Overview
Cloning seems to be an issue for many new players of Satellite Reign. Here’s a short guide of the how and why.
Introduction
I have seen several requests for a guide on cloning, and it hasn’t been delivered yet. So here is a quick one by me. Hopefully, it will at least get you started.
So, cloning… In Satellite Reign, the player controls 4 agents. These agents are able to upload their consciouness in newly cloned body that serves their needs. This means the bodies your agents start with are not their original bodies. They are clones of other peoples. These bodies are also pretty crappy, so you need to find better clones for your agents to upload themself into.
Concretly, the clone your agent inhabit prodives a bonus to health regen, max health and movement speed. It’s actually fairly simple, once you know what to do.
Note: there is an early quest (after liberating the Infiltrator) that requires the player to hijack a specific civilian and serves as a tutorial for the cloning mechanic. You don’t need to have finished this quest to start cloning, and apart from this one civilian you’re free to choose to clone just about anyone in the game, enemies included.
Finding and hijacking a clone
Cloning requires the hacker’s Hijack skill. The hacker start with the level 1 version of this skill, so you can start cloning right away. The level 1 hijack only work on civilians, not enemies, so lets start with that.
Step 1: Finding a good canditate for cloning
Not everyone is born equal, and this is especially true for civilians in Satellite Reign. To suits your needs, you must find the best specimens.
To see a what a civilian’s bodies will provides to your agents once it is cloned, use the Support agent’s world scan ability (over his/her portrait at the bottom of the screen). When a civilian enter the area covered by world scan, it might take a few seconds before his info is decrypted, as illustrated by the little white symbols flickering over them. Once a civi is analysed, click on him/her. In the description pop-up, you will be prompted to pay a small amount of money to reveal the cloning stats. Do that.
3 stats will be shown:
- Bonus to health regeneration (+1.5 is a good early on)
- Bonus to movement speed (+20% is good early on)
- Bonus to maximum health (+25 is good early on)
[Outdated: these values have changed, and new stats have been added]
These stats tend to be fairly random, but more well-off citizens sometimes have better stats. Enemies can have much better bonus, but you will need to upgrade the hacker’s hijacking skill to get them. When starting a new game, I’d recommend looking at the bouncers in the central area of the Downtown (starting) district: they generally have pretty good stats. Once you find someone you want to clone, start step 2.
Step 2: Hijacking your canditate
Once you have your target, select your Hacker and use the hijack skill (next to the hacker’s portrait) on the civilian.
Warning: hijacking is a crime, and enemies will attack you if your Hacker is seen doing it. Note that guards/cameras will only be alerted if they see the Hacker (the victim can be in plain sight). At higher levels, the hijack skill has greater range, allowing your Hacker to stay in cover. [Update: enemies now become suspicious if they see someone being hijacked, and will investigate]
It take a few seconds to hijack (similar to hacking). Once it is done, the civilian will be placed under your control. The hijacked person’s portrait is shown right of your agents’ and has 2 “abilities”: send to cloning and release.
Higher level clones
Once a person is analysed by world scan, one of the stat shown is the level required to hijack him/her.
- Civilians are level 1
- Basic enemies are level 2
- More advanced enemies (like the Draco Hammerhead) are level 3
- Heavy troops and commanders are level 4
Just like civilians, human enemies can be hijacked and cloned. However, you will need to upgrade the Hacker’s hijack skill to do that. Obviously, higher level enemies can provides better bonus to your agents.
Additionnaly, you may also encounter very rare civilians with much better stats, such as +60% movement speed. Find ’em? Hijack ’em. They are very valuable.
Swapping agents’ clones
Now that you have a clone, you may upload your agents into it. Open the menu and go to the Loadout tab, then Clone.
This screen can be a bit confusing, so let’s start with the basic. To the left is the list of all available clones, including the 4 you start with: 1 for each agent. At the bottom, there is the 4 portraits of your agents. To the right is how the selected agent look like.
Select the agent you want to edit (at the bottom, not on the list of available clones). On the left, choose your new clone, the one you just hijacked. Note that the starting clones have random apperance but no bonus, making them quite useless.
In addition to the stat bonus, the new clone will (obviously) change your agent’s appearance. A few other aspects of the agent’s look (coat color, headgear) can also be changed on this screen.
You can now hunt for more clones on the streets, or just use the same clone for every agents. However, note that there is a penalty for using the same clone multiple times (explained bellow).
Clones degradetion
If one of your agent dies, the currently used body will be cloned again. However, the bonus will be reduced each time that happen. If your agents dies often, you will need to find fresh clones to replace the old ones.
[NEW] Also, if you use a clone for more than one agent at a time, the second/third/fourth clones will suffer incremental penalties, because they have to be cloned again.
You can discard useless clones from the list on the Clone screen (there is a little X you can click on).
Conclusion
I hope this guide was useful to you. If you have questions, you may ask them but I don’t plan on continously updating this page.
-Harvatos