worth the effort to change it, and it's certainly a bad plan to add IC nonsense to make cloning worse.

 

The issue is that if this change actually does go through, stuff like that won't be possible, either, because for whatever BS IC reason, cloning was removed for a week to force people to play even more passively than most already do.

This change would effect security gameplay in a very unhealthy manner, and command staff would be forced to hole up in a secure area and cower so they can live.

Isolation roleplay is just about as bad as dead-person roleplay.

[Frances]

Okay, if that's true I'm very sad.

I've never acted knowing I would get cloned. Cloning isn't a guarantee, and in fact, I think people have generally done an excellent job at finding a good balance of taking risks and protecting their own lives in the past months.

Is this really a problem that you see happening?

[Guest]

It's not the expectation of whether or not you'll be cloned is the issue.

It's the eventuality that your roleplay with whatever character you have will eventually be cut short because of fucking nuke ops or any inane bullshit that makes you die before you even realize it, and there's no way you can continue playing with that character until the next two-to-three hours.

Basically, gee gee, no ree. No amount of "muh funeral RP" and "but-but-but atmosphere" arguments will even make this suggestion even considered by the devs to be test-driven.

The results are pretty clear-cut.

[Frances]

I'm not particularly interested in continuing to defend the suggestion (as I'm beginning to realize its flaws - no, not the ones Jamini pointed out while screaming), but that premise seems quite honestly ludicrous.

You are requiring that:

1. Your character get killed mid-roleplay by antagonists/stupidity, neither of which happen terribly often

2. Your character get cloned, which is a process that can take anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour depending on how terrible medbay is (and if you're still alive when you get there)

3. Your character then be able to resume roleplay, assuming the initial situation they had left had been capable to maintain itself during the past hour or so, and people completely disregard the fact that said character has been cloned

The only situation in which I could see that even working is in the event that an incredibly stupid accident kill you in extended (say a blob exploding a weldertank right next to you). Otherwise, people are likely going to be too occupied with the antagonists running amok and killing people to satisfy much of your chair-RP.

Furthermore, even that premise wouldn't work, as CMD causes you to forget all events of the current shift IIRC, and you'd basically have to restart what you began from scratch.

[Jamini]

Furthermore, even that premise wouldn't work, as CMD causes you to forget all events of the current shift IIRC, and you'd basically have to restart what you began from scratch.

 

The ruling has always been "you forget the circumstances surrounding your death." and anything else additional forgotten was optional. Unless Aurora has significantly changed that.

[Nik]

I think this Is a non-subject at this point. I suggest we just work up some secondary option; A perma-death mode, make cloning harder, or allow for the character screen to deny cloning by genetic nonsense.

Otherwise, I suggest you all click this link http://i.imgur.com/z93Cq.gif

and note that we will never be balanced on this topic.

[nanotoxin]

Why not combine this idea and Nik's thread. Instead of cloning them put them into humanoid IPC like things?

[VoltageHero]

Why not combine this idea and Nik's thread. Instead of cloning them put them into humanoid IPC like things?

 

That still makes them robotic. As stated earlier, forcing somebody to play as a borg or even a shell could be worse than just removing cloning all together.

[Frances]

Alright, here's my (new) take on the issue:

-People are already free to roleplay a character's death more in depth if they so wish, especially canon deaths.

-People generally won't be assed to give a damn about the death of a random person. Saying they would if they couldn't get cloned is a bit hypocritical, as I realized even I can't be bothered to care about random exploding assistants on most of my characters.

-Why do we want to make cloning harder?

[nanotoxin]

Idk if you read it or not, or if I read it wrong. But what /i/ thought it was was that it was basically a reskinned IPC. So they can continue living. Pretty much terminators.

[Eliot Clef]

Idk if you read it or not, or if I read it wrong. But what /i/ thought it was was that it was basically a reskinned IPC. So they can continue living. Pretty much terminators.

 

It's not the only thing proposed in that thread, but "reskinning IPCs to support full-body prosthetics for humans" is one of the possibilities offered up by said thread, and probably the easiest one to achieve.

[Erik Tiber]

I'd personally just like it if we made it so cloning involved surgically removing the brain and placing it into the new body. Because currently I just can't take 'unclonable' permadeaths seriously, because they're just entirely arbitrary and make zero sense.

Or, hell, if you want to keep cloning super convenient just have the cloning machine do it. The new clone is spawned with a brain as now, you keep the old dying body in the machine, and the brain organ is deleted from the old body. There you go.

 

The year being 2457 means whatever we want it to mean. It's not actually 2457 irl, so arguments about what is realistic for that year are completely bunk.And if every arbitrary or unrealistic aspect of the lore or game was removed, we'd have a gutted game. Plasma wouldn't exist, because it's a made up resource that makes no sense and also it's dumb when you think about it. The basis premise is that we don't like change. Your brain argument is just as arbitrary.

If Warhammer 40k can have genetically engineered Orks use weapons that only work because the Orks believe that they do and it's seen as a perfectly valid and creative lore, we can have some spooky genetic mystery that causes clones to die. Not everything has to be spelled out, that's boring and it serves to explain at rather than encourage debate. The fact there's a disagreement over "We should know what's causing this." proves my point because this would be a great argument to have IC'ly. It gives additional context to cloning, doesn't mechanically change anything, and is an optional reason to care about being cloned, so that it's inclusive and up to players to decide when, if, and how much they care.

A complete disregard for internal consistency is a sign of bad writing. Given the quality of your work on the Unathi, I know for a fact you are better than this.

Warhammer 40k works because it has a compelling story and a whole bunch of other things. It explicitly states that "no, this tech would not work because warp". It at least gives a handwave. It has literal chaos gods and warp fuckery to justify things. It is a theocratic regime with millions of worlds. It has worlds get lost by paperwork errors, as a direct result. In this way, it actually is cool and novel and has internal consistency. That is why it is coherent. The extreme grimderp tactics are justified enough by the extreme conditions. It actually kinda makes sense. This is why it is tolerable. This is why I can tolerate it. If you had grimderp people being grimderp for no reason, not using alien tech because of superstitions with no other reason, and losing entire worlds to paperwork errors when everyone comes equiped with supercomputers which they routinely use, then you have an absolute disaster of inconsistent garbage.

It is not a spoopy mystery, it's a forced, absolutely arbitrary thing that makes no sense at all. If it had to do with Bluespace breaking something, I would be interested. This, no, I am not. The change itself is pointless and arbitrary, and does not fit with what we already have with cloning. There are better options besides.

If we're using 40k comparisons, you're basically saying "Yeah, the Tau have suddenly started worshiping the Orks as gods". Because it has just as much justification under the current lore. Warhammer has the warp, and warp fuckery. You have no justification at all for this, it is literally out of the blue. The mystery is just... pointless. And makes no sense. The only justufication I can even think of is "This is actually 40k, there are actual souls and actual gods", and turn this setting into apparent space fantasy. I do not want this. I doubt any others do.

I like mysteries if they're done well. That means that you can actually have a debate and there might actually be different possibilities at play. Here, that is not the case. It is done quite horribly. You have a better alternative. Just. Do a simple change. People change brains. No need for completely arbitrary changes with poor writing.

People do actually get bothered by this stuff. It's not like you can just go and make everything arbitrary and completely ignore all rhyme and reason of effort and research and attention to detail. Because people appreciate that. It's basic stuff. It's extremely basic stuff. The fact that this simple fact is ignored, constantly, consistently, is very, very, very silly, and that fact should seriously change.

[Guest]

Coding time V Effort = Reward?

That is all I am going to say on the subject.

I am sick of these 'I don't like this, remove it threads'

I am not inclined to remove or redevelop genetics.

[monkeysfist101]

I personally don't care one way or the other about cloning. To play devil's advocate for the removal side, though, how about we remove cloning and bring in the ability to rejoin as another character after a short wait?

[swat43]

we can already respawn each 30 minutes. Unless you pressed antag button