There's an easier and more reliable way to limit replication; don't hive them the means to create a small but essential part, and instead load the first probe woth many copies of it and have each replica take a set percentage.
For instance, have the probe able to replicate everything but its CPU, and just load up a rack of them on probe 0. Every time it replicates itself it passes half of its remaining stock to the replica and they both carry on from there.