Preamble
I really love the idea of creating ships that aren’t manned by humans or other organics for roleplay purposes and I think it would be cool to have a way to simulate them in game. Here’s my take on how this might work in Aurora.
Automated Ships
Automated ships refer to any vessels which are unmanned by organics. Automated ships function identically to crewed ships with the following exceptions:
- Automated ships suffer no delay in firing in combat unless it’s maintenance or “morale” (we’ll call it coherence) has been degraded
- This is referring to the delay in firing that poorly trained organic crews suffer in combat
- Automated ships carry no crew nor officer. It is instead captained by an AI Core; a sub-sentient computer system that is designed with specific characteristics by their designer. AI cores’ skills are fixed and aren’t improved by experience.
- Deployment time effects the coherence of the AI core at a slower pace than the morale of an organic crew.
- However, the longer an auto ship remains at a low coherence, the greater the chance the AI will suffer a malfunction that can cause it go rogue or self-destruct.
- Effects from hostile jamming are intensified on automated ships, even more so on auto ships piloted by tier 0 cores
- When automated ships are destroyed in combat, there’s no crew or officers to recover. AI cores either attempt to eject for recovery (risking capture) or go down with the ship to avoid the risk altogether and to provide worse salvage.
- AI cores add increasing amounts of EM and Thermal signatures to the vessels in question. AI cores can be shielded to mitigate this effect, although this will increase costs significantly.
AI Cores
AI Cores are player designed components that replaces the organic crew. AI cores don’t learn; they are developed, trained, and then deployed.
Automated ships are available even to conventional empires, albeit conventional AI cores are extremely weak compared to crewed ships. The most useful way to use conventional AI cores is as cannon fodder or one-way missions (Probe Droids anyone?). Conventional AI cores are Tier 0.
Tier 1+ cores are player-created components that increase an auto-ships’ capabilities / skills and can be fitted onto auto-ships. AI core’s can be trained to mimic an average crewed vessel’s capabilities or to excel in a specific role / stat line. Overspecializing an AI core comes with diminishing returns.
Some example stats that could be affected by the AI core’s capabilities:
- Survey Speed (Geo and Grav)
- Weapon Accuracy
- Effective Sensor Range(s)
- Damage Control Rating
- Maintenance Costs
- General (Marginally effect all of the above)
Coherenece (Morale)
AI cores aren’t sentient. The only thing they require in upkeep is MSP and specialized coherence testing. Consider how UNSC AI constructs have a lifespan of ~7 years; after which they go rampant. AI cores function similarly in that their lifespan is limited and they need to be reset / re-trained after their designated deployment time aboard a given ship.
Coherence degrades much slower than morale does, but its effects are much more drastic and dangerous. Low coherence AI cores significantly degrade the performance of their vessels until they accidentally destroy themselves or go rogue; at which point control over the AI core is completely lost.
Auto Ships vs Crewed Ships
So, the big question is, what’s the point of having to deal with the crew system if I have automated ships? There needs to be an interesting choice to be had; if one is blatantly better than the other, then there is no choice outside of RP or challenge considerations.
I think the mechanics I laid out previously should provide some interesting choices by themselves, but I will lay it out here.
For Auto Ships
- Investment into an automated ship is not contingent on needing qualified officers or crew, only materials to create them
- Automated ships are more suited to longer deployment times
- Automated ships can be further specialized at the design level with greater efficiency: without the need to carry crew, automated ships are more compact and cheaper than an equivalent organic one
- Sustaining combat damage doesn’t result in the loss of crew or officers
- Automated ships can be designed to make defeat provide less material / intelligence for the enemy from combat losses
- Autonomous ships can take the place of ships that may have previously been piloted by conscripts
For Crewed Ships
- Doesn’t suffer from additional ECM or jamming effects nor do they have an increased sensor profile
- Officers and crew are “free” (not factoring in the cost of academies) and don’t require you to invest minerals into making them better, just training and time
- Crewed ships can get more effective over time as a ship’s crew gains experience
- Recovering skilled officers or crew can preserve valuable talent, even between new generations of ship designs
- No additional maintenace costs or complications from needing to maintain AI cores
- Low morale ships don’t go rogue
- Less research and development time overhead compared to auto-ships.
- Crewed ships benefit from well designed and staffed naval organizations whereas automated ships do not.
- Allowing organics to captain your ships centers your heroic naval commanders and their achievements. You probably don’t want to decorate your CPU with honors.
Misc
Some additional balancing things that may need to be considered
- Crew quarters are replaced by an AI core equivalent that is lighter and cheaper and would scale similarly to crew quarters so that deployment time is cheaper to buy but not free.
- 6 was an arbitrary number for the AI core tiers. Whichever amount is the most straightforward and interesting to implement is the best.
- The size of AI cores could be tied to some sort of multiplier for the amount of its effects similar to Fire Control. You could plug in a massive 2000kt super computer or a 50kt calculator depending on what you want.
- At high enough tech levels, perhaps you could research a “sentient” AI core that doesn’t start out with any proficiencies but can learn and improve a ship in the way that an organic crew does.
- I have no idea what minerals AI cores should take to create.
- Tying back into the idea of a size system like the ones engines / fire controls / sensors have, the player should be able to choose between making super-advanced and effective AI core models VS super-expendable and stupid models.
- Anything else I haven’t thought of or oversights on my part
