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Forks vs. Backups

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Sun, 2009-10-25 20:36
#1
shogun42 shogun42's picture
Forks vs. Backups
Does creating a Fork require an ego bridge? The boko says that a fork is created by "Taking a backup of a transhuman mind, copying it, and reinstancing it as an infomorph is called forking." Which implies that a backup needs to be made first, presumably using an ego bridge. (p.273) However, it also states that a fork can "be created by copying and running an infomorph (from a backup, infomorph, synthmorph cyberbrain, or directly from the cortical stack)." and implies that forks are created "on the fly", which suggests that you can create a fork more or less instantly directly from the cortical stack. If this doesn't require an ego bridge, can't a character effectively re-instantiate as an infomorph at will by simply creating an alpha fork "on the fly".
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Mon, 2009-10-26 01:11
HappyDaze HappyDaze's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
Perhaps, but unlike with a cyberbrain, there's no way to quick delete the copy of you on the biological brain you leave behind - so that's why it's treated as a fork and not just as you reinstantiating yourself.
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Mon, 2009-10-26 14:20
shogun42 shogun42's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
That's just semantics. If you can create a fork "on the fly", ie without an ego bridge, you can create a full fledged infomorph version of yourself every second (the cortical stack backs you up 86,400 times per day). Provided you have a handy simulspace or server connected to the mesh, you can upload yourself as in informorph more-or-less at will. Why bother with a backup at all?
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Mon, 2009-10-26 15:21
Buhallin Buhallin's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
For the same reason most people don't fork themselves excessively - divergence. A fork is a fully active copy of your mind. As time goes, it diverges slightly from your personality. More importantly, it probably wants to know why YOU get to ride around in the morph, while it's stuck lingering in virual space as an infomorph. I can see this leading to some interesting conflict between forks if someone tried it. Farscape had an ongoing story segment with a similar theme (physical copy, not mental) starting with the episode 'Eat Me' in the third season. It was a good look at this. If you're asking why you need backups when you can create a fork to use as a backup just before death... I don't think there's a distinction there. If the source of the backup/fork is the cortical stack, the information still has to get back to wherever they're going to resleeve you.
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Mon, 2009-10-26 15:44
shogun42 shogun42's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
So, in answer to my question, an ego bridge is not required to create a fork? An informoph copy of your ego can be forked directly from the cortical stack? (This of course assumes you have somewhere to put the fork and run it from, such as a ghostrider module, cyberbrain, simulspace, server, etc.)
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Mon, 2009-10-26 18:11
fimbulwinter fimbulwinter's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
My understanding is that the nanites that maintain the cortical stack's backup are the same as an ego bridge's, it just has access to your brain (and thus your mind-state) constantly from the inside. Even if you have a cortical stack, you need an ego bridge to get the backup out of it (pg 268) and so I'd assume to get a backup, you need an ego bridge. SO...if that's true, then I'd rule that you need an ego bridge to get a useable backup onto a computer able to run it as an infomorph...which is really what a fork is, right? Just an infomorph version of one's ego run from a copied backup.
—
I am a feminist, a nominalist,a pacifist, a meritocrat, a 10th level greengrocer, and as full of shit as 50 horses. I cannot be killed. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or num
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Tue, 2009-10-27 16:57
JLongden JLongden's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
Buhallin wrote:
For the same reason most people don't fork themselves excessively - divergence.
Okay, I just needed to quote that out of context. Carry on. It's been one of those days. :)
—
[Size=2]"The great thing about the internet is its leveling effect; online all opinions are equally WORTHLESS."-- Grant Morrison[/size]
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Fri, 2009-10-30 20:57
Bloodwork Bloodwork's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
Forking is pretty much instantaneous unless you want to do mental pruning before setting it loose. However the fork is a program and can't inhabit a biological morph without an ego bridge. Mental uploading and resleeving both require an ego bridge and takes time.
—
That which doesn't kill you usually succeeds on the second attempt.
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Sat, 2009-10-31 01:42
morolen morolen's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
Here is a question that came up about forking, what is stopping the combat focused charecter from makeing an army of cheap synthmorph clones of himself and more to the point, if peoples control of the mind has gotten so good that they can do mental pruning, why cant they also do the "i know kung-fu" or make perfectly loyal forks? Our solution was to only ever allow alpha forking, the technology to do mental pruning, and thus "i know kung-fu" and loyaly chipping.
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Sat, 2009-10-31 03:11
shogun42 shogun42's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
Except that you clearly don't ALWAYS need an ego bridge to get a backup out of the cortical stack. The farcaster (p306) sends one every 48 hours (or just before you melt your cortical stack with antimatter). The Multitasking metal augmentation creates "up to 2 forks at a time to handle various mental tasks" (p307) Assuming you also had a ghostrider module, there's no real reason why you couldn't stash the most recent of these forks in your own head every few seconds or even send it as a file over the mesh to someone else's ghostrider module (with proper handshaking and authentication of course), or even via access jack to a waiting cyberbrain. Even if the implication is that it requires specialized hardware to create and/or offload a fork from the cortical stack, it still doesn't always require an ego bridge. Loading a fork INTO the cortical stack (merging) only requires a mnemonic augmentation (p275). Under the forking rules on page 274, it states quite explicitly that "most forking is done on the fly- something comes up that the character needs a fork for, so they whip one up on the spot". Whipping one up on the spot certainly doesn't sound like it requires an ego bridge. Of course, the rules for backups are pretty explicit about needing an ego bridge, so it looks like the basic rules seem to suggest that creating a backup requires an ego bridge while creating a fork does not; which doesn't make any sense if the only real difference between a backup and a fork is whether or not it's currently being emulated in a "virtual brain state" (p272).
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Sat, 2009-10-31 12:14
verdra verdra's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
after rereading that section it seems the main purpose of an ego bridge is not creating backups but to put backup egos into pods and biomorphs. people probably use ego bridges for backups because it insure the integrity of the backup and reduces the chance of ego-napping because the transfer is done on a hardline which prevents any complications of transferring it over the mesh(i don't think the cortical stack has any direct connections to the outside) .
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Sun, 2009-11-01 23:13
Bloodwork Bloodwork's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
Re-reading the gear descriptions is starting to confuse me. It indicates the cortical stack is closed off from all other systems but then says forking creates a copy from the cortical stack. I'm interpreting that the cortical stack data is a backup but the tech differs in that it does not create a complete copy from scratch every second (or whatever) it is continuously updating one copy as it detects changes. It does seem that you need an ego bridge to get a brain map from the cortical stack or even a synth brain although it's instantaneous. The ghost rider module can house a fork or a backed-up ego but I thought an alpha fork is the same as a full infomorph. And if it can access the mesh, it could just dump itself somewhere else online, bypassing the need for the ego bridge uploading. My logic processors have hit a wall on this one.
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That which doesn't kill you usually succeeds on the second attempt.
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Tue, 2009-11-03 15:11
Haxar Haxar's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
This is pretty tricky but I think it works like this. When you create a fork, you create a backup of yourself with the cortical stack but instead of sending it via farcaster, you send it to another device capable of storing and presumably running an ego. You can't put it directly onto the mesh, the mesh can't run it. To put it onto a personal computer, server, synthmorph or anything else that's purely cybernetic, you need a physical connection like an access jack. You could use an ego bridge to upload the fork to those as long as it's connected to them, and people do when resleeving, but you don't need to because they can be modified to run an ego easily. You do need an ego bridge to send the fork to a biomorph or pod because nanites from the bridge prepare the morph brain to work with the ego. Otherwise, it isn't capable of storing and running that ego. I'd say merging can be done without an egobridge as long as you haven't been separate for very long, maybe a day. The difference between backing up and creating a fork is this: nothing except what you do with it. A backup is a copy of the ego sent to a storage device, a fork is sent to a device that can run it too. If you have a computer/server connected to the storage device or acting as one, you can create a Fork by radio. Creating and sending a backup is part of what the stack-caster combo does so is instantaneous. It takes more time for forking because the cortical stack isn't going to do it automatically, it has to be instructed on what do send or not send and where to. I think the 'on the fly' comment is to describe an attitude to it rather than how easy it is. People don't have a set of delta forks pre-built to do a set of jobs, they see a need for one and create it there and then. For example, you need to infiltrate a hypercorp building but also need to keep an eye on the front door and make sure no one follows you in. You make a beta fork, upload it to the system, give it instructions then wander off. Later, you come back and merge with it. Or shoot the computer it's on, either's good. And if that's all wrong, well, I'll run it that way anyway :)
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Tue, 2009-11-03 15:37
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
morolen wrote:
Here is a question that came up about forking, what is stopping the combat focused charecter from makeing an army of cheap synthmorph clones of himself and more to the point, if peoples control of the mind has gotten so good that they can do mental pruning, why cant they also do the "i know kung-fu" or make perfectly loyal forks? Our solution was to only ever allow alpha forking, the technology to do mental pruning, and thus "i know kung-fu" and loyaly chipping.
Nothing, in particular. In fact, a criminal organization of the game (Pax Familae, if memory serves) is made up wholly of one woman and her multitude of forks. As for why they can't do "I know kung-fu", they can in the form of Skillware. Perfectly loyal forks isn't a possibility because a fork is an individual. You can program loyalty in them, but that doesn't mean they aren't capable of fighting their programming.
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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Tue, 2009-11-03 20:02
morolen morolen's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
Sorry to do the lame bullet point reply thing ;) “[i]Nothing, in particular. In fact, a criminal organization of the game (Pax Familae, if memory serves) is made up wholly of one woman and her multitude of forks.[/i]” I contest that this is lame from a game design standpoint since it marginalizes the PC’s “special snowflake” factor and regardless of genre the SS factor must prevail. Why have one skilled hacker/medic/fighter/pilot/whatever when you can trivially have 20 for a reasonable price. When you’re done with them you can just as easily delete/throw them out the airlock. I think either the cheap synthmorphs need to have much larger skill limitations or forks do since 10 guys with a 60 in energy weapons is still plenty scary and more to the point, rather easy to do. Though admitted it might not be particularly feasible to have 10 synths with guns, follow the party around all the time, but if discretion has been thrown to the wind, well…, a possible solution might be to make synths also take the hours of time and complex machinery that biomorphs have to suffer through so you can’t whip up an army at the drop of a hat. “[i]As for why they can't do "I know kung-fu", they can in the form of Skillware.[/i]” I hadn’t read that far yet, but now that I flipped to that section, ok, fair enough, though the 40 point maximum seems rather arbitrary, in any case Touche’. “[i]Perfectly loyal forks isn't a possibility because a fork is an individual. You can program loyalty in them, but that doesn't mean they aren't capable of fighting their programming.[/i]” Reading the description of neural pruning certainly makes it sound like creating a beta fork that is reliable and not insane or so bitter as to be useless, is impossible. The off the rack description of a beta fork sounds like it has been afflicted with a mild to severe case of Korsakoff’s Syndrome in addition to the memory that its very existence is intended to be a convenience. Not having any memories older than a year would put quite a damper on any skills(think of how long it takes to learn and master anything of use, certainly more than a year) and would again be very debilitating to the forks mental health. It sounds to me that either transhumans need greater control over neural pruning or forks need to be batshit crazy more often. As for fighting your programming, well, you can fight all you want but the memories simply aren’t there, there’s nothing to fight for, the space is empty and what’s worse you know something should be there but you just can’t recall what it was… Barring these particular points (well one more about how godly speed is but that’s a rules debate rather than a fluff one) I really like the game, but from a campaign building perspective I need to clear these up in my head before I can make sense of it.
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Sat, 2009-11-07 02:53
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
morolen wrote:
I contest that this is lame from a game design standpoint since it marginalizes the PC’s “special snowflake” factor and regardless of genre the SS factor must prevail. Why have one skilled hacker/medic/fighter/pilot/whatever when you can trivially have 20 for a reasonable price. When you’re done with them you can just as easily delete/throw them out the airlock. I think either the cheap synthmorphs need to have much larger skill limitations or forks do since 10 guys with a 60 in energy weapons is still plenty scary and more to the point, rather easy to do. Though admitted it might not be particularly feasible to have 10 synths with guns, follow the party around all the time, but if discretion has been thrown to the wind, well…, a possible solution might be to make synths also take the hours of time and complex machinery that biomorphs have to suffer through so you can’t whip up an army at the drop of a hat.
If you know that you plan to delete a fork as you create it, do note that your fork will probably also know that you intend to delete it. Remember that forks are living creatures in the same manner as the player character, and may not react well to the idea that their lives are evanescent or valueless. Moreover, remember that you have to have a body for every fork you create if you want to be so intimidating... and bodies aren't exactly cheap.
morolen wrote:
Reading the description of neural pruning certainly makes it sound like creating a beta fork that is reliable and not insane or so bitter as to be useless, is impossible. The off the rack description of a beta fork sounds like it has been afflicted with a mild to severe case of Korsakoff’s Syndrome in addition to the memory that its very existence is intended to be a convenience. Not having any memories older than a year would put quite a damper on any skills(think of how long it takes to learn and master anything of use, certainly more than a year) and would again be very debilitating to the forks mental health. It sounds to me that either transhumans need greater control over neural pruning or forks need to be batshit crazy more often. As for fighting your programming, well, you can fight all you want but the memories simply aren’t there, there’s nothing to fight for, the space is empty and what’s worse you know something should be there but you just can’t recall what it was… Barring these particular points (well one more about how godly speed is but that’s a rules debate rather than a fluff one) I really like the game, but from a campaign building perspective I need to clear these up in my head before I can make sense of it.
Memories older than a year would be direct sensory memory, not the basic muscular memory that most physical skills rely on, or the trivial memory that most mental skills rely on. Mental pruning is largely intended as a means to reduce the security risk that a fork would normally be as a result of it being a copy of a mind; by removing most memories short of the past year, it removes many aspects of the original ego's identity... effectively creating a new being altogether. This is an integral component of a society where identity is the only true possession. As for fighting your programming, the memories don't need to be there in the first place. If you know you are a manufactured mind, and that you are only a copy of someone, it's probably going to breed a rebellious desire in some cases (not all). It's akin to a child rebelling against it's parent; you don't need a lifetime's worth of memories for that to happen.
—
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Sat, 2009-11-07 14:37
Bloodwork Bloodwork's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
The problem with alpha-forking is the fork knows exactly what you're going to do with it. A good thing to do with a player who likes to alpha-fork is actually transfer their character TO the fork. So suddenly they are on the receiving end facing someone who wants them to perform some task and then delete them. When I think about alpha-forking it reminds me of The Prestige where he creates copies of himself and even The 6th Day where the bad guy meets his own clone and realises he's a huge jerk. Please correct me if I'm wrong but I think it says somewhere that the beta-, etc forks actually [i]want[/i] to re-intergrate because they are incomplete copies.
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That which doesn't kill you usually succeeds on the second attempt.
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Mon, 2009-11-09 10:00
Ferretz Ferretz's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
Hi, Just want to chime in here. I have a couple of questions about this, and I guess at least some have the same questions, so here goes: -If you make a fork, what decides where your character is? What decides if you play the fork or the original? Who has the "awareness"? Or is the awareness in both places at once? -Let's say that you die, and people can't find your cortical stack. They activate a backup, and you start playing that as your character. But then you find your own body, and the cortical stack. Can you use this cortical stack and merge it into your current backup? Will this restore memory to the backup from the cortical stack? Cheers, E.
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"I can’t talk to a man who bears an undeserved animosity towards ferrets."

-GRAHAM CHAPMAN (1941-89)

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Mon, 2009-11-09 16:03
Ramidel Ramidel's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
1. Both sides of the fork are fully aware and conscious. If it's a beta or delta fork, you play the original. If it's an alpha fork...By default, you play the one you want to play, but that's dicey and does nasty things to your sanity. There's a reason people don't do it much; alphas can be rebellious. 2. Treat it the same as you would any other merge.
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Sat, 2009-11-21 22:00
morolen morolen's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
Decivre wrote:
If you know that you plan to delete a fork as you create it, do note that your fork will probably also know that you intend to delete it. Remember that forks are living creatures in the same manner as the player character, and may not react well to the idea that their lives are evanescent or valueless. Moreover, remember that you have to have a body for every fork you create if you want to be so intimidating... and bodies aren't exactly cheap.
Synths are only in the High price category, peanuts for a party to acquire and arm a slew of them. While I agree completely that forks wouldn't take kindly to being "Throw Away Souls™" (as our game has come to semi affectionately call them) what if you made them only when [i]Shit Just Got Real[/i] and it was a true life or death situation. Then they would all know that it was fight or die time and would have some incentive to not betray you and your friends, who are their friends as well. Our alpha fork solution has fixed this mainly by the Character knowing that if even one of his bonus selves gets captured then all his secrets could get out and that alone is enough reason to prevent PCs (and by extension evil hypercorp/merc group) from getting their one man army on.
Decivre wrote:
Memories older than a year would be direct sensory memory, not the basic muscular memory that most physical skills rely on, or the trivial memory that most mental skills rely on. Mental pruning is largely intended as a means to reduce the security risk that a fork would normally be as a result of it being a copy of a mind; by removing most memories short of the past year, it removes many aspects of the original ego's identity... effectively creating a new being altogether. This is an integral component of a society where identity is the only true possession. As for fighting your programming, the memories don't need to be there in the first place. If you know you are a manufactured mind, and that you are only a copy of someone, it's probably going to breed a rebellious desire in some cases (not all). It's akin to a child rebelling against it's parent; you don't need a lifetime's worth of memories for that to happen.
Ok so then only skills that are Active,Physical and Active,Combat because every other skill in the game requires more then a small amount of book learnin' and as the section on neural pruning states "at best memories may be handled in broad clumps, typically grouped by time periods no finer then 6 months". This insinuates that if you want your beta to be a good negotiator alot of spare memories would get caught up in it and that's only for one skill. But lets assume for some reason that neural pruning is discreet enough to be able to pick out JUST the parts necessary for the quite complex tasks of things like social and knowledge skills. Then why isnt it fine enough to make perfectly loyal forks since to the point of view of the forking program/physician memories of sitting in the classroom learning things about chemistry(a knowledge skill) and memories of your first kiss(obviously not important to the fork) are exactly the same and in fact may be heavily intertwined?
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Thu, 2009-11-26 00:12
Artiamus Artiamus's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
Decivre wrote:
In fact, a criminal organization of the game (Pax Familae, if memory serves) is made up wholly of one woman and her multitude of forks.
So pretty much she did what Bhaal did during Stargate? Make copies of herself, even if people kill 'her' she's still out there running around, in different locations at once. Also, could you make a fork of yourself and then 'hive mind' yourself and the fork?
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Wed, 2009-12-02 22:57
GMJoe GMJoe's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
I say sure, you can create a fork on-the-fly - if you have the hardware for it. Apart from the multi-taking augmentation and the emergency farcaster (p307), the only way to get data from a cortical stack is to pry it from your cold, dead neck (or possibly warm and bleeding, see p268). It would also be possible to whip up a fork from a stored backup, but I wouldn't reccomend it. You'd have the 'lost time' problem associated with backups, so the fork'd be kind of stressed out, plus the effective amount of divergence would be greater, making re-integration more difficult. On the 'deleting forks' thing - why? I doubt most forks would like the idea, and re-integration isn't difficult if you have the hardware to make a fork in the first place. ...Maybe I'm mistaken, but I think some of the confusion might be arising from the various timeframes involved in making backups and such. Here's my reading: Uploading a non-active copy of an ego from a funtioning biological brain: 10 minutes (p269) Uploading a non-active copy of an ego from a funtioning partially-biological (pod) brain: 5 minutes (p269) Uploading a non-active copy of an ego from a funtioning synthetic (cyberbrain) brain: Instantanious (p269) Uploading a non-active copy of an ego from a cortical stack: Instantanious (p269) Uploading a non-active copy of an ego from a dead brain: ~2 hours (p269) Making a copy of a backup: Instantanious (As with all copying that doesn't involve light-speed lag) Copying an ego from one cyberbrain to another, optionally deleting the original: 1 action turn (p271) Copying an infomorph, optionally deleting the original: 1 action turn (p272) Popping a cortical stack out of someone: 1 minute task action (p268) Pruning a backup to make a beta fork: 1 minute (p273) or 1 month (p274) Pruning a backup to make a delta fork: 1 action turn (p274) or 1 week (274) Booting up a cyberbrain or infomorph: 1 action turn (p271) Merging into a biological brain: As uploading from biological brain. (p275) Merging into a pod brain: As uploading from biological brain. (p275) Merging into cyberbrain: As uploading from cyberbrain (p275) Note that uploading from a biological brain takes time because you have to give the nanobots time to crawl all over it. The multi-tasking augmentation does specifically state that it draws it's copy from a cortical stack, but merging the forks would have to involve the biological brain, taking the standard 10 minutes.
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Fri, 2010-01-22 18:18
RobBoyle RobBoyle's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
We clarify some of the forking stuff in the errata. To break it down, creating a fork is essentially the same as uploading. If you want an alpha fork, you can copy an existing backup or infomorph, upload immediately from a synthmorph cyberbrain, scan a biomorph's mind using an ego bridge (taking 10 minutes), or scan a removed cortical stack with an ego bridge. If you want a beta fork, you take an alpha fork and trim it down with neural pruning. If you want a delta, you can take an alpha fork and trim it down with neural pruning too. If you're scanning from a biomorph with an ego bridge, it just takes you 1 minute, since you don't need to copy the whole ego. Yes, this means that infomorphs and synthmorphs have an advantage of sorts for forking, because they can whip one up immediately and don't need an ego bridge to do it. Most biomorphs probably keep a (beta or delta) fork of themselves on hand in storage, however, which they can call up quickly. It won't be up-to-date with their memories, but they can always fill it in on the important details. (Note, if you want biomorphs to be able to spin off forks easily too, then you could say that they can pull a personality overlay for a delta fork at any time from their cortical stack. This contradicts other stuff we have about the cortical stack being isolated for security, but *insert handwaving here*. Alternately, you make that a function of mnemonic augmentation.)
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Rob Boyle :: Posthuman Studios

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Fri, 2010-01-22 21:09
morolen morolen's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
I still think there is a rather large disconnect between what neural pruning says it can and cannot do. I still dislike the idea of pruned forks, but perhaps im the only one that thinks this way. In any case I look forward to more stuff written on what is a rather central part of the game. :D
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Sat, 2010-01-23 14:44
Bloodwork Bloodwork's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
RobBoyle wrote:
This contradicts other stuff we have about the cortical stack being isolated for security, but *insert handwaving here*.
You could just say the cortical stack is strictly read-only.
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That which doesn't kill you usually succeeds on the second attempt.
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Thu, 2010-01-28 17:54
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
morolen wrote:
Synths are only in the High price category, peanuts for a party to acquire and arm a slew of them. While I agree completely that forks wouldn't take kindly to being "Throw Away Souls™" (as our game has come to semi affectionately call them) what if you made them only when [i]Shit Just Got Real[/i] and it was a true life or death situation. Then they would all know that it was fight or die time and would have some incentive to not betray you and your friends, who are their friends as well. Our alpha fork solution has fixed this mainly by the Character knowing that if even one of his bonus selves gets captured then all his secrets could get out and that alone is enough reason to prevent PCs (and by extension evil hypercorp/merc group) from getting their one man army on.
1500-9999 with an average cost of 5000 isn't particularly "peanuts" in value, unless you are vastly over-paying your players for every mission. Moreover, one has to factor in availability and access; bulk synth purchases are likely contracted to mines and factories, and not something that the average player can do... not to mention that shipping such a large quantity of morphs to one location runs the chance of raising suspicion. The logistical needs of trying to put together the metaphorical one-man army are vast, and generally outside the realm of what players are capable of until much... much later into the game.
morolen wrote:
Ok so then only skills that are Active,Physical and Active,Combat because every other skill in the game requires more then a small amount of book learnin' and as the section on neural pruning states "at best memories may be handled in broad clumps, typically grouped by time periods no finer then 6 months". This insinuates that if you want your beta to be a good negotiator alot of spare memories would get caught up in it and that's only for one skill. But lets assume for some reason that neural pruning is discreet enough to be able to pick out JUST the parts necessary for the quite complex tasks of things like social and knowledge skills. Then why isnt it fine enough to make perfectly loyal forks since to the point of view of the forking program/physician memories of sitting in the classroom learning things about chemistry(a knowledge skill) and memories of your first kiss(obviously not important to the fork) are exactly the same and in fact may be heavily intertwined?
If you read the section, you'll note that all skills (knowledge and active) and even aptitudes take a decent hit after pruning for either beta or delta forks. Obviously, the effects of pruning on past experience were taken into account. While you can try to program loyalty in your forks via psychosurgery, it's about as reliable as trying to program loyalty in any random chosen victim (it would be a psychosurgery test for the Behavioral Control modification). But such attempts at mental programming are nowhere near a guarantee that it will stick (there's a chance equal to the patient's WIL * 3 that psychosurgery will be only temporary even if you succeed), or that loyalty after a successful modification is ensured (unless you are willing to take a -30 penalty to your psychosurgery test). /thread necromancy
—
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
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Sat, 2010-01-30 12:57
The Doctor The Doctor's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
Bloodwork wrote:
You could just say the cortical stack is strictly read-only.
Then you could not back up into the module.
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Sat, 2010-01-30 14:42
Bloodwork Bloodwork's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
Ah, in that case just say it's [i]magic[/i].
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Wed, 2010-02-17 06:38
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Forks vs. Backups
RobBoyle wrote:
(Note, if you want biomorphs to be able to spin off forks easily too, then you could say that they can pull a personality overlay for a delta fork at any time from their cortical stack. This contradicts other stuff we have about the cortical stack being isolated for security, but *insert handwaving here*. Alternately, you make that a function of mnemonic augmentation.)
Actually, Rob, I think a better choice for an implant which allows biomorphs to whip up forks would be the Multi-Tasking implant. It already essentially creates Alpha Forks, and has internal access to the cortical stack. Basically it would be a matter of programming it with a Beta or Delta fork pruning template and disabling the automated merge feature in order to make it produce forks as you deem fit.
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