How far away can my new sleeve be when I egocast?

Question

When using an ego bridge to egocast a live ego (as opposed to a halted fork or backup), how distant can the target be?

Eclipse Phase p. 269 says:

In this case, during the process of uploading, the ego bridge is also connected to another ego bridge and the new sleeve. This connection can even be made wirelessly or by farcaster link (with a maximum distance of 10,000 kilometers).

Later, on p. 275:

But for any trip longer than 1.5 million kilometers—the distance a fusion drive craft can cover in a day—people egocast. Egocasting is transhumanity’s most advanced personal transportation technology, though only the character’s ego actually travels. Egocasting combines the technologies of uploading and quantum farcasting to transfer a backup (or sometimes even a conscious ego, see Egocasting, p. 275) over interplanetary distances.

How can you send a conscious ego on a long trip when it seems limited to 10Mm? Unfortunately, the cross-reference seems to be to the very section doing the cross-referencing!

Uploading, the manual says (p. 269), takes "hours … or even longer if done via farcaster." There are no specifics given about time taken, that I could find.

So:

• How far can one transfer an active ego?
• Is it the case, then, that egocasting beyond that is just sending the data composing a backup?
• How long does the long-distance transmission of an ego take?

Answer 1

As the page 296 states, an active ego can only be broadcast 10,000 km - an insignificant distance, cosmically speaking. This capability is likely what page 275 refers to. Note that the quantum faracasting the quote refers to is not quantum entangled FTL communication, but rather a way of encrypting any other communication method - see page 314 for details. As such, egocasting still happens at the speed of light. At 10,000 km it'll take 0.033 seconds for the signal to arrive. It's reasonable to assume this is the main reason for the distance limit - any longer and the brain running at both locations at once is not communicating effectively with itself.

This leads to the conclusion that, indeed, inter-planetary egocasting is done using a stored ego. Loss of continuity is an issue!

As for the transmission time, it is mostly left up to the GM as many such things are in the system. Page 276 says that "Egocasting from the sun to the Kuiper Belt, however, takes between 40 and 70 hours, and so egocasting all of the way across the solar system can take even longer." As speed-of-light travel of that distance would take only 4 to 7 hours, most of the time will actually be spent waiting for the data to be sent: data relays that handle neutrino broadcasting are a bottleneck (page 242).

Conceivably, with an in-game reason or a bribe, this can be expedited. Otherwise, we can see that the process multiplies the travel time by a factor of 10 - perhaps a useful rule of thumb. Once the ego arrives, however, it only takes 5-10 minutes (page 296) to upload it to the new morph.