Birth tie

A thick tie seen at birth connecting both parent and offspring. It generally lasts for 20 cycles, plus a number of cycles required to transfer epigenic or "racial memory" from parent to child. Bots can reduce this time by firing ties manually and deleting them, since only one tie can be formed between any two bots, and newer ties always supplant older ones. Ordinarily this is done to reduce motion penalties imposed by attached bot.

Most parents and children coupled together with a birth tie are vulnerable to outside attack. Also, they tend to attempt moving in different directions, with the result that they go nowhere.

Other methods to compensate for this problem:

• limit motion when tied to child
• limit child's motion (either parent does this manually, or its coded into newborn babies)