Alternative to Cloning

[Midaychi]

 

As a semi-recent thread in this forum suggests, cloning *as is* trivializes death, and puts mass revivification into the hands of any clown that can work a grab and work a button.

HOWEVER, I do not believe that outright REMOVAL is the answer.

 

I posit an alternative, based off of the lore of a semi-popular creative commons tabletop roleplaying game, where constructing new bodies really isn't the issue with body scarcity; The brain is.

The brain is an incredibly complex organ, the mis-forming of which even subtly can directly alter the resulting person in drastic and unwanted ways.

 

As such, most parts of the body take not very long to grow, but brains take upwards of six months even using super-fancy nanotech.

 

The outline for what I am suggesting:

 

1. Replace both cloning and robotics with a single department, shared between science and medbay.

 

2. That department has a number of vats for accepting dna and material, and growing organs.

 

3. This department, now instead of performing genetic experimentation on full bodies, experiments on lab grown organs and limbs instead. The organs have modular datum, and new fantastic genetic diseases and powers can be created in the future, but for now they just use the existing mutation system, just tied to limbs and organs instead.

 

4. That department also has machinery for producing synthetic parts and implants from metallic and glassy compounds.

 

5. That department uses a formation vat to properly form a body from said parts.

 

6. The problem? Brains. You *NEED* the brain from the original host. Or a positron through an ASSIST interface or in a synthetic head. So you can copy the structure? Cool. Now spend six months growing it! It's not very feasible in the short ss13 round time.

 

7. Brains can be directly damaged, and while they can be repaired, there is a point at which they become too damaged to make use of or repair. Repeated gunshots to the head or fire are good ways of accomplishing this.

 

8. To combat the above, as a medium or high tech R&D discovery, basically just port neural lace and use only the lace part as an R&D thing, with a scanning machine. Scan someone in using neural lace and store them on a disk for later. UNFORTUNATELY YOU STILL NEED A BRAIN TO PUT IT ON, but the brain can be a blank one you get from some other source, like a monkey man. People restored from echos, of course, only remember from the point they were last echo scanned.

 

((SOURCE FOR #8, https://github.com/Baystation12/Baystation12/pull/12576 ))

 

9. Also I guess they still handle cyborgs and mechs, or you could deligate that to science or engineering? Derp.

 

Edited June 3, 2016 by Guest

[Dumbdumn5]

This sounds cool, but how about the art assets, the code, the mapping, the balancing, and basically replacing the entire functionality of the current cloning with the new system?

[Midaychi]

 

Derp?

 

That's why it's a suggestions forum. If I had that sort of thing just on hand, It'd be a PR instead.

 

[Midaychi]

 

Specifics:

 

Icon requirements not already met by porting or existing dmi:

1. Vats + Animation of growing generic organ

2. Body vat + Animation of processing

3. Better Neural Lace Icon

4. Alternative sprite for genetics console to be a vat-like device, shows content.

5. Maybe alternate organ sprites for radiation damaged organs and damaged brains?

 

Map Requirements:

1. Repiping

2. Re-wiring

3. Re-everything-ing

 

Code requirements:

1. Lots of datums.

2. Better brain damage tracking

3. Lots of commenting out.

4. Code for working the vats, and the genetic console.

5. Porting of lace and r&d requirements.

6. Implementation of a new department and ID access levels

7. Char setup UI modifications

 

Balancing:

1. Implement

2. ???

3. Profit!

 

[Dinarzad]

 

WALL OF TEXT INBOUND (Avert thine eyes):

First off, Cloning doesn't NEED an alternative, because it is not the issue in the triviality of Death.

Defibs and Strange Reagent are. You want Death to be more impactful, then you nuke SR and Defibs from orbit, because as long as those exist in their current state, death will never ever be a big deal unless everything can have a random chance to Ash you. (I say this as someone who has mostly played Medical, the amount of times I just Defib people casually for dying in medical is crazy.)

 

Secondly, making it easy to render a body totally and utterly unable to be cloned or revived is a terrible idea. Death is not SUPPOSED to be this massive ordeal in any non-HRP SS13 server, it needs to be a hassle and a dice roll (Cue the 'Is Medbay Competent' Gameshow theme) Not this "fuck you, no game for you." mechanic. Cloning is a hassle for both medical and the clone-ee, especially since there is only one cloning pod, so it's a long slow process if there's a lot of dead guys.

 

Thirdly, Enforcing RP effects is probably not gonna happen. It's done very minimally here, because we're not a High RP server, trying to fit High RP effects into an at-best Medium RP server is going to end in clusterfuck fighting, between people who actually adhere to it an people who don't leading to a mixture of "Dude what the fuck, CMD Bro" and "Medium RP server, it's not enforced man."

 

Fourthly, Cyborgification doesn't need touching at all. Being revived as a Cyborg still counts as a VICTORY for the antagonist in question, if their goal was to murder you, an you got borged, then the antag has his happy little greentext, cuz you're still dead. You're no longer "Bob McSpaceGuy" you're now "Secbot 2124". Making it even harder to get a cyborgification going, is just being unnecessarily harsh on both the player and the roboticist who gets maybe one Cyborgification off in a week. (I have literally only ever had 1 guy ask to be borged, any borg I built was strictly from positrons)

 

TL;DR: This is a very HRP-style idea, for a Low to Medium RP server, and is overhauling the component of reviving that was never the problem to begin with.

It's a neat and cool idea. Just not fitting for the style of play Paradise has/gets.

 

[ExGame]

 

Or you know what we could also do?

Make cloning only work when pre-scanned, and not when already dead, simple as that.

IC reasons? You can't be cloned after death has occurred because you would have lost brain cells already, basically giving the clone irreparable brain damage and or PTSD from the death experience and that hey might even not be the person they once were because of the brain cells they lost.

 

So yeah, maybe we could make it be able to clone when dead when it reaches BlueSpace Tier parts, because right now the BlueSpace Scanning Module adds nothing. This could also be added to a nerf of genetics for excessive usage of block injectors and basically rushing the powers not having to worry about killing the subjects, and they only have to not wory about killing the subjects when they reached a BlueSpace Scanning Module.

 

[Dumbdumn5]

 

As my previous question was obviously ridiculous, Dinarzad has clarified and given points that I think are valid criticisms, so I'll stand by them.

 

Derp?

 

That's why it's a suggestions forum. If I had that sort of thing just on hand, It'd be a PR instead.

My previous question wasn't about if you had the resources, but more if you had a plan to get them. What kind of style did you want, how would you balance it, where on the map would you add it, what do you think it would take codewise, and how would the functions of the new system compare to the previous system of cloning? They were questions aimed at what you, as the person making the suggestion, thought about how this should work out to fit your idea, not a question of "Do you have this on hand or the ability to do all of this yourself without help?"