Advanced Nursery

[Combine Crusier]

I was reading through the general suggestions post and I got the idea that we could solve the problem with population by having a nursery equipped with cloning modules which would increase the...... child production rate..... You could select the building and turn the cloning modules on or off. When the modules are active it will do this, for every child born the cloning module will clone one child.

Due to the advanced requirements of this module it can only clone a newly born child by using the umbilical cord from the childs birth which only provides enough material to clone the child once.

[Psudomorph]

Judging by the fact that birthrate is directly linked to morale, I suspect that the limit on birthrate is not a matter of "can't create babies fast enough", but rather potential parents saying "I don't want to raise a child under such bad conditions".

I could see cloning vats being a potential nursery upgrade, but it seems like their use would only really make sense in times of high morale, when the birth rate would be high anyway.

In short: cloning vats might not be as useful for increasing population as one might think.

What in the General Suggestions thread suggested we need a higher birthrate?

[Mcshay]

Children are already cloned in op2. Thats what the genebank is for.

[CK9]

was about to say the same thing ^

according to one of the Novellas, over 50% of the New Terran population is clones.

[Combine Crusier]

Yes but most of them were crazy.
Not to mention that they were not clones of children that were just born.

[Psudomorph]

There is a difference between the standard clone children and the Masters.

===Skip this if you know how OP2 reproduction works===
From reading the novellas, I gather this to be how children are produced:
1. take two samples (Male and Female), at least one of them from the gene bank at random. By using random genes from such a large group of samples, the colony avoids the problem of inbreeding.
2. Mix the samples under lab conditions to simulate the reproductive process. This results in the child getting the standard mixture of genes from their "parents".
3. I assume the genes are somehow put into an embryo.
4. Either implant the embryo in the mother, or maybe let it grow in a tank, I don't know.

The people resulting from this process would technically have been "cloned", but since random DNA is used in step 1, you don't just have copies of people walking around, and you retain a diverse society with many different kinds of people.
===End of reproduction recap===

The reason the Masters were the bad guys is not that they were clones, but that they wanted to remove step 1 from the cloning process and just start copying people whom they thought were "better", instead of allowing genetic diversity. They weren't "crazy" just because they were clones, they were "crazy" because of the way they wanted to use cloning.

Once again, I think the central question should be: Even if you do have a set of cloning tanks, and have the technical ability to double the birthrate, will the society be willing or able to handle it?
Having children would be a choice in the colony as much as it is now. That is: If a couple wants two children, they will have two. If they want one they will have one. What happens when another essentially unwanted child is produced as a byproduct? Will the parents want to take care of more children than they wanted in the first place? Can the colony government force them to? Can robots raise a child to adulthood? Will that child resent not having human parents?

Considering all the problems it would cause to just artificially increase the birthrate with clones, it would probably be a better use of resources to design more efficient buildings, better AI's, etc. rather than screw [<-teeheehee] around with human reproduction