DUST mercs don't use the antiquated mind transfer technology of Pod Pilots. We use vastly improved tech that we carry in our skulls. Likewise we don't use the antiquated practice of making everything in large factories and shipping the goods long distances and having to stockpile physical inventories.

I've seen many threads talking about how BPOs would go the way of EVE manufacturing and we would be buying our gear from Pod Pilots, but that simply won't work with DUST.

DUST mercs don't use the antiquated mind transfer technology of Pod Pilots. We use vastly improved tech that we carry in our skulls. Likewise we don't use the antiquated practice of making everything in large factories and shipping the goods long distances and having to stockpile physical inventories.

Instead we rely upon point in time manufacturing of items one at a time at the point of sale. Walk up to a supply depot and walk away with an entirely new suit and weapon made for you on the spot. You get to pick any fitting that you have a license to make. We don't carry a physical inventory, we have digital licenses to make what we want when we want it.

There is no room in a supply depot or CRU, much less MCRU to carry a physical inventory of every weapon, suit, and piece of equipment that we might want. How can you cram 100+ copies of every weapon, suit, and bit of equipment in one small supply depot? You can't! You can store raw materials and build what is requested.

DUST merc technology is simply a generation ahead of Pod Pilots.

I've seen many threads talking about how BPOs would go the way of EVE manufacturing and we would be buying our gear from Pod Pilots, but that simply won't work with DUST.

DUST mercs don't use the antiquated mind transfer technology of Pod Pilots. We use vastly improved tech that we carry in our skulls. Likewise we don't use the antiquated practice of making everything in large factories and shipping the goods long distances and having to stockpile physical inventories.

Instead we rely upon point in time manufacturing of items one at a time at the point of sale. Walk up to a supply depot and walk away with an entirely new suit and weapon made for you on the spot. You get to pick any fitting that you have a license to make. We don't carry a physical inventory, we have digital licenses to make what we want when we want it.

There is no room in a supply depot or CRU, much less MCRU to carry a physical inventory of every weapon, suit, and piece of equipment that we might want. How can you cram 100+ copies of every weapon, suit, and bit of equipment in one small supply depot? You can't! You can store raw materials and build what is requested.

DUST merc technology is simply a generation ahead of Pod Pilots.

We have mastered teleportation (or something similar) hence drop uplinks.

So who's to say we don't transfer consciousness into a clone on the war barge, pick a suit and then teleport to battle. As for the supply depot, our clone is teleported to the war barge and our consciousness is transferred to a clone with the desired fitting as the new clone is teleported to the supply depot.

Just my idea of how it all works

How can you cram 100+ copies of every weapon, suit, and bit of equipment in one small supply depot? You can't! You can store raw materials and build what is requested.

Interesting...

So a SD is not a manufacturing unit, it's a two way teleportation device? That would allow us to pop over to any drop uplink without suiciding, simply teleport up via SD and back down to any available DU.

Of course that makes CRUs totally redundant. Just drop a SD instead as it has more versatility and doesn't risk a physical inventory of clones on battlefield.

And if teleportation is cheaper than point of sale manufacturing I can see it putting all those space truckers out of business. No worry about pirates and instant delivery too! Who could resist?

They same way they handle gun regulation now. They only care about the receiver!

You're shipping around 100+ gun receivers and manufacturing the rest of the gun on site.

As we all know from real life: Intellectual Property > Technological Capability

Meh, I think the CRU is better as it can spawn multiple troops at the same time, where as the SD can only do 1-2 people (if my theory was correct)

There is no reason to limit one and not the other.

Agreed but if you look at the size of one versus the other, it definitely looks like the CRU could do some heavy duty teleporting

Let's put it this way Gameplay 1st Lore 2nd.

Let's put it this way Gameplay 1st Lore 2nd.

My tiny DUs can spawn mercs back to back (not sure there is any waiting for others to spawn actually), and I can carry seven at a time on my person.

Or you could look at Supply Depots and Clone Reanimation Units as 'media servers'. There's two as they handle two different kinds of 'media'. CRU's serve out the varied, complex 'media' of cloned mercenaries where SDs serve out the more numerous yet less complex 'media' of weapons and dropsuits. Sure, one could do the job of both but the technical requirements of doling out both 'media' would make the device substantially more expensive than the devices as separate entities. "But we drop with full fittings." Yes, one fitting, not our entire library of fittings. We assign a fitting before we drop in so that the CRU isn't overwhelmed by our suddenly over-bloated 'media'. The SD, though, has no problem loading out our libraries as guns and dropsuits don't have complex brains and vital systems that can get screwed up in the transmission process. This also supports the theory behind Drop Uplinks as... have you read their descriptions? I would not want to ride through that transmission line...

So you posit two different types of teleportation? One via wormholes for the uplinks and another that works without them?

I'm confused about your explanation though. Why would either the SD or CRU require a library when it's teleporting, not building the item or merc? You would only need a recipe if you are making something, and at that point you don't need to move anything physical. That's an argument for point of sale manufacturing, not against it.

Not really different, just different 'media'. Like comparing movies and music. Music doesn't need alot in the way of codecs to read and has a small data 'footprint'. Movies, though, need fancier codecs and if the data stream isn't handled properly you could get skipping, desync between audio and video, reduction in quality, so on, so forth. The SD and CRU might be built to different standards making one optimized at handling the 'music' of weapons and dropsuits and the other robust enough to safely deliver the 'movies' of clones in one of their dropsuit fits. They aren't different teleportation methods, just the data that's being managed. Just expanding on the delivery methodology, not really touching on the economics of it.

I don't think manufacturing/industry fits well in DUST. I'd like to see mercs producing the raw materials, selling them on the market to EVE players where they're manufactured into the products we buy back to use in combat. EVE is much better suited to crafting/industry mechanics than DUST, plus it would be a huge distraction for the DUST development team away from things like improving fights, or building a compelling PvE experience. Let the EVE guys deal with that stuff. The code is already ready-to-go, they just need to add a few new resources and end products.

I'm not arguing for DUST mercs to manufacture and sell anything. I'm simply arguing that we have our items replicated for us at point of use and don't buy them in bulk. We buy licenses to replicate items, not the items themselves.

Now that's not to say that this invalidates the normal EVE manufacturing system. Non-immortal clones don't clone jump and therefore can carry their gear with them. It's a lot less expensive to manufacture in bulk and that makes the added cost of shipping, storage, security, insurance, etc. worth paying.

But DUST mercs need the item NOW, RIGHT HERE. There's no possibility of waiting for transport. We clone jump all the way across the galaxy into battle, then all the way across the galaxy to another battle five minutes later. A physical inventory couldn't possibly keep up with that.

In that case what the SD really is is a teleportal/market proxy server. In EVE one would have to ask the question, what region, since the market is segmented by region? This could really expose mercs to regional market manipulations. Furthermore, if mercs are buying EVE-manufactured-on-demand equipment at time of use, there is no way to take advantage of buy orders. Outside of battle, in our merc quarters, yes, but in battle, no.

And what would nullsec operations deep in enemy territory do? If a thousand mercs drop into a quiet region suddenly gone hot, where will merc supplies come from?

We may be forced to carry personal/corp stockpiles on the Warbarge/MCCs, supplemented by teleportal market servers when we run out of items. Perhaps cargo could be transferred from starships to the Warbarge.

But i dislike thinking like this, because if we have access to advanced nanotech, stockpiling weapons/eqipment/vehicles makes zero sense. The only things we need to stockpile are nanites and raw materials. We pay for those, ofc, but then we also pay for the use of the digital blueprints. Who sets the price?

I've seen many threads talking about how BPOs would go the way of EVE manufacturing and we would be buying our gear from Pod Pilots, but that simply won't work with DUST.

DUST mercs don't use the antiquated mind transfer technology of Pod Pilots. We use vastly improved tech that we carry in our skulls. Likewise we don't use the antiquated practice of making everything in large factories and shipping the goods long distances and having to stockpile physical inventories.

Instead we rely upon point in time manufacturing of items one at a time at the point of sale. Walk up to a supply depot and walk away with an entirely new suit and weapon made for you on the spot. You get to pick any fitting that you have a license to make. We don't carry a physical inventory, we have digital licenses to make what we want when we want it.

There is no room in a supply depot or CRU, much less MCRU to carry a physical inventory of every weapon, suit, and piece of equipment that we might want. How can you cram 100+ copies of every weapon, suit, and bit of equipment in one small supply depot? You can't! You can store raw materials and build what is requested.

DUST merc technology is simply a generation ahead of Pod Pilots.

I'd assume PI is going to figure into merc manufacturing in the future. Weapons would be made via a PI module.

Aren't the weapons et al "beamed" to the supply depot from the MCC or warbarge?

Retools Supply Depot technology to print ISK instead of suits and guns

Wins Dust/Eve/Valkyrie.

But who manufactures the supply depot?