'AGI mind programming emulates transhuman brain patterns sufficiently well that they can be sleeved into biomorphs if they choose.' pg. 245, Core.

CodeBreaker wrote:

AGI, unlike normal AI, are based off of human neurology. As such, they are fully capable of sleeving into a biological morph. They are less of what you might imagine an AI to be (code subroutines) and more artificial (trans)humans. Which is why I sometimes chafe at people in my games when they play AGI as the stereotypical 'I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that' AI.

This has become a nasty commonality at my tables too. Apparently, if players play another character before they play an AGI, they generally play an AGI character exactly the same way they think a muse acts.

otohime1978 wrote:

That's odd. I always envisioned AGI like CABAL from Tiberium Sun. Does his job while adding in a healthy amount of snarky commentary.

One of mine I portray like a cheesy tourist on their first visit to someplace new (as it has its first physical sleeve[s]). The other I portray somewhat like a non-spiritual Spock; emotionally stunted, not completely emotionless.

WooMod wrote:

Yeah, noooo. That's a person we are talking about. That person is going to want to have sex. Female combat model designed as bodyguards? Their employers are going to want to have sex too.

How many Abrams tanks do you think are built with cup holders and MP3 players? How many government-issue weapons come with zebra-print handles and a trucker-lady engraved on the barrel? Military tech tends to be functional more than enjoyable. And the Fury was likely funded originally by a military budget. I'm sure it's possible to get furies built for sex: with 5 vaginas, two penises and some octopus tentacles with tits on them… but my guess is that doesn't come stock.

Smokeskin wrote:

The Fury is not a weapon. It isn't a tool a soldier carries to combat and leaves at base when on leave. It's a morph, it's the body that the soldier will not just be fighting in, but living their entire lives in. The design considerations are VERY different from those of a tank.

Not always. In fact, I'm guessing that most soldiers who were issued a fury couldn't take them on leave. In most cases, those furies are probably issued to them, which means it isn't their property. Just because they sleeve those furies doesn't automatically mean they own them. Now, the earliest furies might have been born as furies, likely since they existed before resleeving tech did; and they might live their entire lives in them, but I doubt that most people issued a fury by military organizations are expecting to take it home whenever they like. It is still the property of the issuing organization. Unless I guess they get some indenture contract to earn that body.

Geonis wrote:

Interesting, but I feel things like private security firms, scum enforcers or even police "swap teams" would prefer to having it function with everyday life, so they can remain on call. Resleeving while responding to an urgent call would not only slow them down, but also can cause alienation and integration issues.

But that's one scenario where units might want to stay sleeved at all times, assuming of course they don't employ similar work patterns to fire department workers or touring soldiers today... where on-call workers do not go home until their extended shift/tour of duty ends. In fact, sending someone on a tour of duty is the perfect time to sleeve them into furies, as a soldier is probably egocasted wherever they are needed to begin with. There is no "home" to go back to until you make a return egocast.

Geonis wrote:

Even if they come from a factory neutered, the availability of healing vats in private sectors would make this largely an issue of half a day to reverse and renting a vat.

Healing vats are probably not as old as furies, so a neutered design could very well be a holdover from their original release.

Geonis wrote:

Lastly, females are not the only form they come in, they are just the most common. Also the pack mentality might even them suited for team based sports.

I'm pretty sure that olympians are the most likely morphs fielded for sports. Though olympians also double as low-end combat morphs according to the books.

Page 140 wrote:

I do not think they are not solely used for soldiers, since they would be suited for many other duties quite well. I would believe soldiers probably employ synth morphs (Reapers, etc.) more often than furies.

Tough to say. The Fury is explicitly stated to be a combat morph. While I'm sure it could be used for other uses (as could any sleeve), I'd imagine that the morph's focus is integral to it's design. So much so that I wouldn't be surprised if you needed special licenses to even own or sleeve into a fury. As for which is more popular, note that Reapers aren't suited for many roles, such as habitat security. It probably makes people pretty nervous when they see a Reaper in a public location, so you're more likely to see a security officer in a fury than a reaper (for the same reason that modern security officers are more likely to field a pistol or bullpup rifle than a minigun).

@Decivre What's your hangup with fury morphs having sexual characteristics and reproductive capabilities? Emotions running high is half the fun of furies!

Thampsan wrote:

Furthermore when it comes to combat efficiency the topic of psychosurgery or even forking should be noted, it isn't just about the mentality but about the individuals involved. Why multiple forks of the same reliable, trustworthy soldier aren't used I have no idea. Instead of training multiple individuals you would train one exceedingly well and then just use forks - adjust as necessary based on the success/failure of the mission.

Do you reintegrate him after every mission, compounding huge amounts of stress into the same soldier? Do you press delete on the fork when the mission is accomplished, eliminating any improvement the experience would have provided and threatening morale among the forks if they ever figure it out? Do you maintain a thousand of the same guy, and if so how do you provide incentive for each of them to keep giving it their all? What if an enemy figures out a psychological weakness of your one man army and uses it to neutralize all of them? Some organizations probably do this anyway, but it comes with it's drawbacks and a lot of weirdness.

First, if we wanted a 100% efficient soldier, we should use synthmorphs with a squishy biobrain mounted in the center to avoid the need for cyberbrains, thus difficulting body hacking. People in AF10 go two thrends: those who want to keep their humanity and people who want to cast it off (and all the layers inbetween), and morph design has been run by the first group without opposition until recently. Second: it has been stated in Sunward that several hypercorps use shuttles to commute their orbital workers from Mars' surface to the orbital "shipyards" (let me use that word even if not only spaceships are being assembled there), because using resleeving to move the egos was driving everybody mad. Translated even in game rules terms: it does not matter how much bonuses you stack, a 99 is always a (big) failure (a botch, in fact), and by probability rules the more rolls you do the more likely you will run into some of those. So it is extremely likely that 100 of every 10.000 psychosurgery interventions drive the patient mad, turns he into a psychopath or worse, so you will prefer to limit the amount of resleeving. Unless you happen to find ALL the people in Eclipse Phase that have an "at home" advantage for both a splicer (or some similar "civilian" morph) and a Fury. See the odds of that... As for the measures, I never suggested dwarf or child-size furies, average ones will just be okay (say between 1.67 and 1.77, for example). Specially since the "no advantages in a certain battlefield but no disadvantages either" tends to trump the "specialized for one battlefield only" philosophy: while a very tall and heavy soldier might have some advantages when it comes to use recoil-generating weaponry, they will be less agile in low gravity enviroments (where more mass = more inertia, thus making you a good target since your movements can be easily predicted), not to mention that in some cases smaller soldiers allow for more supporting gear in less space. Kinda the same thing Otohime said about pilots, but consider that it is pretty "stupid" to use pilots in the traditional sense of the word in AF10: you are better having a bunch of beta forks installed in your fighters without a cockpit, or using a pilot sleeved in a synthmorph (since biomorphs have more problems with changing course at high speeds than machines) that would simply encase itself in the cockpit (which would have enough space to fit the morph and cover it, and nothing more: you can control the fighter with a simulspace if you want). Shuttles will be more traditional, of course. But a shuttle filled with Reapers will fare better in a combat insertion than one with furies, because the Reapers are robust enough to survive very high gravity maneuvers to avoid AA fire...

otohime1978 wrote:

Since when? In fact, removing reproductive organs is actually detrimental to mental and physical health as androsterones and its metabolites maintain many bodily functions and promote regenerative capabilities and bone health. This is partially why pre-menopausal/andropausal people heal faster than those who are post-menopausal/andropausal, disregarding age (such as those chemically castrated). Androsterone metabolites estrone, estradiol, and estiol (the estrogens) are actually the hormones that balance and give hormonal stability, even in males. The whole mad woman because of period thing is mostly a myth. Hormone levels do change, but most of the mood swings are caused by pain. After all, your insides are essentially being torn out slowly over a week; and pain does weird things to a person.

Considering that we already have the limited means today to maintain the hormone levels of a fertile person without maintaining the fertility (currently with birth control pills), I have no doubt that this has become further enhanced with future medtech. If anything, you have given great reasons for keeping the internal organs for their hormonal regulation purposes (or a similar non-reproductive variant of those organs), but none for keeping the sexual purposes for them.

otohime1978 wrote:

Exactly. Chances are, baseline models come with sexual characteristics and organs included. Anything else would have to be custom order on part of the customer's preference. And, as you said, why would you even bother with a biomorph in the first place if you wanted 'efficiency'. That being said, almost every experiment or effort for efficiency on part of a footsoldier has generally been a failure. Look at the wiz kids and vietnam, or the british and american's traditional hatred of rapid fire (look at most firearms pre-WWII, they had magazine cut off switches and they weren't supposed to turn them off unless their commanding officer told them too because it was 'inefficient'). War, combat, it isn't exactly efficient to begin with.

There's a very obvious reason to stick with a biomorph: biochauvinism. It's rampant, and people don't like robot bodies. Otherwise, there would probably be very few infomorph masses, and the TITAN "one body for every person" program would have been finished in a few months. The primary reason I think that furies are sterile and perhaps sexless is because military forces don't benefit from pregnancy and childbirth within their ranks. There's a saying my dad used to mention when he talked about the military's attitude regarding families: "If the military wanted me to have one, they would have issued one to me." This goes doubly for the fact that furies are usually female in design... the last thing any military unit needs is for a soldier in a government-issue body to skip out of going to battle simply because they got knocked up (and since fertility is easily controlled, you know it'll be on purpose).

So let's end this derivated part of the thread... The answer is exceedingly simple: only indentures are not owners of their morphs (and special situations so short lived they are almost not worthy of being taken into consideration), and egos still see the morph as their body, not just a tool. So the security firm with Furies in the payroll is not the owner of those bodies, which means the egos inside will want to live using them, not only work. Not to mention it is much more easy to kidnap a splicer morph to psychosurgery the ego than a fury morph... Anyway, sex is part of life (even if reproduction is strictly controlled in AF 10), humans (even transhumans) need it in some way or another, be it for stress control or trust reinforcement (hell, even GitS' Kusanagi had her "intimate moments", in VR because of some reason, since in the manga she is shown as a witness to a cyborgification operation and the female body being made got genitalia). Another reason? If you face stuff like exurgents, or exhumans, you want your people to be the more human you can, to tap into all those instincts our brain has been storing for million of years. And of course, everybody wants a very strong, very fast, temper-prone weaponized amazon with lots of battle hardware at her reach to be as happy with you (her employer) as possible. Gratitude can be that small difference between accepting a bribe or refusing it, after all... Specially where money is worthless and Rep is all.

Decivre wrote:

I can't think of a single scenario where my ability to have sex will be beneficial when facing an exsurgent threat. No, seriously. Considering that the exsurgent virus is a virus, it may actually be very beneficial to face it in a body that [i]can't have sex[/i]. I'm pretty sure bodily fluids are a potential vector. The same goes for exhumans. I love being a guy and all, but I can literally think of no single scenario where I would say "I'm so glad I brought my penis to this mission, because I couldn't possibly succeed without it."

You simply aren't thinking enough like Captain Kirk, then. [/joke] But seriously, I think the manufacturers probably grow them as female and neuter in about equal numbers, knowing that some security outfits will think like that but most private owners and some other security outfits will think differently.

What's the point of having a female form factor if you don't have any reproductive organs? Breasts most often get in the way of all physical actions and combat-wise there is nothing a good hip-to-waist ratio adds to your fighting. As the corebook says nothing about the furies being in essence genitalia-less (some are males, some are females) if I was a GM I would let them have all the properties of a normal woman (+all the added cool fury stuff). If nothing else because if I was constructing a bad-ass large-breasted killer amazon, I'd give her a vagina too just so *I* could have some fun with her before handing her over to use. With implanted pleasure AI of course, wouldn't want her to say no or anything...

I admit I did make the mistake of not reading all the posts before replying. Seems like you already covered that part. :) And I didn't say it was a GOOD idea, just that it's what I would do. :) And to be honest, I think fleshlight attachments to assault rifles is something you might be able to market with a profit. I'm sure at least some soldiers would buy it!

Decivre wrote:

Lorsa wrote:

What's the point of having a female form factor if you don't have any reproductive organs? Breasts most often get in the way of all physical actions and combat-wise there is nothing a good hip-to-waist ratio adds to your fighting. As the corebook says nothing about the furies being in essence genitalia-less (some are males, some are females) if I was a GM I would let them have all the properties of a normal woman (+all the added cool fury stuff).

Because you still want them to be capable of interacting with people. A fury could be sent into a situation where human interaction is a must… whether it be the extraction of people, the protection of civilians, urban infiltration or whatever, there are plenty of scenarios where a female (or male) form factor would be necessary for a fury to fulfill its role. Being able to screw things is not quite as useful, however.

Lorsa wrote:

If nothing else because if I was constructing a bad-ass large-breasted killer amazon, I'd give her a vagina too just so *I* could have some fun with her before handing her over to use. With implanted pleasure AI of course, wouldn't want her to say no or anything...

And this would be exactly why not adding functional genitals is a good idea. I mean imagine this conversation happening today: "You know what my assault rifle needs?" "What?" "A fleshlight attachment, so I can have sex with it." ಠ_ಠ

Firstly, it's insulting to insinuate that [i]anyone[/i] would think that way. Fleshlight attachment? Seriously? Secondly, sex is far more than physical. Sex and sexuality is a spiritual event (as in it holds great psychological power); is a great way to form emotional bonding; it's a great way to relieve emotional stress. Would sex be useful during an exurgent threat? Extremely. Most exurgent viri spread via air, bodily fluids/skin contact, and visually. Chances are, if you run into an exurgent threat, you are all at high risk for infection, regardless of how much sex you have with each other. So why bother worrying about the bug, and just relieve yourselves and grow closer together? Pay attention to cults, or bonobo monkeys. It's compounding upon the pack mentality that furies are known for. Keeping the furies female helps ensure sexual drives don't get in the way of things, the male 'lower brain' from causing one to not think straight. Now, I know ego will have a lot to do with such mentalities... but it's heavily implied that the morph slowly but surely change the ego within it. If you ask me, it seems to me that you guys fear such stuff. Dunno, just how I'm seeing this situation.

Decivre wrote:

But we don't really know any discernable statistics on how many people actually "live" in a fury morph. So it's complete conjecture whether we assume everyone lives in one, or that no one lives in one. I just don't see any military force giving their soldiers furies free and clear, nor do I see someone wealthy enough to drop enough bones to buy a fury even really wanting a fury (it'd be like Paris Hilton buying up a military Humvee). Hence the reason why I think that it's probably an issue sleeve, rather than something that people often own.

I think that assumption becomes less useful the more anarchist or scum an environment you live in.

Quote:

I don't think that birth control is mesh-insert manipulated, though I could be wrong. But I also think that furies simply don't have a build capable of housing children. Not even necessarily due to an inferred sterility, but because their bodies are built for combat, rather than evolved for child-rearing.

I agree actually. It probably takes a lot of modification to make a fury capable of pregnancy. A lot of internal sacrifices likely had to be made to make room for the denser frame a Fury obviously must have.

Quote:

What purpose do breasts serve for police and sportsmen? I mean if you are going to make the argument that it is not exclusively for combat, I will agree to a point (although I will say that's what it's for), but for all the other tasks you mention in which they could be used, I don't see any particular reason you would want them to have accentuated female traits.

I would assume that the average fury has small, but noticeable breasts that won't get in the way. Some (like the person in the scum enforcer archetype picture) might get those body-sculpted for personal preference, though.

Pyrite wrote:

I think that assumption becomes less useful the more anarchist or scum an environment you live in.

Yeah, but then the question becomes how popular furies are among those populations. Oddly, I picture that the two most common social groups to field furies are going to be security outfits and criminal organizations. Most other groups probably don't have many furies at all.

Pyrite wrote:

I agree actually. It probably takes a lot of modification to make a fury capable of pregnancy. A lot of internal sacrifices likely had to be made to make room for the denser frame a Fury obviously must have.

Exactly. I just don't see childbirth as a feature they would make any effort to maintain, especially since in natural humans, it comes at the cost of so many other things.

Pyrite wrote:

I would assume that the average fury has small, but noticeable breasts that won't get in the way. Some (like the person in the scum enforcer archetype picture) might get those body-sculpted for personal preference, though.

I'm of the same mind. Smaller body-fit breasts (A-B cup, perhaps?) with a narrow-but-dense hip structure.

Smokeskin wrote:

People don't like sexless bodies either. Think a bit about what your genitalia-free military morphs would mean for things like recruitment and the psychological well being of the troops.

We could make the same argument about the psychological effect on male troops having to sleeve into female morphs.

otohime1978 wrote:

Umm... trans folk have a known suicide rate of approximately 50% for a reason, and it's estimated to be much higher than that because not all causes of suicides are known.

My point exactly. If being sleeved into a morph that has no sexual organs has the potential for psychological conflict, then being sleeved into the opposite sex has just as much, if not more, potential to do psychological harm. One of the major reasons I really feel that many fury users do not likely stay in one permanently.

otohime1978 wrote:

I could see Furies being popular with scum, where the cost of building one isn't too much higher than another morph because of their technosocialistic tendencies.

True, but I'm talking more about access to the tech for these bodies. Furies were likely created as part and parcel to some older military contract, which means their genetics were probably not open source (at least originally). So unless a scum group has gotten ahold of those genetics, or at least jacked a few bodies, they probably aren't too common. If they did get access, then I have no doubt that combat-oriented minds among the scum got their egos in one a long time ago. So fury access for the scum is likely to vary from swarm to swarm. I felt they might be common among criminal organizations only because many of them have attachments to countries today, so I have no doubt that continued even until up to the Fall.

About birth control and mesh inserts: remember that the mesh insert implant includes biomonitors, add to that that menstruation depends on hormone alterations (that cycle every 28 or so days, damn the moon! XD), and you get a "if I can control the hormone balance I can control the menstruation => I can control pregnancy". Also, unless you remove the womb (which I bet would generate more trouble than anything else), a fury should be able to get pregnant (and controlling the hormone regulation, to induct herself an abortion, possibly). So the hips won't separate? Cut the belly, cesareans are quite used nowadays and I bet the AF10 medicine can compensate for the tissue damage. As for transexuality, I don't think we can go 100% into current stadistics and extrapolate directly. For one thing, you can get psychosurgery (which is not the same as having 14 sesions a month...) to adapt if you need to (or another body, remember that Olympians are the most popular combat morph out there, and Ghost can be males too) so Furies are not the only option. Second, it is not the same thing: nowadays a gender change operation takes months of work to recover from, while in EP you are good in 12 hours wihtout sequels, and it is not a definite one. People might say that those transexuals who commint suicide thought their life would improve or change with the operation, found it did not (or that it got even worse), and unable to "undo" it they despair and commit suicide. In AF10 it is as simple as spending another 12 hours. So now tell me, if you were to loose both legs and arms nowadays, how would you feel? Now imagine they can be replaced in hours and all would be all right, you just need to wait two or three days. It will be hard, but not as crushing because it is not final. Loaning Furies? Yes, I'm sure it is done a lot, but not in days or even weeks turns. The most likely scenario is that you go to a security firm and once you are offered a "company body" (I am too paranoid to accept that for myself, mind you... XD) after some service time, you will need to sign a long-term contract that will cover the costs of the body and the insurance and maintenance. So the body is yours, for some years... Like a company car is nowadays. You might need to resleeve if you need to travel far and fast, but you can expect a body of the same characteristics. And now, if you excuse me, I want to test the Mass Effect ending DLC, and to decide if I just let loose some exurgent monsters in EA's main offices or not... ^^

otohime1978 wrote:

You're not listening. Morph reintegration takes a while, usually taking around a day to get used to a new form... and that's if things go well. Constantly resleeving is not a great way to maintain one's mental health, and the character will be constantly in a flux, clumsy and uncoordinated. It'd be best to find a feminine ego or one who prefers female morphs, sleeve them into the fury morph, and leave them be (and if current social trends are any indication, finding such an ego will be rather easy). Up time and down time, it'd be best to remain in one body and get really used to it instead of flummoxing about. It's an hour not spent crawling into a biological body, and a day not spent getting used to it. Sisterhood and rapid response is the name of the game. And if you're constantly shifting about, rapid response is definitely not going to happen.

A tour of duty is not just an hour or two of work. A soldier sent on a tour of duty might spend anywhere from a half-year to four years on duty. That means you have 6 months to four years to get used to that body, utilize it, fight in it, and use it for whatever you are tasked for; at which point you are egocasted home into your own body. Besides, if jumping from body to body is such a serious pain, then why is egocasting the de-facto standard for travel around the system? That said, many modern militaries (including the U.S. military) are sorely lacking when it comes to taking care of the mental well-being of their men. It would not surprise me in the least if they still treated them like that well into the future. That said, I'm not sure this has anything to do with transgender people. A transgender person is not resleeved into a new body, so any info we can extrapolate from that probably is irrelevant in the scenarios we will see in 10 AF. For the same reason I can't use amputation statistics from the Civil War to show how great or terrible modern medicine is.

otohime1978 wrote:

As for the copying issue and tech requirements, scum barges are a hive full of medivats and nano-replicators (well, at least the nice ones are in the flotilla); they tend to preach morphological freedom. It's not too hard to glean genetic data from biomorphs. After all, you tend to leave your genetic info everywhere you go. Any geneticist worth his salt could easily get around any IP protections and figure out how to grow a morph. So a good scum barge would be full of bootleg morph designs.

Maybe, maybe not. All DRM is crackable, but you'd be surprised at what lengths people will go to in order to prevent you from doing whatever you want with something. Even if it's all about morphological freedom, you'd still have to find a gene hacker that is interested in creating furies. It takes 3 years time to produce a biomorph, so I imagine that most gene hackers choose carefully when deciding which morphs they want to copy.

otohime1978 wrote:

The only issue would be the resources to grow such morphs; and it seems to me that the cost of a lot of biomorphs is an artificial amount used by corporations to recoup development costs rather than materials required to build such things. Even if we use the ingame credit system and go with the costs of implants at the chart's highest level for a cost tier, a fury morph shouldn't cost more than 30k in game, yet it is listed as costing almost +20k more than an Olympian, which, for all intents and purposes, is extremely similar to a fury morph without all the fancy implants. It can't really cost +20k more than an olympian in materials... so I can only conclude that the increased cost is either completely artificial and simply higher to recoup dev costs, or they take longer to grow and slightly more material than an olympian morph... and you still would have a lot left over dripping into the profit section. After all, a medivat used to grow a morph for 2+ years is a lot of time that vat could be doing other things.

Look up military budget costs, and you'll see that the military tends to spend quite a bit on higher-end gear. Oftentimes it is done with terrible inefficiency. Plus, there's the fact that product prices are rarely ever purely based on cost-to-produce. There are always other factors.

Xagroth wrote:

About birth control and mesh inserts: remember that the mesh insert implant includes biomonitors, add to that that menstruation depends on hormone alterations (that cycle every 28 or so days, damn the moon! XD), and you get a "if I can control the hormone balance I can control the menstruation => I can control pregnancy". Also, unless you remove the womb (which I bet would generate more trouble than anything else), a fury should be able to get pregnant (and controlling the hormone regulation, to induct herself an abortion, possibly). So the hips won't separate? Cut the belly, cesareans are quite used nowadays and I bet the AF10 medicine can compensate for the tissue damage.

Or you can transition it into another organ. Maintain most of the reproductive components for hormonal regulation purposes (with improved regulation, of course), while removing most of its reproductive functions (the ability to produce and release ova, the uterine wall's ability to form a placenta, the vagina's ability to dilate, among other things). This sort of thing happens all the time in the natural world (perhaps not evolved sterility, but organs changing purposes), so I have no doubt that medical technology in this period would be able to produce a similar effect.

Xagroth wrote:

Loaning Furies? Yes, I'm sure it is done a lot, but not in days or even weeks turns. The most likely scenario is that you go to a security firm and once you are offered a "company body" (I am too paranoid to accept that for myself, mind you... XD) after some service time, you will need to sign a long-term contract that will cover the costs of the body and the insurance and maintenance. So the body is yours, for some years... Like a company car is nowadays. You might need to resleeve if you need to travel far and fast, but you can expect a body of the same characteristics. And now, if you excuse me, I want to test the Mass Effect ending DLC, and to decide if I just let loose some exurgent monsters in EA's main offices or not... ^^

Exactly. My guess is that a soldier spends his/her entire tour of duty within the same sleeve, likely only getting out of it when they are done, or when they are egocasted elsewhere.

Decivre wrote:

otohime1978 wrote:

No, actually, transgender folk tend to kill themselves because they failed to get what they needed (namely hormonal and surgical intervention). I'm not talking about the physical down time caused by surgery in real life, I'm talking about psychological trauma caused by ill matching forms. Reintegration leading up to and after such things (hormonal and surgical being separate events) takes years. Even after you throw in EP's tech, I can't see reintegration being instantaneous or taking a few hours because as plastique as the mind is, it's not [i]that[/i] plastique. Now, you could handwave away these issues by psychosurgery, as you said. But then this opens a whole other can of worms, such as past memories and the like. Psychosurgery would be much more complicated than the writers of EP let on (namely because the game would not be as fun if they didn't handwave away many of the issues surrounding the practice).

Again, it still isn't the same scenario. A modern transgender person today is stuck in a body they don't want [i]forever[/i]. Even with all the psychological issues of entering into a sleeve in 10 AF, for most transhumans they still acknowledge that it is temporary. This is not the case for a transgender person today. Really think about it in context. Try spending a couple days living in a crappy house that you hate. You'll hate it, but you'll be counting the days until you leave it. Now imagine that you have to stay in that house forever. How's your attitude now?

Egocasting is really only used for long distance travel, like intrasolar travel. Intraplanetary and extrasolar travel is still done the old fashioned way, with vehicles and on foot. Besides, if you're going to be using a morph for months, if not years at a time, you will want it for your pleasure time. Seriously, you're talking yourself in circles. Also, the transgender comments are more on the plasticity of the mind. It's not that plastique. That being said, you could learn a lot from transsexuals and people with sensory adding/modifying implants. And, toward you house analogy, I have stayed in crappy houses, and I have also been homeless. Let me tell you, I prefer to be homeless to being stuck in a shitty house that I hate (rats, roaches, shit on the walls and floors... at least you could find someplace clean outside those homes); and if you've been/seen/done half the things I have, you probably would too. Yes, an unbearable house is worse than no house.

otohime1978 wrote:

Egocasting is really only used for long distance travel, like intrasolar travel. Intraplanetary and extrasolar travel is still done the old fashioned way, with vehicles and on foot. Besides, if you're going to be using a morph for months, if not years at a time, you will want it for your pleasure time. Seriously, you're talking yourself in circles.

Again, as I've said before, there is simulspace and XP to fill out the time. More so than in any point of human history, genitals are not a necessity. Traditional breeding is no longer necessary to expand our species, and physical sex is no longer necessary for sexual pleasure. What possible purpose will genitals serve a combat morph?

otohime1978 wrote:

Also, the transgender comments are more on the plasticity of the mind. It's not that plastique. That being said, you could learn a lot from transsexuals and people with sensory adding/modifying implants.

Actually, it is quite plastic... but mind plasticity does nothing if you do not want the situation you are in. That is a key issue with transgender depression. They are adjusted to their bodies, but unhappy in them… and there is nothing they can possibly do right now to fix that.

otohime1978 wrote:

And, toward you house analogy, I have stayed in crappy houses, and I have also been homeless. Let me tell you, I prefer to be homeless to being stuck in a shitty house that I hate (rats, roaches, shit on the walls and floors... at least you could find someplace clean outside those homes); and if you've been/seen/done half the things I have, you probably would too. Yes, an unbearable house is worse than no house.

Exactly. And you have the power to leave that house. A transgender person is stuck in their bodies. That's the reason you have such a great degree of depression. Had they the means to leave a body they didn't want, you wouldn't see such a high suicide rate. Even if it was a high and hard to attain goal in order to get the body of your choice, the possibility would at least be enough to raise hopes. But as of right now, you are stuck in the body you are in, and your body's sex is permanent and unchangeable. So your comparison is not valid.

Again, I'd like to point that Furies do not carry the "military issue only" anywhere: policemen, or private security contractors CAN use them. Now, you signed for a "tour of duty" into Valles-New Shanghai, and your sevice time is 8 hours a day (the rest, while being "on call", not meaning you are a prisioner!). "What do you mean I need to resleeve twice every week to go have some beer with the pals on the weekends because I'm inside a freakish barbie doll?" Also, remember several things: First: this is a TRANShuman game, that means that, while the characters in it can still be recognized (usually) as related to humanity, it doesn't mean they have the same weaknesses. Second: Psychosurgery is very simple rule-wise, but that's not the same as saying that it handwaves anything out of the picture. Add this "house rules" to the skill: secret roll (you don't know if you suceeded, failed, botched...) and no confirmation for a time (you need to see a week or so of the patient's activities to be allowed a second secret roll to determine if you suceeded or not the first time, a failure in this roll would point to "insufficient data", while a botch inverts the feedback you got from the first roll). Then be creative with the poor bastards in the receiving end of failing or botching rolls, and let the player suffer with the consequences of playing god with people's minds. Third: Psychosurgery is an evolution of all the stuff derived from the physicking of the mind (be it with simple conversation, using drugs, brainwash, whatever). Keep in mind that the people living in AF10 have minds that evolved since ours (and they suffered an extinction even to boot), so it's a little like the old cold war between attacker and defender. This means that, if we look at old games like the Call of Cthulhu, with the Sanity stat and the Psychology skill, we can see that the differences between the psychology skills described (that could be used in 1920, or even in 1890!) and Psychosurgery can be reduced to speed and penetration: with EP's version you can do the stuff faster (specially using a simulspace) and do things that require deeper manipulations but are more refined that the old ones. After all, altering memories (supressing them, getting them back, or even change them) can be done today. Brainwashing? Check. Madness treatment? To an extent, yes, too. And so on. Fourth: Eclipse Phase introduces several "conditions" that need to be taken as truth. In math, we see that we can take 1+1=2 or we can throw it away, and in EP, among other things, it is "the division between mind and body" possible thanks to the very defining factor of the setting (the digitalization of the human mind). So Ok, you can feel uncomfortable in the body of an amazonian killing machine because you miss some hormones and lumps of flesh, but from there to say that you will go nuts there is quite a stretch. Not to mention, people tend to have troubles derived from resleeving not only, or even mostly, because of transgender, but because other "small" stuff. Like body size (see teenagers: they grow so fast they cannot keep their body in check and they stumble upon everything. Imagine going from 1.90m. to 1.60 in a day, or the other way around!), body strength and speed (see people trying to get their cup of coffe and not closing the hand until they knocked it over and kept reaching for it for half a second...or skeezing the toothpaste so hard they empty it completely in one go), hunger levels (jet lag? Hah! That's kid's game), or even something as minute as body odor (not to mention smell: sexual attraction depends to a degree from several stuff that can be summarize into genetic compatibility, which is "marketed" as pheromones. Change body => change DNA => change sexual attractions, to a degree). Seriously, when dealing with people, it is necessary to remember that the big things are not what drives them crazy, its the million of small things what do it.

otohime1978 wrote:

The phantom limb phenomena suggests otherwise, but ok. If they were adjusted to their bodies, they wouldn't seek such radical transformations or kill themselves trying. Like BDD, mutilation is a sign of maladjustment. Their body-mind map does not match and causes issues.

Actually, current theory on phantom limb phenomena suggests that the effect has to do with hardwiring within the somatosensory cortex. This was seen as evident when an amputee lost her malformed four-fingered hand (birth defect), only to have a phantom hand with five fingers afterwards. So it's potentially something not tied to the ego, but the body it is contained in. In theory, if an ego can be sleeved in any body, then that ego will be able to adjust fine so long as the somatosensory cortex is properly configured.

otohime1978 wrote:

But it is valid. Someone in EP in a morph that causes them distress will attempt to leave that morph as quickly as possible. "Living" as an infomorph would be preferable in those cases. Yes, my analogy is not directly comparable. After all, it is an [b]analog[/b]y. Sure, people of today may not be able to completely ditch their bodies, but they can at least modify them heavily so that it matches up close enough for psychological comfort. In EP, they'd ditch the body and request a different one before it causes too much psychological stress.

Not necessarily. You have different mental mindset when you are using something temporarily rather than stuck with it forever. So a person sleeved into a specific morph for a job will likely have a different mentality about it than someone who is stuck in a body they hate from birth to death. Most people are willing to grit and bear it if there's a paycheck involved and an exit at the end of the tunnel. Transgender people today don't have those luxuries.

Xagroth wrote:

Again, I'd like to point that Furies do not carry the "military issue only" anywhere: policemen, or private security contractors CAN use them. Now, you signed for a "tour of duty" into Valles-New Shanghai, and your sevice time is 8 hours a day (the rest, while being "on call", not meaning you are a prisioner!). "What do you mean I need to resleeve twice every week to go have some beer with the pals on the weekends because I'm inside a freakish barbie doll?"

Sure, they can use them too. The question is how often they do. I don't see it being very common, and I see more police officers and public security officials resorting to olympians than furies; similar benefits, lower costs and a broader choice in looks and appearance. Furies are likely for dedicated combat forces… mercenary units, hit squads, platoons. Furthermore, they probably aren't particularly common considering their high value. We're talking one of the four most expensive biomorphs in the core book. I [i]highly doubt[/i] a police officer gets paid enough money to buy one on his or her own dime, and I doubt even more that the public security group they work for would probably make the expenditures necessary to give them one. A private security contractor might have a fury, but it depends on what they are. Are they a security guard? If so, then hell nah! How many security guards today roll around in a Dodge Viper? How many security guards are issued a Dodge Viper or similarly expensive object by their employer? Now if you're talking a mercenary, then sure, but they're probably expected to keep in that sleeve the entire time they're on call. It's the demands of their job.

Decivre wrote:

Most people are willing to grit and bear it if there's a paycheck involved and an exit at the end of the tunnel. Transgender people today don't have those luxuries.

How about you keep your mouth shut about something you know absolutely nothing about.