You can't upgrade a flat to a splicer, or any other morph to any other morph. All biomorphs seem to have the capacity to breed true. It would probably mess a kid up to resleeve during their formative years, but then, what doesn't mess kids up in their formative years? Plus, repairing psychological damage is rather easy to do in the setting.

A splicer is just a flat with the biomods "implant". Per the rules, there's no special conditions for doing that. So in effect, you can spend some time in a healing booth and change morph categories. I'd argue this is one of the only cases where such a thing is possible, all through the miracle of healing booths. What all is involved in gene-tweaking is generally left up to the GM. In real life, breeding two genetweaked animals could result in significant unforeseen genetic errors. This seems less likely with splicers, which presumably are the most popular and oldest morph 'type', so genetic compatibility would be well ironed out. Regardless, the result could not be a flat. At best, it's a splicer. At worst, it's something worse than a flat. Rusters only really came into their own in the past ten years, and would seem to be more subject to regular upgrades, plus are specifically listed as being subject to things such as planned obsolescence. My expectation is that if your morph is purchased, being able to reproduce au naturel is not an option. You need a geneticist, a healing vat, and a lot of proprietary data on your morphs. But all of this is at GM's discretion, since it's not specifically listed in any books.

That's true (mechanically). The rules don't support you getting the bonuses. Not sure if that's supposed to be part of standard biomods, or something else.

Much like how a ford mustang has been around for years :P

Considering that a healing vat can rebuild you from a severed head, complete with implants and augmentations (if blueprints are added to your stack), I suspect that it could turn a flat into a remade, if you were willing to wait about that long. Inefficient? Possibly. Effectively panders to people with resleeving anxiety? Enough to charge a premium price, I suspect.

Yeah, you could maybe get Somatics that way, but it's easy to get so many stacking Somatics bonuses from augs that you can make a Flat hit the attribute cap anyway.

Another unrelated idea - can Mom have a protean or nanosurgeon hive grown in her reproductive system? Aside from shortening and safening (not yet a word, but it should be) pregnancy, could this be used to give her kids in-utero cybernetic augmentation, potentially that which grows with them? My justification: Healing pod, compact, but runs out of canned nano. Dedicated hive, filling the can. Do away with the can, and the pod, and directly implant the hive - in place of one ovary, perhaps. The net result is you now have a very slow healing vat in your pelvis. What breeds true now that conventional pregnancy can pass along traits like "has a hand laser"? :D

Well, here's one possible answer from the Morph Recognition Guide: Delta-V: True fact, my original body was hibernoid. My parents were both flight crew in the early space days, and some of the first to be given hibernoids for their jobs. They liked their morphs so much they purchased breeding rights from their corp.

jKaiser wrote:

I was under the impression that bioware in general is passed down

It is not -- biomods are not the same as genemodding. You [i]can[/i] get genemodded so it will pass down to your children, but it's much more difficult (and expensive, to hire a genehacker with the requisite skill), and usually it's not worth bothering when you can just have a healing vat add the mods to your kid post-birth.

jKaiser wrote:

One of the lifepath events mentions getting a stack early in life, which...also implies young children are at much greater risk of death.

Remember, the default year is only 10 A.F, and a PC could have been born a hundred or more years ago. I'd imagine that after the fall, most children are given stacks as soon as physically possible (which is probably pretty young -- weren't the Lost uploaded as infants?), just in case.

jKaiser wrote:

I digress. I'm rolling with the assumption that any body can be modified within reason (not that some scum don't likely TRY to turn a flat into an octomorph...) into an equivalent if any other. The aptitude bonuses are likely either due to having years to adapt to the body, like childhood, or due to something that IS different between morph categories that hasn't been addressed in detail that I've been able to find. To clarify, a flat with all the bits listed for a remade probably stays a flat on the sheet, but in-universe, its a lot murkier.

Aptitude bonuses and maximums aren't covered under mods (aside maybe a few physical-aptitude boosting mods), but that doesn't mean they're from being born in a morph. You sleeve into a Splicer with +5 SAV, you get +5 SAV whather it's the morph you were born in or not. Likewise, if you were born in a Splicer with +5 COG, you lose that bonus when you upload out of it. Aptitude bonuses (except SOM) represent the morph's brain being wired to better handle that kind of thinking or task, while SOM bonuses probably represent stronger muscles. You can add the mods to one morph to make it like another one (and there are probably knock-offs that do exactly this), but it's not the same. Adding basic biomods, mesh inserts, and a cortical stack to a flat won't make it a splicer; it will not develop +5 to some aptitude and higher maximums over time. Those require redesigning the brain, which is apparently just not something healing vats or even neurosurgeons seem to know how to do. (Maybe it's possible in theory, but no one bothers to pursue it since the time to research and develop such methods would be far longer than the time to just grow a new morph with the desired aptitudes). Changes to SOM should probably be possible, but even that would require replacing muscle tissue throughout the morph, a more extensive change than almost any other mod.

uwtartarus wrote:

Uploading doesn't require a stack, in fact works independently, since all but Flats have them, but Pods take half as long as full Biomorphs to upload, and Cyberbrain uploads are nigh instantaneous, so stacks seem to operate independently of uploading and so forth. /tangent-sorry

A stack is just a local hardcopy backup of your ego, the backup of first and last resort. That does not mean it's the only resort, it means that other backups are less preferable to a stack backup in some instances, and more preferable in others. If a guy goes down in front of his friends, but they win the fight (or, you know, it was an industrial accident, etc,) then the stack backup is the most preferred option to, say, using the backup that's on file somewhere and may not have been updated for a few days/weeks/months. If, on the other hand, the guy got blown out an airlock/trapped on an exoplanet/some other category of Bad Things happening to/near his body that makes retrieval very difficult and dangerous or time consuming and expensive, or he goes down in ways that make the integrity of the ego on the stack suspicious (such as if he goes down a km from the TQZ,) then reinstantiating him from a non-stack backup is preferable, and going after his stack is only to be considered if the non-stack backup is unavailable. (Or, you know, if you want to do Bad Things to his ego, like interrogate/torture it in simulspace, and thus you obviously don't have access to his on-file backups, his stack is gonna be your only option.) You don't need a stack to upload. You [b]can[/b] upload from a stack, instead of, say, going into an ego bridge, and it might in some circumstances be faster to cut the stack out of a biomorph to get a copy of their ego to upload than to use an ego bridge. You know, if minutes matter. If the morph has a cyberbrain, of course, then uploading is just a matter of file transferring, but you'd better be damn sure you trust the recipient and every device between you and the recipient. Or, you know, have quantum-encrypted your ego when you transmit.

Technically, how "splicer" a child of a Flat and a Splicer is probably depends on what chromosomes they get from the Flat parent and if there are traits the Splicer's genes will be dominant over. Both sets of possible chromosomes from the Splicer are optimized traits cleaned of genetic defects and diseases. The Flat's are the standard assortment of random pairings you get from genetic reproduction. Depending on what traits they have and how they're actually expressed in the phenotype, you might get a kid who is way more Flat than Splicer or vice versa. I would agree that the +5 would be he one of the Splicer parent though, as that's where the genes lie. I also wouldn't say a Flat with biomods is a Splicer, it just has biomods installed. Biomods effects the active systems of the biomorph, it wouldn't necessarily alter the underlying genetic code completely. A Flat could still have other genetic defects and sub-optimal traits, which would take a healing vat to fix.

FNR, this is manifestly not the case. Allow me to demonstrate. These are the stats of a Flat with Biomods: [h1]Flat with standard mods.[/h1] Flats are baseline unmodified humans, born with all of the natural defects, hereditary diseases, and other genetic mutations that evolution so lovingly applies. Flats are increasingly rare—most died off with the rest of humanity during the Fall. Most new children are splicers—screened and genefixed at the least—except in habitats where flats are treated as second-class citizens and indentured labor. Stock Implants: [b]None[/b] Movement Rate: 4/20 Aptitude Maximum: 20 Durability: 30 Wound Threshold: 6 [b]Advantages: None[/b] Disadvantages: [b]None (Genetic Defects trait common)[/b] CP Cost: 0 Credit Cost: High Aftermarket Implants: [b]Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack[/b] [h1]Stock Splicer[/h1] Splicers are genefixed humans. Their genome has been cleansed of hereditary diseases and optimized for looks and health, but has not otherwise been substantially upgraded. Splicers make up the majority of transhumanity. Stock Implants: [b]Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack[/b] Movement Rate: 4/20 Aptitude Maximum: [b]25[/b] Durability: 30 Wound Threshold: 6 Advantages: [b]+5 to one aptitude of the player’s choice[/b] [b]Disadvantages: None[/b] CP Cost: 10 Credit Cost: High [h1]Analysis[/h1] A Flat augmented with Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, and a Cortical Stack is still immeasurably more transhuman than a Flat deprived of such necessities of modern transhuman life. However, by way of comparison, a Splicer has attribute maximums 5 points greater than the Flat, absolutely no chance whatsoever of having the genetic defects flaw unless serious shenanigans are at work, and has a +5 point bonus to any one of the user's attributes, chosen when the morph is chosen. (Well, in-universe, chosen when the flat is grown, but for the purposes of player characters, if they're picking the morph and have the opportunity to shop around, they pick the bonus.) The Splicer is still by far the better deal, even if it is, on average, no tougher than the Flat. A Transhuman who has invested in advancing any of his, her, their, etc, aptitudes past 20, to 25 or less, will be hindered in the Flat, which just is not wired properly for them to operate at full capacity. Basically, they'll be underclocked. Additionally, the morph bonus applies to one attribute, and as long as the ego's native attribute score in that attribute is not already 21 through 25 inclusive, they can take full advantage of that attribute. A Splicer is considered the bare minimum you "should" have in Eclipse Phase. Being in a Flat is a handicap option, pure and simple.

FNR: No. No, no, no, no, no. Basic Biomods just fixes you, it doesn't change your genome so completely that your morph is now a different type of morph. A Flat who gets Basic Biomods does not breed splicers. They are not themselves a splicer. They are a Flat with Basic Biomods, no more, no less. Basic Biomods on a Flat won't breed a Splicer any more than Prehensile Feet on a Splicer will breed a Bouncer.

I just reread the biomods' description (For the first time in two years I have to admit ^^; ) and it seems you are right. Seems like the biomods don't rewrite your genome completely, there are just some tweaks. I remembered it to have something like 'removes genetic defects' in the description, which seems plausible, since it is the 'you are now a super healthy, not aging, adapted to zero g, etc. human being'-augmentation. But I mixed that up with the description of the actual splicer. That said, I don't think it will have much effect on our game since the only actual difference to our interpretation is the removal of genetic defect (which you'd have to purchase separately now) and the fact that the child of a modified flat wouldn't be a splicer (which never happened in our game)