Why not make an army of battle droids too?
In all seriousness, UNSC flash cloning is an incredibly imperfect science with a ton of short and long term problems. Clones are probably not fit to be regular soldiers and definitely not going to survive augmentation given how physically compromised they are.
thought about that, but considering them being all bown up was the bigger reason that they wouldn't be able to do cloning for the UNSC, it made more sense to list it last. Since if I'd said they'd all blown up first, why bother mentioning that they were so far away atall?
Money, I want to say that there's a passage somewhere that discusses the cost of a flash clone as being utterly ridiculous, and that Halsey had to ruffle some (more) feathers to get approved for the few hundred she used.
No money is not an issue for cloning at all. It is such a basic thing that it is literally how all major damage to body parts are repaired.
Halsey ruffles feathers because she made full clones which are never healthy and break down because the accelerated growth destroyed the body. Which is exactly why it is illegal to do so. But it didn't ruffle enough that any of the handlers and higher ranks of ONI wouldn't approve it.
My guess: flash clones wouldn't go well with the augmentations. As in, by the time the augments take, the clones would already be breaking down.Â
There could also be issues regarding memory implants, motivation, and even physical coordination.Â
I'm honestly more surprised that ONI never slow cloned the spartan IIs and raised those clones to be spartan killers or some such.
>I'm honestly more surprised that ONI never slow cloned the spartan IIs and raised those clones to be spartan killers or some such.
That's what they want you to think
Holy shit, youâre right. They had the DNA of all of these genetic freaks that were already incredibly strong, fast, and smart. They should have just made clones of them.
Fuck, they couldâve just gone full-tilt Kaminoan and cloned a hundred John-117s. Imagine how insane that would be.
If anyone ONI should slow clone, its Fred.
Second best in everything is still still Second Best in Everything. Fred dosen't rely on luck, hes just that good. A clone army of Fred would be able to take on basically any mission and any opponent bar for a very select few exceptionals (say, John.) But if you send a dozen or more Freds at a target, that target is dead, and thats a guarantee.
One thing is the early parts of their life when their mine was still developing as that clearly was a significant reason for their qualifications.... But this is the Office of Naval Intelligence we're talking about, they could probably just get all their child psychologists to come up with the perfect environment and regimen to raise these clones.
One problem is their early upbringing was part of why they were selected.
Just because you can genetically match John in a clone, doesn't mean that you'll be able to match his personality or skills raising him in a lab.
Resource intensive and likely would cause more questions then they wanted.
Plus just because you can match their genetics, doesn't mean their personalities or skills will transfer. Lab raised Linda may not have the drive or nature that allowed the real one to make an entire spy network of children.
Yeah one of the things that got her on the list of Spartan candidates was at school she created and engineered an extensive spy network through the other children to keep an eye on the teachers and adults.
Yeah the Spartan 2's had some crazy feats lol. Soren survived completely on his own as a child, linda had a spy network. Kelly outran and dodged the team sent to get her because she thought they were playing a game of chase (They caught her because she gave herself up lol).
His stepdad ran an illegal farm and thus didn't take his mom to doctors for an easily treatable sickness, causing her to die (and was left in her bedroom to rot locked away). Dad died from the sickness/wounds later on, and Soren simply lived in the woods.
From memory.
>I'm honestly more surprised that ONI never slow cloned the spartan IIs
IIRC, With that time manipulation tech on Onyx, they don't even need to do it slowly, relative to the galactic timescale.
Build a halo wars barracks with time tech and pump some out every few weeks.
In one of the books it was brought up that any clones produced would become legal and protected citizens to help prevent some form of slavery in believe, but not that it would stop oni. Ontop, clones from whay we see in lore are a lot more susceptible to degradation, and sickness. Though cloned organs were more likely to take to a host and were likely more ethical than having donors, every whole clone weâve met has had a list of health problems after a while. The none cloned candidates already had countless challenges and complications. Clones likely would have been far less successful.
The Mortal Dictata, first mentioned in Halsey's journal from the *Halo: Reach* collector's editions and then in *Halo: Mortal Dictata*.
Technically it only outlaws human cloning (and discriminating against people based on their genetics, augmented or not), it doesn't outright say clones are people or that clones can't be enslaved, but it *does* say that a human is a human as long as any random person could say "yup, that's a human right there", and that no human can be owned by any other person or organization. So as long as the clone looks and acts human it's considered a human and can't be legally enslaved (or re-cloned).
But considering how much the S2 program already violated the Dictata, yeah it wouldn't stop them if it were a viable option.
Flash clones are infamous for the myriad health problems which ultimately killed them, hardly makes for an effective soldier. Also SIIIs were chosen from "consenting" orphans for their reckless behavior and the need to avenge their families, how would you motivate clones to sacrifice themselves with the same reckless abandon?
Clones were never supposed to be people.
Dumping flash clones of the S2 kids was like a cat leaving a dead rat on your bed.
They're probably near braindead, and have no memories.
If I'm not wrong Halsey did mention somewhere that she hoped the flash clones could have been used instead of the actual children, but they weren't able to last for very long since they died weeks after
Because it's cheaper and faster to use war orphans, especially since I bet they have way more spare war orphans than they do facilities for flash cloning a whole person, and the resources for flash cloning the suicide soldiers could instead go toward flash cloning organs and limbs for wounded soldiers who can be sent back out to have another go at dying
A flash clone had a life expectancy of a few weeks, sometimes a couple months max. With medical treatment, you could see it extended (maybe, going off Halo Legends) but they would probably never be in any shape to do anything. A full flash clone would need to be trained on everything, and I do mean everything (how to tie boots for starters). By time you get them to a rifle range, most are probably dead or bound to medical beds waiting to die.Â
Because 99% of the clones would be dead before you trained them?
It's very clear in Halo that they waste away ,fast. Only two Spartan II clones survive beyond like a few years and the only one directly shown has been in a wheelchair for some time.
Flash Clones die in anything from a few weeks or months to the same day of their creation. The decay is unpredictable and uncontrollable. Any SIII clones would have been difficult to control, train and deploy without them dying pretty much immediately.
media (kilo 5, homecoming, the fall of reach movie) pretty well depicts that flash clones either have practically no responses to stimuli and/or almost immediately begin deteriorating physically so id imagine theyd be largely useless beyond becoming excellent target practice for the covenant theyre deployed against
The reason Spartan IIs are as good as they are is because theyâve been in the military their whole lives. The Spartan IIIs became a close approximation through both augmentation and sheer unbridled rage. A flash clone isnât going to have the drive to accomplish a suicide mission, Spartan IIIs often volunteered for them and in the case of noble 6, would occasionally steal classified documents and go on suicide missions by himself which is why he was originally the only other âhyper lethal vectorâ
Weak bodies unable to handle augmentations- not to mention you couldn't train them fast enough (up to a Spartan's standards at least) before they rapidly succumb to illness that all flash cloned people suffer from
They'd probably just sit around wearing sunglasses and look uninterested.
*"Mr Pop-Spartan doesn't feel like this mission realises his artistic integrity!"*
Firstly there's more to warfighting than numbers and physical capability, the ability to fight as a unit, rapidly assess and respond to an evolving battlefield, to understand the outer limits of your equipment and to be able to trust your team. Secondly, you have timing, flash clones as others have mentioned have erratic life expectancy before overlapping chronic and life-crippling diseases begin to develop and after augmenting these flash clones they still need to be trained. To give a real-world equivalent, a US Army Ranger from Basic Combat Training to Ranger School is roughly 26 Weeks that is half a year including 1 week of augmentations assuming there is no recovery time (which is unlikely). Compare that training timeline with the average flash clone's life expectancy of 14.7 Weeks. Lastly, the need for fully trained spartans rather than flash clones is because they weren't being trained and equipped for a single operation, they were built for as many suicide missions as they could be sent on.
It's sort of implied in the books that they didn't need "quantity" they needed "quality". You have to remember the context.
At the time the unsc we're losing tens of ships to destroy 1 of the covenants. Plasma rounds, spikers, personal shields, brutes....ONI was looking for a way to have a person *exist* on the battlefield. A soldier could unload clip after clip into a brute/elite and nothing happened....10, 100, 100,000,000 doesn't matter how many they sent at that time, they *all* melted before even the weakest of the covenant.
*That* was the true reason the Spartans worked. The armor that cost as much as a destroyer gave them the opening they needed. The augments gave them the reaction time they needed. Just to *exist*.
Quantity works because each "piece" is enough to deal *some* amount of damage. If the damage is repaired as fast as it is dealt....then it no longer works. Look up Warmhammer 40k for a little more detail on this idea.
Also, just cause someone else brought it up. Ethics. Moral and public backing are important for a war. Even if it's for survival.
Why not make an army of battle droids too? In all seriousness, UNSC flash cloning is an incredibly imperfect science with a ton of short and long term problems. Clones are probably not fit to be regular soldiers and definitely not going to survive augmentation given how physically compromised they are.
Why didn't they get the Caminos to do it then? They're cloners. Damn good ones toođ
Because the Caminoans are A. in a galaxy far far away, and B. were destroyed by the empire a long time ago.
wouldve been perfect if you reversed the order of those
thought about that, but considering them being all bown up was the bigger reason that they wouldn't be able to do cloning for the UNSC, it made more sense to list it last. Since if I'd said they'd all blown up first, why bother mentioning that they were so far away atall?
I think it's more that your answer would then have read "a long time ago B. In a galaxy far far away "
Is that what happened to camino? I don't know extended Star Wars lore whatsoever I'm just a casual fan of the movies
Yeah, it was the main plot of Bad Batch season 1.
Kaminoan*
Thank you
Money, I want to say that there's a passage somewhere that discusses the cost of a flash clone as being utterly ridiculous, and that Halsey had to ruffle some (more) feathers to get approved for the few hundred she used.
No money is not an issue for cloning at all. It is such a basic thing that it is literally how all major damage to body parts are repaired. Halsey ruffles feathers because she made full clones which are never healthy and break down because the accelerated growth destroyed the body. Which is exactly why it is illegal to do so. But it didn't ruffle enough that any of the handlers and higher ranks of ONI wouldn't approve it.
Just clone the augmented soldiers then lmao.
Why didn't the eagles just fly the clone technology into the future?
My guess: flash clones wouldn't go well with the augmentations. As in, by the time the augments take, the clones would already be breaking down. There could also be issues regarding memory implants, motivation, and even physical coordination. I'm honestly more surprised that ONI never slow cloned the spartan IIs and raised those clones to be spartan killers or some such.
>I'm honestly more surprised that ONI never slow cloned the spartan IIs and raised those clones to be spartan killers or some such. That's what they want you to think
Holy shit, youâre right. They had the DNA of all of these genetic freaks that were already incredibly strong, fast, and smart. They should have just made clones of them. Fuck, they couldâve just gone full-tilt Kaminoan and cloned a hundred John-117s. Imagine how insane that would be.
Clearly would be very ineffective, as his luck would be evenly distributed between all those clones, resulting in very average Spartans.
If anyone ONI should slow clone, its Fred. Second best in everything is still still Second Best in Everything. Fred dosen't rely on luck, hes just that good. A clone army of Fred would be able to take on basically any mission and any opponent bar for a very select few exceptionals (say, John.) But if you send a dozen or more Freds at a target, that target is dead, and thats a guarantee.
ONI at that point would be stupid enough to send all of those Freds on a single suicide mission and watch them get glassed from orbit.
Make more.
One thing is the early parts of their life when their mine was still developing as that clearly was a significant reason for their qualifications.... But this is the Office of Naval Intelligence we're talking about, they could probably just get all their child psychologists to come up with the perfect environment and regimen to raise these clones.
You'd ride the Fred sled wouldn't you?
*would you not*
One problem is their early upbringing was part of why they were selected. Just because you can genetically match John in a clone, doesn't mean that you'll be able to match his personality or skills raising him in a lab.
Resource intensive and likely would cause more questions then they wanted. Plus just because you can match their genetics, doesn't mean their personalities or skills will transfer. Lab raised Linda may not have the drive or nature that allowed the real one to make an entire spy network of children.
I've only read fall of reach so far, but Linda did what?!
Yeah one of the things that got her on the list of Spartan candidates was at school she created and engineered an extensive spy network through the other children to keep an eye on the teachers and adults.
Lol, that's so cool.
Yeah the Spartan 2's had some crazy feats lol. Soren survived completely on his own as a child, linda had a spy network. Kelly outran and dodged the team sent to get her because she thought they were playing a game of chase (They caught her because she gave herself up lol).
Is it normal that the first thing I thought of when you said Soren was Mass effect? Was the kid homeless or something?
His stepdad ran an illegal farm and thus didn't take his mom to doctors for an easily treatable sickness, causing her to die (and was left in her bedroom to rot locked away). Dad died from the sickness/wounds later on, and Soren simply lived in the woods. From memory.
Because that would be extremely unethical /s
>I'm honestly more surprised that ONI never slow cloned the spartan IIs IIRC, With that time manipulation tech on Onyx, they don't even need to do it slowly, relative to the galactic timescale. Build a halo wars barracks with time tech and pump some out every few weeks.
In one of the books it was brought up that any clones produced would become legal and protected citizens to help prevent some form of slavery in believe, but not that it would stop oni. Ontop, clones from whay we see in lore are a lot more susceptible to degradation, and sickness. Though cloned organs were more likely to take to a host and were likely more ethical than having donors, every whole clone weâve met has had a list of health problems after a while. The none cloned candidates already had countless challenges and complications. Clones likely would have been far less successful.
The Mortal Dictata, first mentioned in Halsey's journal from the *Halo: Reach* collector's editions and then in *Halo: Mortal Dictata*. Technically it only outlaws human cloning (and discriminating against people based on their genetics, augmented or not), it doesn't outright say clones are people or that clones can't be enslaved, but it *does* say that a human is a human as long as any random person could say "yup, that's a human right there", and that no human can be owned by any other person or organization. So as long as the clone looks and acts human it's considered a human and can't be legally enslaved (or re-cloned). But considering how much the S2 program already violated the Dictata, yeah it wouldn't stop them if it were a viable option.
Thanks for the clarification!! Been forever since i read the book.
Mortal Dictata I think.
That sounds right
Flash clones are infamous for the myriad health problems which ultimately killed them, hardly makes for an effective soldier. Also SIIIs were chosen from "consenting" orphans for their reckless behavior and the need to avenge their families, how would you motivate clones to sacrifice themselves with the same reckless abandon?
Clones were never supposed to be people. Dumping flash clones of the S2 kids was like a cat leaving a dead rat on your bed. They're probably near braindead, and have no memories.
Realistically why didn't they develop robots controlled by a smart AI
Isn't this the plot of Halo 5? :p
The plot of Halo 5 is about a rampant AI that convinced itself to follow a dead religion.
Exactly - a smart AI controlling ancient robots, and why that's a bad idea. ;-)
If I'm not wrong Halsey did mention somewhere that she hoped the flash clones could have been used instead of the actual children, but they weren't able to last for very long since they died weeks after
Flash clones are sickly and die quickly
Tbh, clones of some probably could have produced a lot more spartans.
Because it's cheaper and faster to use war orphans, especially since I bet they have way more spare war orphans than they do facilities for flash cloning a whole person, and the resources for flash cloning the suicide soldiers could instead go toward flash cloning organs and limbs for wounded soldiers who can be sent back out to have another go at dying
A flash clone had a life expectancy of a few weeks, sometimes a couple months max. With medical treatment, you could see it extended (maybe, going off Halo Legends) but they would probably never be in any shape to do anything. A full flash clone would need to be trained on everything, and I do mean everything (how to tie boots for starters). By time you get them to a rifle range, most are probably dead or bound to medical beds waiting to die.Â
Because 99% of the clones would be dead before you trained them? It's very clear in Halo that they waste away ,fast. Only two Spartan II clones survive beyond like a few years and the only one directly shown has been in a wheelchair for some time.
Flash Clones die in anything from a few weeks or months to the same day of their creation. The decay is unpredictable and uncontrollable. Any SIII clones would have been difficult to control, train and deploy without them dying pretty much immediately.
media (kilo 5, homecoming, the fall of reach movie) pretty well depicts that flash clones either have practically no responses to stimuli and/or almost immediately begin deteriorating physically so id imagine theyd be largely useless beyond becoming excellent target practice for the covenant theyre deployed against
The reason Spartan IIs are as good as they are is because theyâve been in the military their whole lives. The Spartan IIIs became a close approximation through both augmentation and sheer unbridled rage. A flash clone isnât going to have the drive to accomplish a suicide mission, Spartan IIIs often volunteered for them and in the case of noble 6, would occasionally steal classified documents and go on suicide missions by himself which is why he was originally the only other âhyper lethal vectorâ
Weak bodies unable to handle augmentations- not to mention you couldn't train them fast enough (up to a Spartan's standards at least) before they rapidly succumb to illness that all flash cloned people suffer from
you couldn't train them to any standards , their genetics are falling apart in real time with auto immune diseases
They'd probably just sit around wearing sunglasses and look uninterested. *"Mr Pop-Spartan doesn't feel like this mission realises his artistic integrity!"*
Clones are blank slates and they start deterioratingnas soon as they're made. They wouldn't be highly trained combatants that Spartans should be.
They wouldn't even survive long enough to be trained.
Firstly there's more to warfighting than numbers and physical capability, the ability to fight as a unit, rapidly assess and respond to an evolving battlefield, to understand the outer limits of your equipment and to be able to trust your team. Secondly, you have timing, flash clones as others have mentioned have erratic life expectancy before overlapping chronic and life-crippling diseases begin to develop and after augmenting these flash clones they still need to be trained. To give a real-world equivalent, a US Army Ranger from Basic Combat Training to Ranger School is roughly 26 Weeks that is half a year including 1 week of augmentations assuming there is no recovery time (which is unlikely). Compare that training timeline with the average flash clone's life expectancy of 14.7 Weeks. Lastly, the need for fully trained spartans rather than flash clones is because they weren't being trained and equipped for a single operation, they were built for as many suicide missions as they could be sent on.
Probably because the clones didn't survive long and seemed to have in-built neurological disorders.
It's sort of implied in the books that they didn't need "quantity" they needed "quality". You have to remember the context. At the time the unsc we're losing tens of ships to destroy 1 of the covenants. Plasma rounds, spikers, personal shields, brutes....ONI was looking for a way to have a person *exist* on the battlefield. A soldier could unload clip after clip into a brute/elite and nothing happened....10, 100, 100,000,000 doesn't matter how many they sent at that time, they *all* melted before even the weakest of the covenant. *That* was the true reason the Spartans worked. The armor that cost as much as a destroyer gave them the opening they needed. The augments gave them the reaction time they needed. Just to *exist*. Quantity works because each "piece" is enough to deal *some* amount of damage. If the damage is repaired as fast as it is dealt....then it no longer works. Look up Warmhammer 40k for a little more detail on this idea. Also, just cause someone else brought it up. Ethics. Moral and public backing are important for a war. Even if it's for survival.
They had free kids, why waste money on cloning?
My head canon are that flash clones are stupid as hell and can barely do anything thing.