casemorphs and pods were designed and mass produced to be inhabited by AGIs before the fall (less than 10 years ago don't forget!) and the idea of owning a human identity in a bot was seen as repulsive, like being a slave owner or like being owned if you were the unlucky one inhabiting it. after the fall they repurposed the massive surplus of cheap pods and cases to accept infugees. that's why the price is lower. side note- theres a hab made up of entirely 2 cm microdrones that look and function like full sized synths. THIS is the way free all those infomorphs, their dirt cheap, use almost no resources, and can be built like lightning. honestly... they could free everyone in a month and make micro cities and habs just about anywhere, and heck use simulspace to keep everyone believing its a perfect recreation of earth.

http://eclipsephase.com/how-does-it-feel-be-tiny p88 sunward THE COLONY Allegiance: Lunar-Lagrange Alliance Primary Languages: Javanese The Colony is micro-sized, in the literal sense. All members of the settlement are sleeved in insect-sized (though not necessarily insectoid) morphs and the living environment is built to scale. Taking up only a small side cavern in the larger Karpola habitat, the Colony exhibits a transhuman lifestyle that still has all of the same amenities (nanofabrication, the mesh, resleeving, etc.) while being far less resource intensive. The Colony is a popular destination for Lunar tourists who wish to live small for a brief period. so actually no, theres no problem making insect sized morphs or cyberbrains... straight from the book.

To answer the original question, I think the laws of supply and demand are in play. There isn't enough production or matter to supply the needs of everyone, let alone the wants. If I recall correctly, one of the books for Eclipse Phase (Could be Transhuman) mentions that everyone is literally working as quickly as possible to produce habitats and morphs. Yet that still isn't enough to supply everyone with Cases, let alone something better like Synths. A great many is working to build the habs they will eventually live in. ---- A basic law of supply of demand is, if the demand is higher than supply, then the price will increase. It will increase until the increased prices reduces the demand to the point where it is equal to the supply. Namely, those willing to pay the higher prices for good will still buy, while everyone else isn't willing to buy. One factor to consider is a Synth takes longer to build than a Case. Lets assume that they can and are built with the same matter and stuff. The Case priced at [Moderate] would take 3 hours to fabricate, while the Synth priced [High] would take 4 hours to fabricate. So it takes about 33% longer to build a Synth than a Case. If this was the sole factor to consider in the price, then a 33% increase in price (for extra nanofab time) would be reasonable. On the other hand, that slows down how quickly one can get new morphs, enough so that it might be disallowed or one would be charged extra. In fact, charging extra would be an effective way to encourage growth. With extra money, you can buy more matter, which can be used to build more morphs and nanofabs. Desktop CMs are not cheap, so charging people extra for better morphs would be an effective way to get the money needed for another Desktop CM. Of course, this increases demand for matter and equipment so the prices rise. Because the prices are higher, there is more profit to be made in morph production so more people will enter the industry, thereby increasing supply and maybe reducing prices. I imagine that this feedback loop will grow to the point that when things are over (when everyone has a morph of their choosing), that a lot of people in the industry will have to quit their jobs and move into other industries. There simply wouldn't be the demand to keep prices up enough to keep so many people in the industry. In contrast, I think there may be some habs that try (or tried) to be noble and try to enforce that everyone will get Cases (not anything better) until everyone has morphs. I think they will suffer economically. In their efforts to remain noble, they simply didn't have money to keep up with the rising prices. Those with money (or good indenture-ships) might have considered buying morphs on such habs, but in a foolish act of nobility by the local authorities, the authorities rejected outside money. Now those habs suffer the consequences of having too much pride, honor and honesty. ---- Another factor for price differences between Cases and Synth is the quality differences. While nothing is listed in terms of matter used, the fact that a Synth is twice as tough as a Case (with better armor too) should say something. A Synth also has better aptitude maximums, better aptitude bonuses, better speed, and the lack of the lemon trait (which might not be possible with a shortage of matter). The Case however does mention that it has a thin frame and stands shorter than the average transhuman (so a Case might be a striped down Synth, striped down to reduce the matter needs where ever possible).

DivineWrath wrote:

In regards to the hab with tiny morphs. I imaging people there are using tiny robots, jamming them to give the egos high levels of control over the robots, and using advanced AR illusions. The intent being is to make it seem like they are running around in normal sized biomorphs. Any mention of people being literally sleeved in tiny morphs could be in error. Its not the first time the devs made errors. The more recent case is a thread talking about how one of the devs realized that while the books mention that bikes are used a lot, there might be actual problem caused by the low gravity in a great many habs. The bicycle thread: http://eclipsephase.com/bicycles-low-gravity

It does say "sleeved" specifically, but there could be explanations for that.

I think DivineWrath is making a good case (for his opinion). Ok that was poor I know but I couldn't resist!

1) a neo-corvid brain isnt that much bigger than a pidgeon's http://users.ox.ac.uk/~kgroup/tools/neurobiology.shtml 2) a neo corvid brain isnt anywhere near as large as even an infant child's who's head is about 1/3 the size and weight of the body, there's no presumably about it. 3) theres nothing contradictory, the devs were specifically talking about processing power of distributed intellegence in swarms, that has nothing to do with non-distributed intellegence in advanced microsized morph brains (that seem to only exist in the colony.) 4) I think you really need to go out and get small... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4GRKNw19Jo

thezombiekat wrote:

As to the colony/swarm morf. If a cyber brain can be built into an insect sized morf why would a swarm morf bother with distributed processing and the myriad problems it creates?

Redundancy?

I think others have presented some valid reason, but for me the main reason is Eclipse Phase is not an ideal post-scarcity setting. Nanotechnology cannot transmute elements, and energy actually has to be produced from somwhere other than thin air, so raw materials and energy are still cost-adding factors. Synth morphs are bigger, denser and probably use more refined base elements and more exotic elements in their construction. They take more time, and they also require more energy. I think it could be interesting to figure out the scarcity of elements in different parts of the Solar system and adjust some of the prices based on that. E.g. the way scarcity of metals is said to affect Titanian industry.

According to the game text case morphs are not nanofabricated, they are mass produced.