You're right, McPerth, Pilot is only explicitly listed with that "aim the spinal mount" task (which, by the way, would apply to a robot-crewed behemoth with a spinal mount!). Obviously Ship's Boat would never be relevant in that situation.
But then there's this curious entry under Special Rules beginning at the bottom of page 94:
Emergency Agility: Because of the importance of agility, it is possible for a ship to elect not to use energy-consuming weapons in a combat round and instead divert energy to its maneuver drives. It such a case, an emergency agility rating equal to the ship's maneuver drive may be used. As always, Pilot Skill may be substituted for emergency agility if desired.
(emphasis added is mine).
In my view, this implies that Ship's Boat skill where relevant would apply in an equivalent way.
The problem with phrasing the rule this way, of course, is that adding "As always" implies that the rulebook says this elsewhere, but I can't find another reference to pilot / ship's boat. I think this makes Pilot / Ship's Boat skill a good candidate for a substitute for Computer Model in the Def DM.
You're right about that...
Perhaps we should point that in the errata forum, and let DonM to give us an official answer.
But, other than this, I think I'm now tending towards saying we substitute Gunnery skill for Computer Model for Attack DM, Gunnery skill for both sides of the "to penetrate a defence" task, Sensor Ops for Computer Model for Sensor Lock (but robots get Unskilled OK on this task), and Ship's Tactics can be applied to non-combat tasks - so, yeah, sensor lock would be a prime candidate for this. There's another robot crewed ship design - an armoured box with ultra powered active sensors, Sensor Ops-4 and Ship's Tactics-4 with a range of communicators that is designed to sensor lock and broadcast enemy positions.
And lastly, yes, the intention here is that all of this only applies to robotic craft that do not have a ship's computer installed. But this gives rise to a new problem. Adding a ship's computer to a small craft could reduce the ship's performance in combat. And there's the volume / weight / power problem: a robot brain with far less investment in any of these metrics can produce a +4 DM - in the robot drone above.
Consider this:
Robot Drone Brain - MCr1.35, 0.12kL, 0.03 tonne, 0.02MW
Model /4 - MCr6.4, 5.5kL, 1.4 tonne, 0.005MW
Now, the robot brain is far more power hungry, and when considering the power needed given its smaller size, it positively runs hot. I think this stands up to my pseudo-reality test.
Ewan has suggested that any Computer-1 hit wipes the robot brain, whereas normally it reduces the effective computer model number. This is a partial re-balancing, I agree.
Agreed with Ewan and you in that. I'd also won't allow the robotic brain to be protected against radiation/EMP, as they are too delicate for that (mostly against starsip sized weapons producing that radiation). This would partially balance it again..
We must think, though, that, being a small fighter/drone (not over, let's say, 50 ton, 100 at maximum) most hits would give it criticals, so being left brainless due to a hit won't usually be its main problem...
But the additional problem is that the rules also assume that the computer has two redundancies - that means, triple the stats above. Does this mean that a Computer-1 hit means one of the models is reduced by one and then a better back-up kicks in? I don't see that in the rules, which are drawn from High Guard; it seems to imply that total computing power is reduced.
I've allways seen this as a safety measure for personnel carrying crafts/ships. If you look at the drone in 101 vehicles, it has only one robot brain, even as rules say a flying craft must have a back up computer too, so I guess the same may be applied to space drones.
There is another way of looking at this. The scenario we are describing only applies to small craft anyway, because starship/spaceship sized craft require a computer anyway. So perhaps this is a way of giving those smaller craft an edge in space combat. Again, this restores the role of the fighter - it can't carry the heavier weapons, but install a robot brain (even with a sophont controller) and you've got something that's very hard to hit and can close to visual range and target ship components.
The first time I envisoned such fighter/drone, was while studing how to make a squadron for BCS. The fighter/drones may allow to ignore (most would say cheat) the pilots limit (while the enemy has 10 ships only due to pilots limit, I oppose them with a dispersed structure carrier and 100-150 fighter/drones). The fighter /drone I designed was on the 8-10 dton range and armed with a fusion gun. I could never try it. It would have been a one-shoot weapon, as,if it was succesful, drones would either been forbiden or counted as pilots, as the intention of the limit was (IMO) to limit the fighters and avoiding massive fighter batles.
After that, I used those fighter/drone in a MT RPG campaign, but, just not to make them too strong, I ruled they need a person with robot operations and flet tactics, and a dedicated radio channel to direct a flight of 10 such fighters (or fraction), so limiting its use (curiously enough, as one player pointed me, both skills may be adquired at the staff college, so he said this position was one of the ones trained there).
