Forgive me if this is in an obvious place inside the book. But does the book mention how much it would be to purchase a bioroid or clone? If not, then how expensive should each one be?

Dont think it states it specific. I would depend on what type of clone or bioroid you would seek. Is a black market decommission hacked model or maybe a renegade clone with just a few months left of its expected life span ?

Or maybe a top notch perfect tailor made clone custom ordered. I think the prices would vary a lot.

On page 57 under the Jintiki Faction it says that a big favour would equal "provide a custom clone" in the favour system a big favour can gain 1500 extra starting credits but not all credits are created equal so again your milage may vary. Says the same for Bioroid under the Haas-bioroid entry.

Then again "provide" does not 100% imply ownership might come with strings attached

My guess is in the neighbourhood 40~60k Credits for the basic models (a property cost equivalent to vehicles) and more for advanced/specialized models; basically equivalent to owing vehicle. Its not too expensive for a small business or an independent family to own, but still rare enough. Interestingly, according to "World of Android", Clones are cheaper than Bioroids, but require living space and greater maintenance. In addition, Bioroids can function for years longer and is able to be reconfigured for other tasks if needed. Therefore, in Andorid's world Bioroids are considered better and long-term investment for non-interacting roles and professions.

Both Jinteki and Haas apparently also have a lease program, like cars, so that could also cheapen the expenses (as well as provide some hooks for scenarios or ideas for characters).

I don't think you purchase Clones or Bioroids. You lease them and all service is done be Jintiki or Haas-Bioroid depending if it is a Clone or Bioroid. They are extremely protective of their IP. I suspect if you damage them, there will be a big fee for that.

16 hours ago, Torg Smith said:

I don't think you purchase Clones or Bioroids. You lease them and all service is done be Jintiki or Haas-Bioroid depending if it is a Clone or Bioroid. They are extremely protective of their IP. I suspect if you damage them, there will be a big fee for that.

While leasing is often mentioned, I believe that is more true of Bioroids than clones. Worlds of Android has an entire section on clones. It mentions constantly how the owner is responsible for feeding, clothing, and giving the clone time to bathe. Neglecting to do any of these properly can void the warrenty.

Even with a lease agreement there would be some cost tied to it. Although much lower than outright ownership.

For funsies I decided to ask the developers and this was the response I got.

Question   :

I'll keep my questions right to the point. If my players wanted to purchase an Android; how much would one cost? I imagine the better and more specialized the model the more expensive it would be. But  what would be a good starting figure? If just leasing a model what would the costs and conditions be?

Answer: 

Hello Noah, 

We deliberately did not include prices for bioroids or clones. Since both are arguably sapient as well as sentient beings, we felt doing so would come down on the side of them being a commodity for the players (even though in the game world, they certainly are treated as such). Therefore, the prices are to be set by the GM. However, we can certainly  offer some guidance. Remember that androids are replacing human workers in a lot of menial jobs, which means they are not so expensive as to be a novelty to the very wealthy.  How  ever, they’re not cheap enough that everyone has an android, either. Think about items in our modern day world that seem similar (such as a good new car, for example) and you’ll have a  good starting  point  .

Personally I've been trying to wrap my head around the economics of how Droids & Clones could reach a point where they're cheap enough to so widely replace workers.

Robots seems fairly obvious - but to continue to use an inefficient and complex body shape... I don't think the argument is so clear.

On 6/11/2019 at 7:11 PM, steveliv001 said:

Personally I've been trying to wrap my head around the economics of how Droids & Clones could reach a point where they're cheap enough to so widely replace workers.

Robots seems fairly obvious - but to continue to use an inefficient and complex body shape... I don't think the argument is so clear.

I think the short answer is that bioroid brains are not custom coded -- they're based on human brains via braintaping, so they might not accept a body too far off of baseline human. It's got to be cheaper to provide a weak AI control system and then hand over drone control to a bioroid than to develop a custom self-contained strong AI. (And for routine activities, one bioroid could thus manage a whole fleet of drones.)