A Game of Clones

Cloning is one of the most misunderstood concepts in EVE for new players. There are two types; medical and jump clone. You get one at the medical service in station, and you get the other… in the medical service in station. When you get podded you get sent back to your clone, but which clone?

There are few tutorials to set you straight. Here are some: EVElopedia, EVE Uni

Notice both medical and jump clone topics are covered together and usually the jump clone gets all the coverage. Also note guides sometimes they disagree because some are outdated and the rules have changed and will change again soon. If you know of a good resource for current cloning mechanics, please leave them in the comments.

Coming Changes

Recently, as part of the “slowing long distance travel” changes medical clones have come back into the spotlight. For a long time they were the “pod express”: Pilots would self-destruct. If their clone was in the right place, they’d wake up where they wanted to be. This will no longer be possible. A pilot must travel to given location to buy medical clone for that location.

Oddly CCP closed the loophole for all but the newest players. The given reason was that CCP supports any effort to get people into nullsec. In reality this was a capitulation to certain alliances (Goons, Test, Brave) because they allow brand new players to join them. Most other nullsec alliances require a few million skill points (SP) before being considered.

Medical Clone

Besides EVE lore the medical clone mechanic, as far as gameplay is concerned, is puzzling. What is it there for? In short, it insures your skill point progress.

1. ISK Sink – the higher the SP coverage need, the more expensive the clone fee. For someone in their 3^rd year (roughly 60 million SP) they’re probably paying 5 million each time they get podded, roughly the cost of a cruiser. If you’re a 6-year vet (120 million SP) it will be 20 million per clone, or a T2 Frigate. (full clone scale)
2. Account Maintenance – Higher experience have combat advantages so they pay a higher price. It also encourages young pilots to get their mistakes out early while it doesn’t cost much to buy a clone.
3. Ship Escalation – No one wants to replace a 20 million ISK clone after dying in a cruiser that cost half as much. Higher SP players risk bigger, pricier ships. (credit Rain6637 for point)
4. Messaging – Killing a pod in high or low sec lowers your Standings fast. It’s a good way to become person non grata in empire space. Conversely it is considered insulting to pod someone, although in nullsec it happens all the time to destroy the enemy pilots plug ins. Killboards now record these losses.
5. Psychology – Getting over being “killed” in EVE is necessary to encourage new players to risk themselves. By starting as a clone CCP constructs a separation between player and character.
6. Travel – not anymore! Pod Express is over.

None of these reasons seem all that important, especially when you compare it to the penalty for failing to secure a clone. At low levels it is just a nuisance, but for most invested players it can be catastrophic:

After the grace zone of roughly 1 million SP, you lose 5% of your total SP. That is deducted from your highest-level skill (to a cap of 50% of that skill). So if you just finished Jump Drive Calibration 5 and get killed without a clone, that 5 drops to a 4 and you have to train 3 weeks to get it back. It can happen, see this guy?

The inconvenience of finding clone services, and the scaling cost, the “is this ship worth it” decisions, create pressure to stay docked for more experience players. They park them and create low skilled pvp alts so they can enjoy the game again without the weight of slipping up.

Focused

If you’ve ever shopped for a character one of the selling points is “focused skills” which means the character is trained for a purpose without extra skill points in unnecessary areas. This is the goal – a functional alt with low overhead: Titan sitters, cap pilots, booster pilots, recon pilots, black ops, market trader, exhumer pilots, freighter pilots, etc.

The smart play for the competitive set is not to have a highly skilled character at all, but to have multiple focused characters.

Maybe CCP prefers this approach to EVE. Multiple alts mean multiple accounts (revenues), especially if you use them simultaneously. This has the added benefit of decentralizing your “persona” and thus risking your faceless characters more freely and frequently.