Clones, A question or 2 Options

[Emperor Tippy]

1)Does a clone that isn't force grown mature normally? I.E. you clone a guy, wait 9 months for it to become a baby in the artificial womb, and then raise the kid normally.

[hyzmarca]

Yes. That's pretty much the definition of a clone. It'll be just like having a substantially younger identical twin.

[Emperor Tippy]

Yes. That's pretty much the definition of a clone. It'll be just like having a substantially younger identical twin.

Ok, so then if they wanted to the military could take 1 person and run off a few thousand clones? Meaning that like Type 0 system bioware should be cheaper as they can mass produce it for them, correct?

Oh, another question:
2)Does genetic heritage cost essence?

[Stahlseele]

wasn't there something about cloning not being able to actually produce licing beings, only a clean slate or a set of spare-parts for a specific human?
no memories, no mind at all, maybe even no aura/essence?
as for the second question: i think the rules state that genetic heritage costs essence, but common sense more or less says no because it's your own body, you grew up with it, it is a part of you since conception . . no augmentation . .

[Emperor Tippy]

wasn't there something about cloning not being able to actually produce licing beings, only a clean slate or a set of spare-parts for a specific human?
no memories, no mind at all, maybe even no aura/essence?

I know it says that about force grown clones (the ones that reach adult size in 6 months or so). I was wondering about non forcegrown ones.

as for the second question: i think the rules state that genetic heritage costs essence, but common sense more or less says no because it's your own body, you grew up with it, it is a part of you since conception . . no augmentation . .

Augmentation just says "free". It doesn't reference either (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) or essence and I was wondering about the average opinion (unless it has been clarified somewhere else).

[FrankTrollman]

Ok, so then if they wanted to the military could take 1 person and run off a few thousand clones?

Sure. Or you could have the people of your country have a few thousand children. You could give some modest financial incentives for child rearing and just let the market create some for you. Or you could just be a market parasite and allow the large world unemployment rate to force people already born and grown to come to you for work.

Cloning isn't cheap enough to make it a financially important competitor with biological reproduction (which I remind you will happen for "free" unless condoms are involved).

-Frank

[Backgammon]

Ok, so then if they wanted to the military could take 1 person and run off a few thousand clones? Meaning that like Type 0 system bioware should be cheaper as they can mass produce it for them, correct?

The cost saved by mass producing bioware would be dwarfed, and by dwarfed I mean size of a pea versus size of the sun, compares to the cost of creating the clones, keeping it hidden, and feeding and raising those soldiers from birth to fighting age. Then, as soon as your enemy gets wind of your plan, you can watch all your soldiers die of a precise-engineered cold.

There are practically no advantage to vat grown soldiers, unless you REALLY REALLY need an army of endoctrinated from birth morons, or you merely need a few custom-built spec ops soldiers.

[Emperor Tippy]

Sure. Or you could have the people of your country have a few thousand children. You could give some modest financial incentives for child rearing and just let the market create some for you. Or you could just be a market parasite and allow the large world unemployment rate to force people already born and grown to come to you for work.

Cloning isn't cheap enough to make it a financially important competitor with biological reproduction (which I remind you will happen for "free" unless condoms are involved).

-Frank

The cost to run a massive cloning initiative is cheaper than custom designing delta grade bioware for each solider. IT also allows you to completely standardize equipment because everyone of your soldiers is physically identical.

The cost saved by mass producing bioware would be dwarfed, and by dwarfed I mean size of a pea versus size of the sun, compares to the cost of creating the clones, keeping it hidden, and feeding and raising those soldiers from birth to fighting age. Then, as soon as your enemy gets wind of your plan, you can watch all your soldiers die of a precise-engineered cold.

A great shadowrun I think.

There are practically no advantage to vat grown soldiers, unless you REALLY REALLY need an army of endoctrinated from birth morons, or you merely need a few custom-built spec ops soldiers.

There are a few: standardized equipment, training from birth, all your soldiers can share blood and organs if needed, and you can mass produce delta grade bioware (basically, all your soldiers get type 0 system).

The last one is where the real cost savings come it.

[Stahlseele]

wrong side of the gun . . imagine what kind of money you could make selling type-o bodies . . then use said money to hire cheaper soldiers when needed

[hyzmarca]

If you create an army of bioengineered clone soldiers then it is a foregone conclusion that Kurt Russel will kick their asses.

[Zak]

If you create an army of bioengineered clone soldiers then it is a foregone conclusion that Kurt Russel will kick their asses.

Or some douchebag comes stealing them all.

[FrankTrollman]

There are a few: standardized equipment, training from birth, all your soldiers can share blood and organs if needed, and you can mass produce delta grade bioware (basically, all your soldiers get type 0 system).

The last one is where the real cost savings come it.

And in 18 years, this may or may not pay off. There was a story about this kind of thing that didn't quite make it into Augmentation. There are limitations.

-Frank

[Emperor Tippy]

And in 18 years, this may or may not pay off. There was a story about this kind of thing that didn't quite make it into Augmentation. There are limitations.

-Frank

Sure, I never said it was guaranteed. Was just asking if something inherent in the cloning process made it impossible.

A medical facility costs 200,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) and a single clone costs 25,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) A medical facility can support 8 patients at a time, so 8 clones seems like a good number.

Let's go with 500 facilities for easy numbers. Base cost is 100,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) and you can produce 4,000 clones at a time. Sure you are talking an 18 year lead time on the project but in then you get 4,000 soldiers every 9 months.

To buy a medium lifestyle for those 4,000 soldiers costs 20,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) and that covers all their expenses for life. Each batch costs 100,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

Now what do you save? How about 2,430,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) per solider on just his bioware? And thats assuming that cultured bioware can't be massed produced for a specific DNA type. Assuming it can (which makes plenty of sense) you save another 2,900,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) per solider.

And if genetweaks carry over to clones (which makes sense) then you save 110,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) per solider as you only have to perform the alterations once.

So economically, you are better off making a clone army than you are making the same army without clones. The only real problem could be just what can be done with ritual magic and a material link (i.e. a blood sample). Basically, can you make a ritual that effects every clone with just 1 sample from 1 clone or can you only target 1 clone at a time and use a sample from any clone? Both are interesting.

If you can effect all the clones with 1 ritual then all the soldiers will have some very nice magical defenses but you also have the potential for your whole army to be killed off with 1 spell. If its just 1 target at a time then they don't have magical defenses but your whole army also can't be killed with 1 spell.

[FrankTrollman]

Let's go with 500 facilities for easy numbers. Base cost is 100,000,000 ¥ and you can produce 4,000 clones at a time. Sure you are talking an 18 year lead time on the project but in then you get 4,000 soldiers every 9 months.

Uh.. yeah. Let's say for the sake of argument that you're someone who could actually spend that kind of money on making children. Like Aztlan. You do realize that just for getting up in the morning, Aztlan has a birth rate of 20.04 people per 1000 residents per year in 2008. With their 2008 population of 109 million, they create approximately 183,626 potential soldiers every month. In order to actually turn them into soldiers, they would have to make sure that they are fed, clothed, sheltered, trained, and indoctrinated over the next 18 years, which is where all the real expenses come anyway. Sending them in at even a Low Lifestyle for 18 years would set you back some 432,000¥ per child. Now repeat that for 4000 children and you are out nearly 2 billion yen. Just for the feeding, clothing, and minimal education.

If you aren't a country, you probably don't have the resources to raise thousands of children. If you are a country, you already have millions of children being born and seriously don't need to artificially create any.

-Frank

[Adarael]

So economically, you are better off making a clone army than you are making the same army without clones.

This is only true if you assume that you need every member of your army to have those mods, and that you won't need them for about twenty years. And that your investment won't be obsolete in 20 years, too.

In one case, you could spend 2,900,000 yen per soldier to make a guy who has some awesome 'ware, is a killing machine, is born and bred for combat.

In another case, you spend between 7500-10,000 yen on guy off the street to make a soldier with an AK, some combat drugs, some basic smartgoggles and a grenade or two. Maybe you get fancy and throw in a shitty skillwire system, too.

You get 1 of the super-soldier for every 300 (or thereabouts) of the latter. While Super Soldier is awesome for commando shit, 300 to 1 odds for regular troops will smoke the shit out of him any day of the week.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I'm just saying that en masse, it's just not cost effective.

[Mordinvan]

At this time I would like to add, you could force grow the body, and use the same techology drones use to make and train clone brains, and then insert them into the bodies so you'd only have a 6 month production time. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)
But to be honest I'd just use modified Otomo drones with +3 body to increase str and damage soaking, 10 point concealed armor or 18 points of obvious armor if you don't care about them looking like killing machines out of their uniforms, and enhanced sensors. Outfit them with souped up military armor, a lmg or Hmg or minigun (drones don't worry about recoil), and they'll have agilities of high teens for their firearms tests plus level 5 skill softs, with specalizations, and smart guns.... ya.... lots of dead people.

[Emperor Tippy]

This is only true if you assume that you need every member of your army to have those mods, and that you won't need them for about twenty years. And that your investment won't be obsolete in 20 years, too.

In one case, you could spend 2,900,000 yen per soldier to make a guy who has some awesome 'ware, is a killing machine, is born and bred for combat.

In another case, you spend between 7500-10,000 yen on guy off the street to make a soldier with an AK, some combat drugs, some basic smartgoggles and a grenade or two. Maybe you get fancy and throw in a shitty skillwire system, too.

You get 1 of the super-soldier for every 300 (or thereabouts) of the latter. While Super Soldier is awesome for commando shit, 300 to 1 odds for regular troops will smoke the shit out of him any day of the week.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I'm just saying that en masse, it's just not cost effective.

Actually the numbers game is deceiving, 10 million (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) will get you 1 super solider full equipped (including his lifestyle). At 10K a guy that is 1,000 to 1 odds. Sounds bad, right? Now lets look at how many guys can attack our single solider at any given time, its far less than 1,000. And if you field your 1,000 guys our single solider calls in a T-Bird with some Seven-7 cluster munitions and drops them all over your soldiers.

Massed, crappy troops are just a way to inflate the body count. They can't really contribute to a war. Even on the occupation level they just don't have the muscle to stand up to the local guriella groups who would be making their life hell, much less organized resistance of the military variety.

[ornot]

However, for the cost of your supersoldier you can buy far more vehicles and weapons for your far cheaper grunts. Yes, your supersoldier can call in an airstrike from a Tbird to obliterate the grunts, but they can do the exact same thing to him. And you're a hell of a lot more out of pocket having lost that one soldier than you are when 10 or a hundred grunts get cacked.

I do think it is perfectly possible in SR4 to raise a clone army as you propose, but I don't think it's likely to be done for practical reasons. Basically, as far as kit, support, maintenance and training go, the costs are the same. The only saving is that in exchange for the cost of the facility to grow and rear the clones to maturity, you make certain high end 'ware cheaper to plug into them, even if you consider part of the rearing budget to be covered by training costs.

[Emperor Tippy]

However, for the cost of your supersoldier you can buy far more vehicles and weapons for your far cheaper grunts. Yes, your supersoldier can call in an airstrike from a Tbird to obliterate the grunts, but they can do the exact same thing to him. And you're a hell of a lot more out of pocket having lost that one soldier than you are when 10 or a hundred grunts get cacked.

Sure, and the final number (without using clones) is 6.2 million (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) per solider including a bought medium lifestyle. And using a T-Bird (which costs 2.35 million before weapons and fuel) to take out ground forces is uneconomical if you can't use chemical/biological/nano weapons. There is also the slight fact that the Super Solider is a bitch to target.

I do think it is perfectly possible in SR4 to raise a clone army as you propose, but I don't think it's likely to be done for practical reasons. Basically, as far as kit, support, maintenance and training go, the costs are the same. The only saving is that in exchange for the cost of the facility to grow and rear the clones to maturity, you make certain high end 'ware cheaper to plug into them, even if you consider part of the rearing budget to be covered by training costs.

But the real savings is in that ware. 5 million (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) (or thereabouts) per solider to be precise. Or a savings of 20 BILLION (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) per clone run. Even as a 1 off for a brigade of these guys (4,000) it's worth the infrastructure costs. And even if you don't put ware in them it could still come out as a net gain.

Total cost for 4,000 of these guys is as follows:
100,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) for Cloning Facilities
100,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) for the Clone Batch
20,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) for the Lifestyle
110,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) for the genetweaks to the original
5,548,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) for the Enhancements
800,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) for gear

Total: 6,678,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

I think thats a fair price for a brigade. Considering that just training and equipping 4,000 US marines costs 5,000,000,000 USD (and that was before the dollar weakened) and doesn't include food, clothing, shelter, or pay.

[Oracle]

If clone soldiers would be that great, governments or corporations in the sixth world would already have adopted the idea. As far as we know they have not. That tells us, there is a flaw in it. And after all we are not talking about Star Wars here.

[ornot]

/snip

Total: 3,262,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

I think thats a fair price for a brigade. Considering that just training and equipping 4,000 US marines costs 5,000,000 USD (and that was before the dollar weakened) and doesn't include food, clothing, shelter, or pay.

3 billion (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) vs 5 million $

I don't know what the exchange rate would be worked out as but that's still 3 orders of magnitude. And a 20 odd year lead time. And not factoring in deaths through training mishaps and accidents depleting your nice round 4000.

Sure it's doable, but I don't know why anyone would sink so much of their military budget - which must be less than the total budget for things like infrastructure, health, education etc etc. - into a relatively small military force, when they might be called upon to fight in more places than their armed forces allows. If a country expects to not have to fight in many places, why would they spend 3 billion (admittedly over twenty years) for a brigade of soldiers, when that money could be spent on other things? If they are expecting to have to fight a lot, they'll need more than a brigade of troops, which pushes your 3 billion over twenty years to mind boggling heights.

[Emperor Tippy]

3 billion (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) vs 5 million $

I don't know what the exchange rate would be worked out as but that's still 3 orders of magnitude. And a 20 odd year lead time. And not factoring in deaths through training mishaps and accidents depleting your nice round 4000.

Sure it's doable, but I don't know why anyone would sink so much of their military budget - which must be less than the total budget for things like infrastructure, health, education etc etc. - into a relatively small military force, when they might be called upon to fight in more places than their armed forces allows. If a country expects to not have to fight in many places, why would they spend 3 billion (admittedly over twenty years) for a brigade of soldiers, when that money could be spent on other things? If they are expecting to have to fight a lot, they'll need more than a brigade of troops, which pushes your 3 billion over twenty years to mind boggling heights.

Doh. I forgot a 0. Thats supposed to be 5,000,000,000.

[Emperor Tippy]

If clone soldiers would be that great, governments or corporations in the sixth world would already have adopted the idea. As far as we know they have not. That tells us, there is a flaw in it. And after all we are not talking about Star Wars here.

For all we know they have. The things do take 18 years at a minimum to grow up. If a nation or corp decided to do it back in 2060 or so then we wouldn't see the results for another 8 years in game. That 18 year lead time is the bitch. I mean once its out of the way you have a new brigade every 9 months. The only problem is that you can't really ramp up production if you need too. What I see them doing is running off 10 or so brigades worth and once that is done run off a new one every 5 years or so (to cover losses and other such things).

Too bad SR doesn't have cryogenics or I would say just keep putting the excess in the freezer (without implants if you want to save money) and unfreeze them as needed.

[Blade]

At this time I would like to add, you could force grow the body, and use the same techology drones use to make and train clone brains, and then insert them into the bodies so you'd only have a 6 month production time. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)
But to be honest I'd just use modified Otomo drones with +3 body to increase str and damage soaking, 10 point concealed armor or 18 points of obvious armor if you don't care about them looking like killing machines out of their uniforms, and enhanced sensors. Outfit them with souped up military armor, a lmg or Hmg or minigun (drones don't worry about recoil), and they'll have agilities of high teens for their firearms tests plus level 5 skill softs, with specalizations, and smart guns.... ya.... lots of dead people.

IIRC it's stated somewhere in Aug that you can't make biodrones out of wimps. But you can use wimp brains for cyborgs.

[Emperor Tippy]

IIRC it's stated somewhere in Aug that you can't make biodrones out of wimps. But you can use wimp brains for cyborgs.

Well with Move-By-Wires and a really good custom pilot you theoretically can but it has no real benefit. It's just a meat body that cost you 200K plus and has no real benefits (your ignoring the human brain completely).