Tuesday, October 21, 2014


Medical and Jump clones are one of those things in EVE that everyone pretty much takes for granted. The mechanics surrounding them haven’t changed much in the seven years I’ve played EVE, except for perhaps a little naming action recently, and the ability in FW to upgrade systems to decrease medical clone costs.

I was getting caught up on EVE Vegas reading, and ran across CCP’s idea regarding ‘premadeath.’ That is, the idea that you can lose all your skillpoints when you die, if you haven’t updated your clone.

Now, for the record, I absolutely despise this particular idea regarding ‘permadeath.’ However, the idea in and of itself got me thinking about the concept of ‘clones’ in general in EVE.

While I hate the idea of ‘permadeath’ I love the idea of jump clones being more than a vessel for our current set of implants. Furthermore I love the idea of introducing new risks and choices that could impact various aspects of gameplay—especially where ‘clones’ are concerned.


We have blueprint originals, and blueprint copies, but how about blueprint implants? These would essentially be simple blueprints you plug into your head.

Not only would these BPIs be something completely new, but they would have some entirely new properties. Instead of ‘researching’ these BPIs, you would ‘learn’ them. And instead of ‘learning’ them through the typical skill learning, you would ‘learn’ by doing.

In other words, the typical ‘ME’ and ‘PE’ of BPIs would only be improved on these BPIs the more you use them. So, the more runs you make, the more ‘efficient’ you would become.

Of course, if someone pods you, the BPIs will be destroyed like any other implant. And the rate at which you can 'learn' efficiency on them would correlate with normal BPO research, for the most part.


The possible uses of these could be interesting and wide ranged. Obviously, there wouldn’t be BPIs for everything, but imagine wormhole dwellers and others not having to lug around blueprints for everything they might need? I could even see uses for non-industrialists –pvpers or pveers who want the convenience of being able to make scripts, charges, or ammunition on the fly.


While I hate the idea of the possibility for someone to potentially lose years of skilling through permadeath, the idea of clones having different ‘skills’ that are potentially ‘losable’ is fascinating.

So, I’m introducing the idea of ‘optimizations’ which is essentially a cross between nano-tech, skill learning, drugs, and implants. In a nutshell? These are temporary nano-bot skills you plug into your head.

They would only be available for certain ‘specialization’ things and would allow people to gain the skills to temporarily use certain things, or do certain actions. (For example, say in order to use Module X you need Skill A trained to three. If an optimization were applicable to this, you’d need Skill A trained to three, or Optimization Z plugged in.)

They would be costly, and temporary. Like some implants they would have different ‘grades’ which would determine how long the nano technology lasts in your system. For example, a low-grade optimization might only last 12 hours, whereas a high-grade might last a couple days.

Furthermore they would be tied to a clone, and destructible if you’re podded.


The general idea is to give people temporary abilities to use or do certain things that they don’t necessarily want to invest in being able to do ‘all the time.’ General skill learning wouldn’t really be applicable –this would be for ‘specialty’ stuff that you might need once.

Anchoring skills is a good example. You may not want to invest in high anchoring skills, but you might—once in a blue moon—have the need to anchor something.

Certain industrial skills might also be applicable. Say you’re a pvper and you come across some blueprint copy you really want to build. You don’t plan to get into industry, so you’re not going to invest in industrial skills. But, you could use an optimization 'implant' to temporarily give you the ability to build the item, just this once.

Resurrection Ships and Resurrection Mobile Structures

Right now, medical clones can only be set to stations. What if this were not the case? What if you could setup medical clones in special cloning facilities and cloning ships that you can build and run yourself? (I’m talking medical clones, not jump clones!)

While these would be useful after the changes to jump drives, they would not be for moving vast distances with how we currently ‘pod’ ourselves to get from place to place. Just the opposite. They would have a limited ‘range’—so you’re clone would only be transferred to the facility/ship if you’re within a certain distance. (Otherwise, you’d go to some default NPC station, or etc.)

Obviously, the structures and ships are destructible.


They would be useful during campaigns where people want to stay near a strategic base of operations when they get podded.

There would also be interesting implications for wormholers. Imagine you get podded in your wormhole and instead of ending up in high sec, you end up at the POS in the very same wormhole?

Clone Profiles

Various aspects of the 'clone profile' idea have come up through other people from time to time. But today, I’m going to wrap it all up into a workable, single feature.

The idea is to essentially have a sort of ‘fitting’ for clones. I’m calling it a ‘Profile’ and what it is, is essentially a clone placeholder that you can plug and unplug various implants into. It will have a ‘fitting’ screen similar to a ship fitting screen which will show you statistics of the various bonuses and abilities of your various implants, and etc. (This will be especially handy for implants that are improved when you have entire ‘sets’ in play.)

A profile can be sold via contracts, traded, and etc. in a much similar way you sell or trade a fit ship. However, per the regular rules of implants, once you embed a profile into a clone, it is permanent.


This is mainly a quality of life improvement to the game. If you have ‘basic’ clone setups you like, you can ‘fit’ these into profiles. Then, if you are podded and simply want to quickly ‘install’ the ‘general’ clone setup you like, all you have to do is embed the profile you have pre-prepared.

I could also see this being useful for corps, or alliances who can establish certain ‘standard’ clone setups for their members, and perhaps even provide them.

Also, this will make implants easier to understand to newer players, who often have to ‘guess’ about what they’re doing right now. The profile ‘fitting’ screen will give them a lot more information, and a more bigger picture about what they’re doing with their implants.

I also see some advantages to traders. I could see selling common profiles to be something people could go into business doing on contracts, in much the same way people sell fit ships. Players could also more easily and conveniently sell ‘sets’ of implants and etc. through selling an entire, prepared clone profile vs. a bag of loose implants.

1 comment:

  1. What I've read about permadeath seems confused and vague - in Sugar's Game Mechanics post today the Q&A has CCP reporting that they don't like characters losing SP. Also medical clones are being reviewed.

    You have a fantastic and imaginative post here, how far would you go with clone profiles abilities? A leadership plugin for instant fleet/off-grid boosts... a cap ship plug in for freighter/JF hauling... POS gunner (in the old days)... logistics pilot for when you can't get a fleet running... battleship god for a weekend of Incursion running...
    or just mechanical boosts to fill skill holes, like being able to build the BPC that dropped from an exploration site?

    If CCP wanted to balance ability boosts with some sort of ability loss (like you have with rigs), what sort of system might that look like?