Clone Bay
The Clone Bay is the heart of Moonstalker survival — a chamber containing your genetic backup and memory imprint technology. It's Selenite Corp tech, widely distributed before the collapse, and the reason Moonstalkers can take the risks they do.
How It Works
The Save System
The Clone Bay functions as the game's save mechanic:
- Extraction = Save — When you extract to your vessel, your current state is saved
- Death = Reload — If you die on the surface, you respawn from your last save
- State captured — Inventory, experience, memories, contract progress — all saved
What Gets Saved
| Saved on Extraction | Lost on Death |
|---|---|
| Inventory (everything you carried back) | All items gathered since last extraction |
| Experience earned | Progress toward incomplete contracts |
| Completed contracts | Surface position and context |
| Unlocked recipes/blueprints | Memory of how you died (narrative element) |
| Current physical state | Time investment since last save |
Memory and Identity
Memory Discontinuity
Clone technology isn't perfect. When you respawn after death:
- You remember everything up to your last extraction
- You have no memory of what happened after that
- You don't know how you died (unless the Vessel AI can piece it together)
- Hours of surface time are simply... gone
This memory gap is a core narrative element. The Moonstalker knows they died, but not how or why. The loss is both practical (inventory) and existential (experience).
Vessel AI Recovery
Sometimes, your Vessel AI can reconstruct partial information:
- Last known position from tracking data
- Environmental conditions at time of death
- Nearby threats detected by sensors
- Fragmented suit camera footage (corrupted, incomplete)
This creates gameplay moments: "Your telemetry went dark near Sector 7. Detecting wildlife signatures in that area. Approach with caution."
Clone Degradation
The Cost of Dying
Frequent deaths cause cumulative effects on the clone:
- Visual glitches — Screen distortions, visual artifacts
- Audio distortion — Sounds become slightly wrong
- Personality drift — Subtle changes in dialogue options or reactions
- Unsettling deja vu — Moments of wrongness, feeling not-quite-yourself
The exact mechanical impact of clone degradation is an open design question:
- Should degradation have gameplay penalties or remain cosmetic?
- Can degradation be repaired? At what cost?
- Is there a maximum degradation level?
See Open Design Questions for full discussion.
The Clone Bay Space
Physical Description
The Clone Bay is a small, clinical chamber within the vessel:
- The pod — A human-sized chamber where the clone is grown/restored
- Nutrient systems — Tubes, tanks, the biological infrastructure
- Memory banks — Data storage for the personality imprint
- Status displays — Clone health, save state, degradation level
- Selenite branding — Corporate logos, faded but visible
It should feel both essential (this keeps you alive) and unsettling (what does it mean that "you" are replaceable?).
Clone Bay Upgrades
Improvement Paths
- Faster Recovery
- Reduce time between death and being ready to drop again. (Quality of life improvement.)
- Better Memory Retention
- Vessel AI can recover more information about what happened before death.
- Reduced Degradation
- Each death causes less cumulative degradation.
- Degradation Repair
- Ability to actively reduce degradation level (resource cost).
- Emergency Backup
- A secondary save point that preserves more in case of catastrophic loss.
See Your Vessel for the full upgrade system.
Lore Implications
Why Does This Exist?
Clone technology was "widely distributed before the collapse" — but why? Selenite Corp made resurrection technology available to Moonstalkers. Questions to consider:
- Why would a corporation give such valuable tech to disposable workers?
- What data do they collect from the memory imprint process?
- Are there things in the clone system that Moonstalkers don't know about?
- What happens to the memories of dead Moonstalkers who never extract?
The Clone Bay is a gift that might be a leash. Selenite Corp's generosity always has a price.