: Ok, so it seems that the general consensus is that the pattern buffer
: facilitates some kind of time travel in which the mind survives after
: death and travels back to the last time it used a PB.
I think this is the start of your problems. Pattern buffers in traditional Sci-Fi are the intermediate things in transporter systems; you're body is disassembled and the pattern of energy stored for reassembly later.
I imagine the original gameplay mechanic of them was simply that when you die, they reconstitute you, no time travel involved. But in order to work as a saved-game mechanism the EFFECT is of time travel. For the player, this can be explained somehow through his Jjaro cybernetics.
Ordinary people using pattern buffers probably die, and then get reconstituted at the pattern buffer later, no knowledge that they had died or that any time had passed since they were buffed.
Though you have to wonder if they have that tech on board, why bother with a colony ship or statis chambers at all? Just pattern everybody...
