Synthetic Entity CoreA ship technology which reduces the amount of crew needed to operate other ship components, effectively removing the need for portions of the crew. The benefit is the reduction (or removal if you proceed far enough into the technology line) of the usual crew annoyances like deployment time, crew quarters, recreation requirements, and life support, in addition to very likely reducing the amount of weight the ship requires.
The simulated entities would embody both the mental-only computers taking over logistics, as well as specialized and generalized synthetic
No lost lives when a ship is lost, though the monetary cost would likely be pretty high for these types of components.
Boarding parties would be defended by the synthetics, perhaps with installed automatic weapon turrets inside, and wouldn't be at risk of being captured. In fact, if the whole ship was remote, there'd be no need for life support at all, so a boarding party would either have to deal with this. It's also possible boarding parties are assumed to wear protective suits, or not to need them at all.
The kick is you have to research it all, the research should be available only after a certain minimum reactor power efficiency becomes available, and the ship would require a lot more power than normal.
Research Paths- Synthetic Entity Core: Unlocks the ability to build cores on ships.
- Synthetic Efficiency: Related to the amount of synthetic entities offered per core.
- Synthetic Aptitude: Related to Fleet Training for synthetics, since synthetics wouldn't get the benefit from normal training. All synthetics would get this level of aptitude from creation, and it should update automatically when further research into aptitude is done. (think binary flashing)
- Synthetic Defense: Related to the ability of synthetics to defend their station. IE: defend against boarding crews and ECM