Cloning?

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Feretto
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Cloning?

Post by Feretto »

So, why nobody of the belligerents consider using clones in war? Maybe it's unsuitable for Loroi, yeah, they have very high natural reproduction rate, but what about Umiak? They're already using cyborgs and pay little attention to individuality, I can easely imagine them using clones en-masse (or maybe it is already so?).
And can humanity use such technology in coming war to countervail it's lack of soldiers?

fredgiblet
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Re: Cloning?

Post by fredgiblet »

At the moment the Loroi are assuming that the Umiak are using some sort of cloning method as the only means of keeping up with losses. The Loroi don't because they don't need to, unless you clone a fully grown and trained adult their ACTUAL reproductive system is pretty close in efficiency, and a cloned adult Loroi would likely end up highly underdeveloped in regards to Psi.

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bunnyboy
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Re: Cloning?

Post by bunnyboy »

Cloning aren't instamatic human copymachine.
You still need rent a womb for 9 month, 6 year training for primary motorical and social functions and same education as anybody else.
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Ktrain
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Re: Cloning?

Post by Ktrain »

There are also genetic limitation for clones (those dang chromosome caps that degenerate), as it is now the only things that really can be cloned without "deterioration" are plants (I once saw a documentary about agave plants cloned for making Tequila: Tequila always a bad idea).

The Umiaks are monogendered and cloning might work for them, but they might still need genetic material from two or more donors to have viable offspring. Either there is some sort of artificial insemination process or Umiaks have a naturally high birth rate, but I doubt battlefield casualties from this war wouldn't really hurt most species since a very small portion of the populations should (theoretically) be in the actual navies. Population and production are a more pressing concern, planetary attacks are a greater problem. Logistics is the issue not manpower.

Furthermore, are Umiaks live birth creatures or do they come from eggs or something similar?
OUTSIDER UPDATE => HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED?

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Rosen_Ritter_1
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Re: Cloning?

Post by Rosen_Ritter_1 »

I can't quite comprehend why everyone assumes that all artificial test tube reproduction has to be cloning. It seems incredibly redundant, since there's very little utility in producing an entire population of individuals who are EXACTLY the same. A better model for that kind of assembly line people manufacturing would be what they had in Brave new world, that involved mixing sperm/egg together in a facility on an industrial scale and just growing the babies in test tubes. There was no need for fancy cloning techniques.

Now then. We don't know if the Umiak are using artificial reproduction or not. In fact, barely anything is known about regular Umiak reproduction. So lets focus on the Loroi.


The Loroi already have rather rapid breeding time compared to Humans. 90% of their population can be impregnated, and their young reach maturity at around 10. The Loroi in fact severely restricted breeding due to how fast they could reproduce prior to the wars casualties resuscitating allowing more replacements to be bred. So they're already producing quite allot of warriors.


So why not go all the way out and start assembly line producing test tube babies on a massive scale? While a birthing factory can pop out tens of millions of new Loroi, it's not going to pop out equipment, weapons and starship for tens of millions of Loroi to use. This is a high tech space war where large masses of people by themselves are useless. There's no reason to waste industry to producing huge masses of extra personell that you can't equip.

AndrejaKo
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Re: Cloning?

Post by AndrejaKo »

Wait a second....


Isn't it mentioned in the Insider that Umiak are probably mass-producing grunts?
The Umiak have only a single gender, and while unmodified individuals are still reproductively viable, little is known about the details of their reproductive practices. Indeed, it is suspected that they may have entirely abandoned their natural life cycle; judging by the ease with which they replace losses and their apparent lack of concern for the safety of individuals, it seems likely that the Umiak now rely substantially or wholly on artificial forms of reproduction.

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Ktrain
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Re: Cloning?

Post by Ktrain »

I feel that article is meant to imply that there are many unverified rumors concerning the Umiak; the Umiak may be heavily collectivist and value the welfare of the whole over the individual as a culture. The Russians threw away millions of lives in the Great Patriotic War; there they devalued individual lives over achieving outcomes and Russian manpower seemed limitless (is was not). That quotation is nothing more than a rumor based on speculation. Societal structure and values can describe such behaviors just as well as "artificial reproduction."

Sorry I am an Umiak apologist; they might be the most sad people, alienated from their own nature.
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osmium
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Re: Cloning?

Post by osmium »

I believe the phrase in the insider is something like "the Umiak are believed to partially or completely rely upon artificial reproduction methods".

Only point I'll make here is enzymes vs catalysts. Enzymes in general do the same job just better, I would expect Loroi to naturally do better than whatever artificial method can be concocted. On the other hand the Umiak rarely want what would happen naturally, they want gravity tolerant big brutes and heavily genetically engineer their troops. As a result I'd *expect* them to rely on artificial methods that will make it easier to accomplish said alterations reliably.

-O

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Mjolnir
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Re: Cloning?

Post by Mjolnir »

osmium wrote:Only point I'll make here is enzymes vs catalysts. Enzymes in general do the same job just better, I would expect Loroi to naturally do better than whatever artificial method can be concocted. On the other hand the Umiak rarely want what would happen naturally, they want gravity tolerant big brutes and heavily genetically engineer their troops. As a result I'd *expect* them to rely on artificial methods that will make it easier to accomplish said alterations reliably.
Enzymes are catalysts. Specifically, that subset of catalysts that are proteins, generally produced biologically. They're not inherently better or worse, just easy for squishy biological things to make in countless varieties via their protein synthesis machinery.

Apart from that, I have no idea just what analogy you're trying to make...your ultimate point seems to be that the Umiak have more to gain by artificial reproduction. Correct?

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bunnyboy
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Re: Cloning?

Post by bunnyboy »

All this talk got me remember something.
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osmium
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Re: Cloning?

Post by osmium »

Mjolnir wrote:
osmium wrote:Only point I'll make here is enzymes vs catalysts. Enzymes in general do the same job just better, I would expect Loroi to naturally do better than whatever artificial method can be concocted. On the other hand the Umiak rarely want what would happen naturally, they want gravity tolerant big brutes and heavily genetically engineer their troops. As a result I'd *expect* them to rely on artificial methods that will make it easier to accomplish said alterations reliably.
Enzymes are catalysts. Specifically, that subset of catalysts that are proteins, generally produced biologically. They're not inherently better or worse, just easy for squishy biological things to make in countless varieties via their protein synthesis machinery.

Apart from that, I have no idea just what analogy you're trying to make...your ultimate point seems to be that the Umiak have more to gain by artificial reproduction. Correct?
I'll elaborate. I probably should have said general chemistry rather than catalysts as it's a clearer delineation;the point was that the chemistry analog, catalysts, usually won't be available to do the same job an enzyme would, and hence chemistry utilizes higher temperatures and pressure to accomplish the same task that an enzyme might. A good example is nitrogen fixing bacteria (room temp, 1 ATM) vs Haber process (what like 300-500C and like ~2ATM?). So for the Loroi they have a naturally tailored biology so unless said biology did not adequately provide enough throughput they would unlikely see any gains (and in fact would probably see a reduction in efficiency) from using artificial methods (saying nothing of the whole psionics thing). On the Umiak hand, they already want to tinker with their genetics so I think that the difficulty of doing so "naturally" would outweigh the limitations of using artificial methods. To me this is analogous to using an enzyme vs chemistry. If the enzyme already does what you want it's likely a very efficient if not the most efficient route to that end (provided it can provide the throughput which in this case is birth rate & fertile child bearers), if the naturally occurring enzyme doesn't do what you want you're already going to have to do some chemistry in which case not only is that process unlikely to not denature the enzyme in question but the changes your making may very well not play nicely with the original system, which is sort of analogous to the steps you would have to take to bring a heavily genetically modified creature "to term" so to speak.

I could probably continue babbling but that's the general idea.
-O

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Arioch
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Re: Cloning?

Post by Arioch »

I'm guessing what Feretto means when he says "cloning" is "growing a fully-adult copy in a vat". Which I don't think is very easy to do, even at Loroi/Umiak tech levels. But even if it was, that fully-adult copy would be a mindless sack of meat, useful perhaps only for organ donation. Unless you had some kind of brain-taping, which I again don't think is easy to do at this tech level.

The reason the Loroi don't use real cloning (which just produces a fertilized egg) or other types of in vitro fertilization is that you still need a surrogate mother to bring the baby to term, so there's no advantage as opposed to normal sexual fertilization. I suppose they could have civilian mothers carry warrior-gene children as surrogates, but I don't think that's a stigma that Loroi warrior culture could get past. And the Loroi like their sexual reproduction just fine; they don't want their mating rights taken away. :)

As Ktrain alludes to, the Umiak are exoskeletal and therefore must have egg-like sacs to allow for external development of the fetus (there's no room for this inside the exoskeleton). Since the prenatal sacs have to be externally incubated anyway, and Umiak reproduction isn't limited by the need for a mother to carry the fetus to term, and since the Umiak do a lot of gene-tailoring to boot, it's a much easier step for the Umiak to just cut the sex part out altogether, to industrialize reproduction and dramatically increase growth rates, when necessary.

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