We Are Clones (in Autoduel 1st edition)

"I'm a clone, I know it and I'm fine.
I'm one and more are on the way."
- Alice Cooper, "Clones"

The Car Wars universe dealt with character death by making it curable - sort-of - with money.

I decided to go back and take a look at it. It seems like a textbook case of Extra Life - you purchase a backup "you"for cash.

The details are on the sidebar of Autoduel 1st edition, p. 75, and basically copy Car Wars in costs:

$10K for the initial clone growth
$1k/month to maintain
$2K to reprogram, and it needs to be reprogrammed monthly unless you get a MMSD.
MMSD storage of your memories is $25K but the data never disappears and can be used repeatedly. So much so that you can get a new clone for $5k as long as you've got an MMSD. Cheaper than maintaining a clone, really.
Direct upload from a corpse is $K.

So this adds up very, very quickly even given the high-value cash of Car Wars. It costs 1-2 Div 25 cars per year to maintain.

And you lose any XP gained between the time when you last updated your clone (or MMSD) and when you die . . . so you really don't want to die without leaving an intact corpse to upload into your close or you lose XP.

This costs no points, however. It's purely a monetary transaction, just like a Resurrection spell but one that will work even if you're utterly annihilated . . . assuming you maintained your backup.

I have to pull my copy of Autoduel 2nd edition out of storage and see what they did there. I was right near when it's boxed up today but didn't think of this clone issue until I was listening to the song quoted above on the ride home. Oh well. I'd listened to it many times prior and didn't think, "Hey, what about Gold Cross?" until today's stray thought. I'll take a look when I get a chance - or if you've got it, say what it has in the comments. Is Gold Cross an advantage or, essentially, equipment like in 1st edition?