AI/drone crew

[Neceros (OP)]

I would really love to be able to make ai/drone/droid/robotic ships. Ships or stations that function without any crew on board. Consider drones walking or flying around maintaining and using the things the crew normally would. Or perhaps the ship and modules themselves are designed to be more reliable or automated and require fewer crew with the same level of capabilities (depending on research level?)

Proposal for Drone Crew:

• Drone Crew modules will replace crew quarters and act similarly but without the need for living comforts biological creatures require, thus making it smaller in tonnage
• Drones/ai require power from a power plant. Without power, the ship is disabled. (Perhaps there's an automated command a ship can perform if the AI goes offline)
• A new technology which establishes the performance of your drone crew, types of drones, perhaps a tech to lower the power required, etc
• Automated ships won't require as much MSP as a crewed vessel

I really want to be able to say there's no crew on board and so my morals are safe when sending in the drones.


A Non Crewed checkmark when designing a ship which would apply the following research tech (if you have any):

Automated [Crew/Systems/Maintenance/etc]:
At default, the player has no technology into automated crew (or just systems that repair themselves, however you flavor it) and will do nothing. Each level of this tech decreases the required crew for each ship by a set percentage. Max tech level means the player can do entirely automated ships.

Ty for reading.

[nuclearslurpee]

It is a very flavorful idea, but the concept has come up many times and the general sense is that Steve does not want to remove the need to man ships with a crew as a resource that is managed and balanced by current mechanics. Adding robotic/drone crews basically bypasses several mechanics which isn't really a design pattern that works well for Aurora.

[Aloriel]

A possible solution for your robotic needs:

If there was a name list that was all letters and numbers (THX1138 and the like), you could imagine that humanity has come and gone. Our robots are what are left behind. *They're* the ones that have discovered trans-newtonian technology (or perhaps rediscovered, depending on your exact head canon -- humans had to go *somewhere* right?).

So, you have vessels full of robots. Not people. They have designations, not names. The illnesses they get are computer viruses that cause their systems to break down slowly. They shut down after a certain amount of time (70-80 years)... etc.

[Neceros (OP)]

ok, thanks for replying. I understand


As it stands, yes I just pretend they aren't crewed and pretend I didn't lose a captain

[Borealis4x]

This idea comes up a lot and I standby that the best way to add AI/drone features would be to make it an option part of every player-crafted module you develop for your spacecraft.

Each level would reduce the number of crew needed to staff that particular module in such a way that smaller ones can be totally automated pretty early (so you can make totally autonomous drone fighters) while bigger modules would need significant investment to make autonomous (no AI battleships until the late-late game).

Though I feel there would only be much benefit in automating smaller ships so that they don't eat up officers. I've certainly never experienced anything close to a normal crew shortage and I've never heard of anyone who has. Best that might happen is you save a tiny bit on crew modules not taking up as much space, but I imagine you'd have to get pretty up there in tech and be very dedicated about automating modules to see any return approaching significance there.

Perhaps a more elegant way to model the increasing sophistication of AI tech in your Empire would be for ever module research tier to require less and less personal per HS. I could get behind that. 

[TallTroll]

>> I've certainly never experienced anything close to a normal crew shortage and I've never heard of anyone who has

Generally, it's only likely to ever happen if you go on a building spree really early, and/or forget to mark your civilian vessels for conscript crew, and end up staffing a load of freighters with Naval crew for no real reason. Even if you do run out of Academy trained crew, IIRC (and I may not), any remaining crew slots are assumed to be conscripts, with the lower base CG that implies, so it's not like you'd get a message that a ship can't be built due to lack of crew at any point, you'd just build some with terrible starting CG stats

[Kashada]

I find it hard to argue that un-crewed should be added as the only real thing it adds is better RP. For example I would love to have my fighter sized missile or sensor platforms to be un-crewed as in reality no human empire would stick two people in a tiny ship for 50+ years but its also a small enough thing I can ignore it.

[StarshipCactus]

I find it hard to argue that un-crewed should be added as the only real thing it adds is better RP. For example I would love to have my fighter sized missile or sensor platforms to be un-crewed as in reality no human empire would stick two people in a tiny ship for 50+ years but its also a small enough thing I can ignore it.

I just imagine it is FIFO. So abstracted shuttles bring the old crew home and fresh crew to the base.