Robot Ships

[Omnivore]

There are at least a couple of quite reasonable assumptions that could be made that would allow automation to coexist with human crews, at least minimal ones. First, it is quite possible that anything resembling a true self aware AI would be unusable - insanity was a reason in Niven's Man/Kzin wars - fear of rogue Saberhagen berserker ships another. This still allows for a high degree of automation using expert AI rather than truly self-aware AI. A second, possibly coexistent reason could be a legal one, human governments may quite well insist on human command authority aboard.

 

[aramis]

Employed to do what though?

Ship interview of prospective biological crew...

Pilot? No, the AI is far superior in every circumstance.

Navigator? No, again the AI is better.

Engineer? Nope, not that either.

Gunner? Of course not.

Medic? Don't be silly.

Steward? Yes. You are hired. For some reason passengers feel more comfortable and superior when being waited on by another "lower" social rank fellow being.

The ship muses to itself ...just as soon as we can make convincing androids and I'm not saying we don't already :devil: then we can forget about needing to hire any inferior biological crew.

So, do you really want all your player characters to be Stewards? With no combat training or any other "adventuring" background and skills? (unnecessary after all) To do what in the game? Solve the mystery of the missing tureen? (Hint, the Steward did it )

Humans as pets.

 

[CosmicGamer]

There are at least a couple of quite reasonable assumptions that could be made that would allow automation to coexist with human crews, at least minimal ones.

Agreed. Several posted by FT and others earlier. I have a mix of some of those.

My thought is that once you have an AI as intuitive, unpredictable (needed for combat), and imaginative as a being (any race) it also has some of the lesser desired human issues.

 

[McPerth]

Reading book 8, it seems fairly easy to construct a robotic ship pilot, nav and engineer at TL12 with all of them skill 4. I can see it being esp useful for a 100k ton freighter plying a standardized route. You could just have a backup human crew.

The same book 8 says that synaptic brains are not reliable enough to be used in starships, and so paralel computing is used there. And the TL tables give self-aware robots (and I guess starships) as TL 17.

IMHO there can be too many possible unexpected situations in an starship to make it advisable to have true intelligence on board, and computers don't attain it until TL 17 (at least).

For reasons of play starship crews are not automated.

Well, the need of a single pilot for a starship that may need days or weeks to reach its destination (and I talk now about normal space, and so include non jump ships), a single engineer to keep its drives and PP 24/7... I guess there's quite a lot of automatization there...

In MGT there seems to be less automatization, and so crew needs use to be larger.

Plus, a human crew is usually less expensive than a lot of robots (I make them expensive if they're good).

In initial price, sure, but how many monthly salaries do they cost? A good pilot (level 2) costs you Cr 79200 a year (in CT), enough for a good robot brain...

There are at least a couple of quite reasonable assumptions that could be made that would allow automation to coexist with human crews, at least minimal ones. First, it is quite possible that anything resembling a true self aware AI would be unusable - insanity was a reason in Niven's Man/Kzin wars - fear of rogue Saberhagen berserker ships another. This still allows for a high degree of automation using expert AI rather than truly self-aware AI. A second, possibly coexistent reason could be a legal one, human governments may quite well insist on human command authority aboard.

One of Kinunir adventures was about a computer going insane, IIRC.

All this does not mean I don't allow robots to help on a starship. You have only one player with engineering while your ship needs 2 engineers, allow him to buy an engineering robot (engineer 2, useless in other tasks). It's a good way to give players positions they cannot fill without resorting to NPCs.

And I even designed once a drone fighter (10 tons) as a unexpensive (robot brains end up quite cheaper than computers) way to boost your small ship fleet (and to cheat the maximum pilots rule in a billion Credit Squadron match :devil, but they were drones to be used for the battle, not true fighters with all its other uses. The main problem, when using it with HG/MT combat system is how is factored its robot brain as computer, to use the computer DMs.

 

[Dragoner]

That is the way I use them for the most part, to fill crew positions and as an analog to reality, robots do a lot of flying aircraft and navigating oceangoing vessels today, I really can't see things going backwards.

 

[samuelvss]

When figuring the cost of the robot crew member, balance agaisnt the cost of a stateroom, .5MCr, as well as salary.

 

[McPerth]

When figuring the cost of the robot crew member, balance agaisnt the cost of a stateroom, .5MCr, as well as salary.

And I also forgot to feature its life support cost (Cr 2000 per jump, one jump per 2 weeks, 4 weeks a year lost in arious issues, maintenance included, so about 48000 per year). That, added to its salary (Cr 12-72000 per year, pluses aside) and its stateroom (Cr 50000, if you can give him a small one). All of this balanced with a robot brain that could do its job (in most cases you will not need more than the brain, connecting it to the ship commands) clearly shows us that money is not what keeps the crews to become robotic.

 

[E.D.Quibell]

You can either use a human replacment robot.

My low tech example of this is in Freelance Issue #013, January 2011 (although Iv'e fixed it since then).

Or you can just replace the Starship computer with a robot brain (aka Virus).

IMTU, which is TL10 max, I'm just starting to have Robots supliment Humans on a labour poor, high tech, immigration restricted planet/system in the low end booring jobs. One of which is running old in system mega freighters. I'm going to have a couple of sophants in command positions, but the rest of the crew is going to be human replacments.

Best regards,

Ewan

 

[77topaz]

You can either use a human replacment robot.

My low tech example of this is in Freelance Issue #013, January 2011 (although Iv'e fixed it since then).

Or you can just replace the Starship computer with a robot brain (aka Virus).

IMTU, which is TL10 max, I'm just starting to have Robots supliment Humans on a labour poor, high tech, immigration restricted planet/system in the low end booring jobs. One of which is running old in system mega freighters. I'm going to have a couple of sophants in command positions, but the rest of the crew is going to be human replacments.

Best regards,

Ewan

Hmm... but, really, a TL10-max universe is not very useful when discussing things in the semi-OTU (Charted Space).
And Earth already has many robots for many different purposes, such as auto-pilot systems, "factory robots", primitive warbots (bomb-checkers), space exploration vehicles, surgical robots... the list goes on and on.

 

[E.D.Quibell]

Hmm... but, really, a TL10-max universe is not very useful when discussing things in the semi-OTU (Charted Space).

Why is that?

There are more TL9 planets than any other TL in the Imperium and the next highest is TL10. Infact 70% of all systems in the Imperium are TL10 or less (68.61% if you wish to be more presise).

I don't have the TL per population to hand, but my guess is that it's probably around 50% (or more) of the total Imperial population is at TL10 or less. I need to run the anaylisis because it's all about the pop A and 9 worlds (96% of the total Imperial population), the others just don't count.

Best regards,

Ewan

 

[E.D.Quibell]

Ok so I was wrong:

A (or less) 25.4%
B 10.3%
C 10.6%
D 12.3%
E 14.8%
F 22.6%
G 3.9%


25% of the population is TL10 or less. Still that is 1 in 4.

Best regards,

Ewan

 

[McPerth]

101 vehicles (MT), page 3:

A robot brain may take the place of the computer and one crew member

I guess taking place of the computer may only be applied if the robot brain is used as Pilot/Operator, not in 'lesser' functions (if you use a robot brain instead a gunner to mann your turret, I guess you still need computer(s) in your ship).

BTW, also see that it says the computer, not one computer, so hinting that robotic drones don't need multiple computers (as need gravitic crafts, that need two of them, or spaceships/starships, that need three). I guess the multiple computer needs are safety regulations for people-carrying crafts (so they may not even be universal, but only in Imperium controled space), while drones, due to being expendable, don't need so much safety.

 

[Dragoner]

Expedition to Zhodane has rock jumping with minimal assistance, so it seems there is even some canonical evidence for robot ships, though it did do a misjump. I would say automation is fairly standard, but human crews supervise procedures, some things would seem to have to use automatition, such as gunnery.

There are always "jump tapes," like a deep purple 8 track.

 

[mike wightman]

They aren't tapes - they are self-erasing cassettes.

LBB2 page 40.

 

[Dragoner]

So you can only listen to space truckin' once.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zGJ9N7c6pE

 

[Ackehece]

Sure, I agree, but

The player characters need a reason to be on the ship, to be travelling to other worlds, to be getting into all those "fun" bits. Traveller generally supposes they do that and are prepared for the "fun" bits by being and having been space crew.

Automate things and you change that.

Not that it's a bad way to go, I never intended to imply that, just that it will be different... such as the PCs are, quite simply and appropriately for the game, Travellers.

Once you introduce the level of AI that eliminates the need for ship crews it is a different universe. One that is unlikely to get back to needing ship crews. Those jobs, and hence the training and experience for them, will be gone and not coming back.

Just as humans were replaced by automotive assembly line welder robots because they are faster, better and cheaper. Just as I read in the news today that Canon (iirc) is going fully automated in camera assembly (in one plant at least).

It's not a bad thing, it's just a change. Unless you're the worker being replaced.

In the game it could be a very interesting scenario. Generate the characters normally then have them discharged because they are replaced by AIs. Their once valued and valuable space skills are now unemployable except on the few antiquated small ships still stubbornly plying the space lanes. Ships which will in a few years be so obsolete as to be outlawed as hazards to safe navigation and ordered upgraded to AI or scrapped. Do the players go underground and keep working? Or resign themselves to early retirement? Or upgrade their ship and become redundant aboard? Maybe they will look forward to just travelling... and still finding "adventure" in that.

In the world of cars here we are well on the way to this. Autonomous vehicles are getting licensed left and right world wide. their current accident rate is less than 1% of human drivers with similar driving distances and times. Thus within 10-15 years all cars will be pretty much made to be autonomous.
almost all new airliners DO NOT require pilots (777) as they can fly fully autonomous but people still feel better with a pilot at the controls.
fighters fight better without pilots as they can be smaller, faster, turn harder...
it does seem to me that basic technology before we even get to the stars will take the handling of our vehicles away.
Even gunnery now - with drones that identify enemies... we have humans in the loop only to say yes or no, not to aim.

 

[Ackehece]

Expedition to Zhodane has rock jumping with minimal assistance, so it seems there is even some canonical evidence for robot ships, though it did do a misjump. I would say automation is fairly standard, but human crews supervise procedures, some things would seem to have to use automatition, such as gunnery.

There are always "jump tapes," like a deep purple 8 track.

this is my feelings as well.

OTOH - you could make an argument that sensors operations can use "tac-witches" aka people who can synthesize ideas better than computers as even most conceivable AIs don't have creative imaginations and tend to place a higher priority on known data. (or can use psionics - to detect the undetectable)

 

[BytePro]

Played CT without Book 8 (till the reprints), but robots figured pretty strongly IMTU (along the lines of Star Wars)....

They appear in bars, shops, starports, waste disposal, etc. (Stat'ed like PCs)

However, the likes of C3PO are fairly rare - they not only cost a lot (10~15 MCr on up), but laws say they become 'free' (partial citizens - but free will for employment) when they 'pay for themselves'... so companies really only want to put that much investment in them for hazardous jobs or jobs that require only one AI to run other automation.

In system freight haulers is a common role... the ships have no life support nor crew accommodations. In some systems they even 'manned' jump ships.

Economically (esp. with the 'freedom' laws), they are a large investment that nets nothing - and may represent a bigger loss if things go bad enough. They also lack the 'zeroth' law...

 

[Dragoner]

this is my feelings as well.

OTOH - you could make an argument that sensors operations can use "tac-witches" aka people who can synthesize ideas better than computers as even most conceivable AIs don't have creative imaginations and tend to place a higher priority on known data. (or can use psionics - to detect the undetectable)

Humans or sophonts (imo), can make intuitive leaps of logic better than AI's and are not as easily fooled, so with sensors, you would still have humans working within the loop. Though as I see it, it isn't a either or situation, but an "and" situation where machine and humans work together to be more than the sum of the parts.

 

[BytePro]

Robots as NPC crew works well in my games - they are more believably less independent than sophonts.