Eclipse Phase General - /epg/

There are definite degrees of bioconservatism going on within EP. I'd argue the PC has a strong bio-con streak, the standard morph is still human in form and ability, just with the genetic loose ends tied up and maybe an inclination towards exercise genefixed in.
And the Lunar cities are pretty against transhumanism for its own sake, although how much of that is part of their culture and how much is due to literally being in orbit around the monument to the failure of our entire species is up for debate

I thought it was just a bonus if you had your real body.

>if they have their real bodies in which they were born.

I wonder how they check that, though. I could've been born a Splicer or Exalt or Olympian to begin with. I have the feeling that as a Futura, I'd set off all the same bells and triggers as a insatiated ego in a clone of their choice.

And I have the feeling that as a Futura, they'd either give me a compulsory promotion or turn me into a rapeslave for science.

>tfw you love Jove but Jove does not love you

>I wonder how they check that, though.
Well they probably have one of the best archives besides Mars considering that they should have American, Chinese and Russian security files.

Well Futura has more problems with psi than with actually getting citizenship. Considering that Jovians really don't like Corpies psi abilities will be the biggest hurdle to overcome. And mental problems. Most Futura probably will need a therapy.

Also why would they need to make you a rapeslave if they can just get samples and create a copy?

What are the rules for smoke grenades?

They're a [Low] cost item, obscures sight, obfuscates heat signatures. That's... about it, I think. I'd generally go with it applying a -20 combat modifier ("Visibility Impaired: Major", EP p193) to start with.

Yeah, but how far do they spread? And how fast?

Presumably you've already looked through the books and not found anything covering it explicitly, so it'll fall back to the "ask your GM and house-rule it if you need rules for that".

There are so many factors to consider for that that it'd need it's own page just to write the rules. Think about it.

Are we talking about on the moon, without atmosphere? Are we talking about inside the moon, so low-gravity but with atmosphere? Are we talking Mars? What about weightless but with atmosphere?

A note on it would've been nice, some more information, sure, but largely such things should be left to the GM.

I find it more odd that they obfuscate heat signatures. Like. How?

Chaff or something in the grenade to confuse IR sensors? You've always got to assume your opponent has access to the whole light spectrum in EP combat, even smoke grenades need to be teched up

>ask your GM and house-rule it if you need rules for that
>sure, but largely such things should be left to the GM
I am the GM. That's why I'm asking.

I guess you could have some ionized nanoclouds that assume and attempt to spread ambient heat evenly, or simply is very hot to momentarity blind sensors, but the former would work poorly and the latter only until you can adjust the settings.

Maybe it creates a micro-climate that's in flux? But that could be devastating to the local area or the enviromental settings.

>I am the GM.

I guessed. Like I said, just something to go on would've been nice. Some additional information. For example, a modern-day smoke grenade wouldn't work at all without an atmosphere, and would probably be wildly ineffective in zero- or low-G environments.

Then go with the rules of what is dramatically appropriate for the area they pop smoke in. At minimum it should fill a room within a turn, but that's assuming there's no extractors or holes for the smoke to flow out through
Uses excess heat from the detonation to make the smoke warm? Its not about being invisible to heat vision in the smoke, its about the guy with heat vision not being able to pick out targets. If all they can see is a haze of blue-green clouds, the jobs done

>I am the GM. That's why I'm asking.
Choose some current grenade and beef it up a little. Than declare that it is standard for the game. Players can get better grenades but for a price and they will be harder to find.

You can more or less ignore gravity probably for the radius as long as there is atmosphere at more or less Earth pressure levels. But gravity will define how long a cloud will last. Don't bother with trying to get realistic numbers (unless you really have time to fro all the math) just make them consistent and use some simple formula that players can easily grasp.

Are you using grids and the like, or is your combat generally more abstracted?

You could just go with "it's a ten metre blast radius, lasts for the combat, and actions taken to disperse it half the penalties it applies after X turns and remove it after X+Y turns". You could add a random element for X and Y, you could modify X and Y based on the MoS of the actions used to disperse it, you could add a maximum amount of time for the smoke to persist in combat, you could add an amount of time it takes for the smoke cloud to expand and change the penalties it applies so it works on a curve, starting fairly poor, hitting peak after a certain number of turns, and then naturally dispersing and inflicting less penalties.

There's a whole shit load of stuff you could do to simulate smoke grenades. Personally, I'd go for the simplest possible options, because there's usually plenty of other stuff to worry about when running combat, so there'd have to be a bloody good reason to add extra stuff.

So obviously if the TITANs return the Jovian's stand the best chance of surviving. My question is, do you think that they would survive?

I'm personally inclined to say yes, or at least that they would last long enough for the TITANs to disappear again, because unlike the old Earth militaries which were easily exploited and subverted by the TITANs, the Jovian military is designed to force you to fight it on its terms.

Plus, this is assuming the TITANs would think the Jovian's were worth attacking. I don't think the TITANs would waste a ton of resources attacking the dug in Jovian's, especially since there's almost no cortical stacks for the headhunters to take and do whatever they do with them.

We have literally no idea what the TITANs motives were 10 years ago, let alone what they would be trying to achieve if they ever returned in force. Assuming they're after egos isn't that good of a defense anyway, if you don't have a stack they'll just capture your entire body and forcibly upload you. They did that to millions of people across Africa come the end.
And the Jovians are hardened against TITAN interference true enough, but they have exactly zero means to force the TITANs to fight on the same level. All that means is the TITANs are down to fighting a conventional war, which is EXACTLY what the TITANs were created to fight and win in the first place

>described as epitomizing "everything wrong with the 21st century" as according to anarchist millennials (also known as "everything actually wrong with the 21st century")

Nice.

No. I doubt they've even got the best chance of surviving; brinkres on the furthest edges of the solar system and survivalists on exoplanets probably stand a better chance of remaining undiscovered and unmolested. The best chance of surviving against the TITANs return is not to be there when they show up.

>no cortical stacks for the headhunters to take and do whatever they do with them

They take them away for forced uploading, not to nab cortical stacks. Ego-bridges, for instance, don't require you to have a cortical stack - it takes it from the brain.

Why is everyone sucking so hard on jovians dick in these threads?

Welcome to /epg/

Yeah, that's a good point. I feel like this is why it's stupid that the Jovian's and Firewall are written as enemies. The Jovian's would want to stop the TITANs returning even more than Firewall would, and would have even less problem killing innocent transhumans to do so, yet they are written as enemies cause reasons. It's even acknowledged in the writing that the Jovian's have almost no x-threats within their territory, and that they're the only people even remotely prepared for the return of the TITANs (although whether they're prepared enough is up for debate). By all means the Jovian's and Firewall should at least tolerate each other, but yet they don't.

That being said, I do think their could be a cool alternative to having them work with Firewall. Similar to how the Planetary Consortium has their version of Firewall called Ozma, the Jovian's could have their own elite teams of Firewall equivalents. Unless that basically describes the entire Jovian military.

It's because they represent concepts like government, nationality, bioconservatism, and religion in the setting. Considering most people who like Eclipse Phase aren't socialist anarchists, we tend to side with the faction that represents the ideals that we support. The reason people get so salty about it is cause the writers are really hamfisted in their portrayal of all the factions except the autonomist alliance

Because the books are written with such a pro-anarchist stance its smothering. I'd consider myself quite lefty, but the way a lot of the book is written is nauseating in how much it bends over backwards to the anarchist cause
Like, there's parts of Sunward when they all but state the only reason people don't want to live like anarchists do is because The Man keeps them down and stops them from imagining a life outside their little bubble. There's no respect for the idea that people can look at a life where your next door neighbour is a transsexual orangutan with a background in nano-warfare and decide "actually, that's really not for me" of their own volition. In EP you're either a free anarchist, blinded by the dogma of the system (and thus awaiting the 'glorious liberation' of anarchism) or a baby eating conservative.
The Jovians are explicitly against all this bullshit, so Veeky Forums clings on to them as the one actual element of the setting that stands against the bullshit

Ok, I can understand your point, but besides their are more moderate factions besides right-wing and left-wing extremists.

I find the anarchist way holier than thou, but I find the nationalist religious biocon, however badly wrote, equally unappealing.

>By all means the Jovian's and Firewall should at least tolerate each other, but yet they don't.

It's probably because the Jovians - perhaps rightly - see Firewall as a bunch of terrorists that are furthering the goals of the Argonauts and their left-wing autonomist friends.

The problem is the Jovians only care about saving the Jovians, which is completely antithetical to how Firewall operates. Firewall is a cross faction conspiracy designed to at least try and help every group in the setting, whereas the Jovians don't consider a majority of the system to be human anymore. The Jovians in Firewall tend to be either dissidents against the Junta looking for connections, or Jovians with foresight enough to realise that since Jove is relatively free of internal x-threats it needs to look beyond its borders
I think the nearest thing to 'Jovian Firewall' is probably their intelligence services, dedicating to rooting out any roosting x-threats and the like. Again though, they're not often seen outside Jove orbit. The Republic is a closed nation in a post national solar system, and has the firepower to enforce that

I understand what you're saying, but a big part of the reason people tolerate the extremes that the Jovian's go to is because the setting is post apocalyptic. It's one thing to be for the distribution of 3d printers, it's another thing entirely when said 3d printers can create nuclear bombs. Freedom of the press is nice, but when all it takes is one basilisk hack displayed on television to wipe out a habitat then it becomes understandable to regulate it.

We judge the Jovian's according to our modern day sensibilities, but the Jovian's are stuck in a universe that just went through one apocalypse and is set to go through another one. It's perfectly understandable for them to be paranoid and authoritarian in such a situation.

>we tend to side with the faction that represents the ideals that we support

You probably shouldn't think of siding with factions in Eclipse Phase or, at least, accept that your ideals are not going to exactly match with a particular faction. People seem to side the Jovians, and then complain about the ideals they have while simultaneously claiming that they support the Jovian ideals.

Well there are terrorist anarchist cells that make attacks within Jovian territory, and Firewall has done some minor infiltration into the Jovian ranks, so yeah, basically Firewall is a bunch of terrorists when you get down to it.

>It's perfectly understandable for them to be paranoid and authoritarian in such a situation.

It's perfectly understandable, and it's a believable response to a sort-of-self-inflicted extinction event for humanity, but it's crucially not the only response that people might have to it.

Firewall are as much terrorists as Delta Green are terrorists
That is to say yes, because they use violence for political ends without state authority to back them up. To their credit though, Firewall very rarely uses terrorism to affect political change, its mostly to fight whatever hellish beasty the exsurgent virus has unleashed
And yeah, I know there's that entire server dedicated to spying on the immortal ultra rich which is blatantly an anarchist front trying to start shit in the inner system, but everyone in Firewall recognizes their lying out of their ass at least

Oh, I perfectly understand why someone might not like them, I'm just explaining why people on Veeky Forums find them so sympathetic. Personally I tend to side with them, but if someone think that they go too far or are acting silly then that's fine too. Will have to kill those people for being a heathen transhumanist though.

The higher ups may look at people as numbers but if public opinion was that other transhumans are not people the Jupiter moons would be much less populated. After all feneris can't save you against antiproton beams and UV lasers firing from high orbit.

But yeah Jovians do prefer to keep to themselves. Frankly they have enough space for their population to grow 10 times over and not suffer much shortage in any resources. So they don't need anything beyond Jupiter trojans except security.

The most outgoing groups of Jovians are probably reclaimers.

>I'm just explaining why people on Veeky Forums find them so sympathetic.

That's the part that I always found a bit odd though; I don't find the Jovians particularly sympathetic, because what the Jovians represent is a whole mess of different ideals and concepts, some of which I agree with, some of which I find fairly abhorrent. And it's the same for every other faction, so I don't really overly identify with any of the fictional groups in the game.

Like how I can say "I think Donald Trump has some valid points regarding the unequal distribution of the benefits of globalisation when it comes to the poorest sections of a society", but not be such a Trump supporter that I'll defend some of the weird shit he's said and done simply because he has a viewpoint that's close to my own in some respects.

>Frankly they have enough space for their population to grow 10 times over and not suffer much shortage in any resources
Quite the opposite actually, they're having trouble with life support systems. Since the Jovians refuse to use nano tech, their life support is much more likely to go septic. Not lethal by any means but not comfortable either. I can see that changing as they get better acquainted with the challenges of living in space and more nano tech passes the stringent testing of the Jovian Science Board but the situation still isn't ideal.

Well even not counting different religious, ethnic and business groups you have government, security, mainstay military (those who serve beyond base time needed for citizenship), citizens and those didn't serve and now live in some hole. And they all will have different takes on what it means to be Jovian.

Eh, some of its the political Stockholm syndrome foisted on people by parties and ideologies; we agree with more of the program than we don't so we go all in on supporting them rather than appear to be half hearted in our beliefs.

I mean in the long run. Nothing stops them from creating new habitats or digging underground cities on moons. Though habitats will be better cause you can add drives to them for the time when shit hits the fan.

Yes currently they need to iron out existing systems but after that Ganymede alone can easily take a billion people. Though it's a security risk.

>I find it more odd that they obfuscate heat signatures. Like. How
Even today we can do that. It just requires messing around with the smoke composition until you get something that blocks IR. Some even block certain kinds of radar.

The Jovian's are more or less the most "normal" faction of the setting. The people inhabit human bodies but aren't luddites, a functioning government and military exists, religion still plays a role in daily life, actual currency is used instead of a shoddy reputation system, and people have rights but also restrictions in their life. Sure, you're not going to like everything about them, just like many people today might not like everything about our current day lives, but that doesn't mean we would ever consider moving to an anarchist hell-hole or some corporatist "country".

All these things are true of the Planetary Consortium, the Morningstar Constellation or the LLC. Shit, they restrict their citizens a lot less than the Jovians, and if you go to Mars you get to live on an actual planet instead of a space station with septic oxygen filters

Yeah but they got people turning themselves into octopuses with 9 penises, and they aren't preparing for the TITANs returning which seems like the most reasonable action to do after an apocalyptic event like the Fall.

Keep in mind there's also quite a bit of "Humanity Fuck Yeah" in play here. The idea of an unmodified human going toe to toe and beating the various creatures of transhumanity is appealing.

>The idea of an unmodified human going toe to toe and beating the various creatures of transhumanity is appealing.

Plucky baseline munchkinism is a potent drug, much like cocaine or heroin. But, like all drugs, it is toxic in large doses.

>they got people turning themselves into octopuses with 9 penises
No they don't? Maybe in Morningstar, but even then its very rare and seen as strange even by transhuman standards. I'm going to agree to disagree about TITAN preparation, the fact is if there's anything they wanted from us at large they could have taken it ten years ago, and I can't believe we'll make anything after them that they can't make themselves. They have no reason to return, we shouldn't cripple our potential to protect against a non-existent possibility
And true, there is that element of HFY, but I don't pick up EP for that. I pick it up for Transhuman weirdness fighting darker digitized Lovecraft weirdness. If you want pure humanity standing alone against the raging dark of an uncaring universe, Delta Green or Call of Cthulhu honestly do a better job

the 'normality' of the jovians is a current normality

the contemporary normality is inner-system transhumans or maybe the technosocialists on that moon.

I mean this in the sense of the sensible adaptations to the environmental pressures of a post-apocalyptic far future. You might be more or less inclined to the jovian approach to these pressures as practically or ethically right, but I wouldn't call it a kind of normality. Though I can understand what you mean if you're more thinking of resemblance to humanity currently.

It depends on how you envision the TITANs returning.

If we're talking about TITANs returning in full force, after occupying a few star systems nearby, having turned much of it into quantum processors, cold-fusion reactors, nuclear railguns and nanobots, intent on the destruction of humanity?

No, the Jovian Republic and everyone else would be massively fucked. The TITANs could likely snipe all of Jupiter, blowing it up, or just devastating it, before the Republic (or anyone else in the solar system) would realize what was even going on.

The only realistic option in such a scenario would be to flee. Either get into a generational ship/station and leg it out of the solar system, hoping it escapes notice (which is unlikely) or jump through one of the Pandora Gates (which is insanely dangerous and something the Factors have explicitly warned humanity from doing).

But either way, we know fuckall about the TITANs. They may not even really have left. They could just be incubating inside Earth somehow. Their motivations are a complete mystery. There's some "GM:s only" spoilers for the setting, but nothing really explains the corruption of the TITANs, where they went, or why.

For all we know, the TITANs are actually the good guys.

But they are luddites. They restrict technology because of their belief it is bad for society.

No they restrict technology because they think that atomic bombs should not be an accessory that you chose to match colour of your eyes.

Why do they disallow resleeving then?

They restrict life saving nano machines, they let their life support go septic because the best fixes use nano tech and they heavily restrict the near boundless immortality enjoyed by people outside of the Republic
I respect they have a point in restricting the upper bounds of what citizens can freely produce, but the Consortium, the Constellation and the LLC are far more reasonable examples. Shit, the Jovians don't even let people have access to fabbers

you might be confusing it with their hardened attitudes to transhumans after a protracted war with morphs made completely out of dried maize stalks

Tbh as they don't try to impose their views upon the rest of the system, I couldn't care about the Jovians, but saying they aren't luddites would be misleading

You mean the technology that allows you to create a nuclear bomb in your basement? Yeah it seems reasonable to restrict those. As for the nanomachines, those were easily hacked and used by the Titans to eat anything they could find, so that's why those are restricted.

Contrary to popular belief the Jovians are developing technology, they just are developing it more cautiously, with a focus on exploiting the weaknesses of TITANs and transhumans.

>Ok, I can understand your point, but besides their are more moderate factions besides right-wing and left-wing extremists.

Look at the OP and check some of the discussion in the previous thread, a discussion that ended about here: What *other* moderate factions are there, presented, that have not drunk the crypto-anarchist Kool-Aid, nor high on transhumanist dogma?

That being said, I don't mind being "left-wing extremist" or "right-wing extremist", but both should be treated fairly in terms of setting, but the Jovians both implicitly and *explicitly* are not - but at the same time, while being consistently shat on, many aspects of them come across as "making sense" and as being the only near-sensible faction in the setting, the "issues" as presented basically having to be engineered (How the fuck can cancer still be a thing, with the technology available, even if you reject gene-modding and nanotechnology? How the fuck can you lump "Fascism" and "Lobbyism" into the same sentence, and apply it to a (albeit corrupt) constitutional republic?).

Where's my pro-humanity, generally bioconservative Argonauts and research collectives that question the act of uplifting disparate species to sapience? Where's my Terran Dominion that want to reclaim Earth, but hate the anarchists, the ultimates and AGI:s, but don't mind genemodded humans (Olympians, Mentons, Exalts, Furies, etc)? Hell, where's my die-hard communist faction that is just as terrible as you'd imagine a transhumanist communist faction to be, where everyone is literally created equal?

It's no wonder the Jovian Republic attracts a following.

>Why do they disallow resleeving then?
That's actually another point. Not the luddite one but about human identity. Notice that Jovians do use planned parenthood a-la Gattaca ensuring that all their future generations are basically splicers but anyone who sleeves into a morph with non-evolved genecode must give DNA of his first body for his children.

Because nanomachines are really easy to exploit. Especially if you can get access to their hive.

Fabbers can't stitch uranium atoms together out of thin air, you just need to restrict the feed stock for them (like the PC, MC and LLC already do)
As for nanos, contrary to popular belief you can't just flip a switch and turn them into grey goo machines, they don't have the programming for that. And besides, restricting something that beneficial because of the remotest chance of the return of the TITANs is a very short sighted policy. Not least because a) there is nothing in this system the TITANs want, if there was they would have taken in ten years ago and b) if the TITANs do return they won't even bother subverting your nanos when they can just rip your head off. TITANs are not subtle

Depends on what you mean by "high on transhumanist dogma" doesn't it?
Because I'd argue the PC do a fine job of being a moderately right wing faction that allows a lot of freedoms to its citizens but still restricts them. Hell, on a day to day basis life as a member of the PC is closest to the modern Western standard of living today, just with higher tech in some areas. But for some reasons every ignores that and focuses on the Jovians
I do agree that the left outside of anarchism gets shit on though, the only real left wing polity is Titan. Which is pretty cool but very hard to discuss on Veeky Forums because I can already here the arguments about immigration and refugees starting
Beyond that there doesn't seem to be a major hard left faction anywhere. Sure you can just decide "fuck it, there's a station that runs on communist lines" but there's no where for that group to fit within the larger structure of the setting

Besides TITANs there is AGI, exhumans, ultimates, anarchist nutjobs, uplift nutjobs and every other kind and type of nutjob. And anyone of them getting access to a life-support slaved hive can fuck up most of the habitat.

There is a good reason while you never keep all your eggs in one basket and don't allow a single system to be critical to a survival of the place where people live.

>I don't find the Jovians particularly sympathetic, because what the Jovians represent is a whole mess of different ideals and concepts, some of which I agree with, some of which I find fairly abhorrent. And it's the same for every other faction, so I don't really overly identify with any of the fictional groups in the game.

The only things I don't like about the Jovian Republic is that it's fairly corrupt (being a democracy) and that it's fundamentally Christian (and as presented, a fundamentally retarded brand of christianity, to boot).

Other than that, if you ignore the way the writers try to paint them as the baddies, and only focus on the objective facts as presented, I like the Jovian Republic quite a bit. Over all, it's probably one of the better places to live in the Solar System, bar perhaps Luna.

At least unless you're rich - if you're rich, there's always somewhere better, like a pretty much private O'Neill Cylinder, or something.

It's frustrating that the fetishising of Flats is a thing in the Jovian Republic, though, because it's not really expanded upon why. I can't think of a reason why at least basic splicing into Exalts, Olympians, Mentons, Furies or Observers would be a problem. You don't even need to upload/backup or something; you could just be born that way, or be changed literally on the fly, suspended in a healing vat.

There's no concrete reason why the Jovian Republic must be 80% flats, especially since far from everyone is, other than "hurr durr look how backwards the Jovians are."

Yeah Titanians are probably the most moderate left wing faction. And I'd argue that Morningstar, while a bit hedonist, is the most moderate right wing faction.

>There's no concrete reason why the Jovian Republic must be 80% flats, especially since far from everyone is, other than "hurr durr look how backwards the Jovians are."
Actually most of the children should be splicers.

I don't think Morningstar is that hedonist, it just got conflated with Pavarti, which is ironic considering Pavarti IIRC is actually a Consortium station that just happens to be in Venus orbit
What makes you think other stations have such a major security flaw? Because they don't, for the reasons you just specified. No life support system is completely dependent on nano swarms to work, they just make it easier to keep them clean. The Jovian refusal to use them makes life on their habitats, particularly on the smaller ones or in the poorer areas, more unpleasant than it needs to be

> Over all, it's probably one of the better places to live in the Solar System

I'd like to disagree. Jovians habitats are using near obsolete methods of life support system due to restrictions on technology, making it a dangerous place to live.
On top of that the fair share of inequality in the Republic due to their citizenship system make it hard to live in if you're not a citizen and/or you are poor.

>It's frustrating that the fetishising of Flats is a thing in the Jovian Republic

The first justification who comes to my mind is religion, and some kind of sanctity of the human body. I'm not saying it is a very good justification though.

honestly, it seems like your personal perspectives are colouring your interpretation of the material
the underlying value of transhuman ideals is not only explored but anxieties regarding it are built into the core themes of the game.
Normative rejections of transhumans are necessarily limited in scope, in this game, because emphasizing it's validity as an option (something not at all necessary given the context of the game) would require ignoring the majority of the game's written systems which revolve around sleeving, biomodification and electronic egos. This is even worse for someone who wants to engage with the normativity of transhuman philosophy; you won't be simulating your experience of a situation that might pose a moral dilemma by taking an absolute stance and avoiding those situations altogether.
It's also a setting cranked up to 11 in terms of the risks humanity might be expected to survive. Planetary integrity is no longer a given, so uploading technology and egocasting, as one example, can become a literal necessity for survival despite the quandaries over psychological/physical continuity of identity; it's that or all knowledge that resides on that planet is lost. Because a solar system of transhumans in ideological conflict is being portrayed, it's perfectly reasonable that the non transhumans have an aberrant quality about them.

I'm probably remembering wrong, but didn't the fleets that founded the Republic take a lot of refugees with them when they left the Earth? That would explain the tendency towards a Flat population, most of Earth was still Flats at the time
People elsewhere are predominantly Splicer and other morphs because people who were either already off Earth or could ego cast out already had a preponderance to picking non-Flat morphs. The Fall as an extinction event heavily selected for people already OK with morph switching

Every nanoswarm is a potential weapon capable of destroying everything around it. The only thing that stops it from happening is that nutjob programmer has no access to the hive at this moment.

>There's no concrete reason why the Jovian Republic must be 80% flats
wouldn't that be what you mostly get when you don't reproduce with an exowomb?

Yep. And considering that longevity treatments are allowed flats will be a majority for a long time.

Depends on the genecode of the parents, two splicers would make a splicer (I could be wrong though)

>The people inhabit human bodies but aren't luddites

They totally are, though. It's one of those things that really puts me off the Jovian Republic (which I otherwise have a nerd-boner for).

The restriction on AI:s, AGI:s, Uplifts, and nanotechnology all makes varying amounts of sense in context, and the Jovians make good arguments as to why these things work the way they do.

There's a warranted fear of AI:s, Uplifts as a concept is arguably amoral in several different ways, and nanotechnology is insanely dangerous.

There's a lot of ethical questions regarding "immortality" and there's probably many religious reasons why cortical stacks are not a thing, why you can't backup freely, and so on and so forth. I buy all of that. I'm fine with it. Soul and Conciousness are not the same thing, what does it mean if you die, is the upload you the real you, etc.

But why the fuck would you limit yourselves to Flats and only Flats, as a matter of law and policy? It boggles the mind. It's fine to not be a morph-hopper, it's fine saying that a copy of your mind in a synthmorph is not really you.

But if I jump into a vat, and genetically engineer myself to be free of disease, it's still the same me, in the same basic body, tethered to the same "soul" (or whatever). On a fundamental level, I am still me, and I am still human. I'll still have the same overall facial features, I'll still have the same haircolour and the same eyes, and basically the same brain, with the same knowledge.

And not accepting that is what makes the Jovian Republic luddites, and it's shitty writing to not even come up with a reasonable excuse.

>Our exowombs, childcare facilities, and schools are
also top of the line, given the importance we place on
rebuilding our population and raising future generations.
Families with children are allotted special incentives
to encourage population growth.
Direct quote from Rimward.

I don't think so, they make a few references in the books that morphs can pass down their genetic traits to their kids. In the Morph Recognition guide they mention that a Hibernoid kid has the whole "only needs an hour of sleep a day" or whatever trait the parents do

>Depends on the genecode of the parents, two splicers would make a splicer (I could be wrong though)
Not reliably. Splicers don't have active genes that may be detrimental to them. But they may still have recessive genes that have a chance of acting up in their children without gene control.

Hey /epg/, pregnant flat player here. We've done some shopping around, and found a few morphs within price range that manage to not be cases.
Couple of basic pods relatively fresh, a used worker pod (apparently has cancer in the biological bits), a used security pod (was used in the evacuation of earth, owner is cagey on what else is going on), and... an Ayah, of all things. Used and described as 'quirky', but the owner's adamant on only getting the morph to us once we transfer the credits over. An Ayah would be pretty nice for my character, who's a social infiltrator type, and honestly better than the other options, but I'm leery about how cagey the owner's being. Thoughts, /epg/?

>But why the fuck would you limit yourselves to Flats and only Flats, as a matter of law and policy?
They don't limit officially. Genefixing is available to general population. So 100% of population can become splicers. Other biomorphs can be acquired through licensing or by working in a position where you absolutely need one.

here. Seems like the 80% figure comes from rimward

'The vast majority of Jovians (over 80%) retain
their original bodies. In fact, our Republic offers
a signifiant reward to anyone who still has their
birth body that relocates and becomes a Jovian
citizen. Many are genefied (splicers), though some
refuse out of religious objection. '

Yep. A little later he talks about how people with works needing special mods/morphs can get them by going through bureaucracy.

What makes the Jovians luddites is they claim they're all about a slow progression of tech, of making sure its all safe and sound before its put to use (a fine and laudable policy) but then ban and restrict something as simple and well understood as a cleaner swarm.
The Jovians are luddits not because they restrict the upper bounds of transhuman technology (indeed a lot of other more liberal polities have similar policies) but its the way they apply the same restrictions to the lower bounds as well. For example, genetic engineering. From the Jovian perspective its not safe because while you might be free of disease you're awesome super-immune body could be the unwitting host for diseases that can cripple a flat that you simply don't notice. Its the extremes of "well this MIGHT happen, so EVERYTHING that COULD lead to it is banned"

Are you sure its actually an Ayah, and not some worker pod with the bare minimum upgrades to make it pass as an Ayah?
Either that or its potentially hot, or was used for some weird stuff by the former owner. There's a 'bodyguard' variant of the Ayah out there, plus the possibility of it being a custom job for the same purpose. Make sure you're getting what you think you're getting, then go for the Ayah. No one looks at the nanny, especially if its got weird robot parts you can't fug

So basically a cancer ridden pod, a basilisk hacked exsurgent trying to make you buy an infected securitron and an Ayah with insane muse that hogged up part of the brain and now proclaims itself Queen Elizabeth 117 and has at least 90 in programming related skils and an antimatter bomb in skull ?

Well, those are all possibilities, yeah.

The owner sent us a proof of purchase from the Invatch conglomerate; we've checked it back against hypercorp records and it's a legitimite purchase of the Ayah about six years ago, and the purchaser then matches the identity of the guy we're buying from, so we're fairly sure it's actually an Ayah, so our guess is weird stuff.

>wouldn't that be what you mostly get when you don't reproduce with an exowomb?

Yeah, but you don't need an exowomb. You could just use a good ol'-fashioned womb, unless you specifically want to grow a specific morph independent from other individuals.

Which you obviously don't, in this case.

>Considering most people who like Eclipse Phase aren't socialist anarchists
Speak for yourself, capitalist swine!

As an IRL anarchist, it's not really an ideology for me but rather an end goal. Anarchy is the theory of a perfect society that overcomes the troubles of life and become something greater. Anarchy for me isn't the solution to poverty, corruption, inequality. It's the outcome of overcoming them. Is it realistic? Maybe not, but we haven't advanced as a species by accepting our fate as animals, and I think that's what EP tries to get to, we solve our problems or we die. If anarchy doesn't work, than we find a way to make it work.

There always has to be someone cheering for the losing team.

Is it okay to play as an infomorph and never sleeve into a physical morph or an eidolon?

Honestly, I don't see anyone winning at the "end" of Eclipse Phase.

You ask as if it's a moral thing.