Non-tech reasons won't fly as that means someone wouldn't care and would thus have uncrewed jump ships.

Don't forget the drone ship returns a couple of centuries later loaded up with advanced technology.

It became self aware and is now trying to convert more machinery to it's cause (to rule mankind of course).

The ship has returned but is now on a collision course to collide with a space colony.

The returning ship was changed in some way.

A ship matching the unmanned scout has been sighted, but not where it should be.

The ship once thought lost has returned, but is not responding to any signals. When sent to investigate the characters discover that some of the equipment is missing, who did this and why?

There really is no reason to not have drone vessels, is there, other than clinging to the atavism of a 1970s vision of the future. If Voyager 1 can stay functioning for 35 years, with a further ten to thirteen years projected, on crappy TL 7 technology,and get as far as the heliopause and the threshold of interstellar space - then I'm sure that drone ships can easily be constructed and deployed for remote operations in the far future with the advanced tech at their disposal.

_________________
Hypnotist, Dreamer, Plainclothes Clown, Agitator, Author

No, there's another reason (not familiar with the one you cited) and that is; I don't want MTU universe dominated by ships that have no place for PC's...

Well, that won't happen clearly. Just the big cargo ships, drone probes and similar ships that are designed to require jobs requiring no human decision-making and little maintenance.

Fighting ships need human crews for human decision-making, and also because some of them are likely to carry human crews for fighting in conditions where robots are unsuitable. Further, human crews are generally required on passenger ships, not to mention those free traders and tramp ships which are effectively a home to the Traveller crews whose job is to provide those skills that really require a human touch.

Incidentally, the idea of not equipping weapons platform drones with autonomous smart systems able to use their own initiative is even more important when it comes to the concept of designing a ship of any size, designed for combat, but automated. It's a matter of ethics - the drones might be doing killings, but there is still a human at some point, pulling the trigger.

_________________
Hypnotist, Dreamer, Plainclothes Clown, Agitator, Author

so what most ships will have a Crew and that Solves the problem.They are illegal and if the 3I catches one it is confiscated so players either will not use them or they are a nice plot hook if they do.

If you must have tech reasons the downjump causes problems so the computer, fusion etc. is powered down and the ship runs on batteries for a few minutes. Or low-tech electronics keep the reactor going but have not enough smarts for more. Memory programmable controllers like the Siemens S5/S7 are a lot more rugged than comparable universal computers but are a lot less flexible. So humans are needed for checks, restarts etc.

Alternatively play with persons who do not care about useless details

Why? IFF and protocols should eliminate that before long. We already have hunter drones that could well be autonomous once loaded with a target profile.

At the very least manned space fighters are a non-starter. IF space fighters are valid combatants. If not then just make them bigger until they are, and call them corvettes, or destroyers, or whatever. You have more room for what counts in a fight; weapons, speed, armour, and speed.



What possible conditions could exist that are unsuitable to robots but suitable for humans? It'd be easier to protect circuits from any environment than humans.



Skills like what? Steward? MgT has "Luxuries" to replace that. Medic? Have you seen the bedside manner of PC medics? I'd sooner trust an AutoDoc...

Homes for the crews? Sure. Tonight on "Multi Million Credit Homes of the Poor and Unknown"... without those jobs (replaced by automation) the "crews" would have perfectly fine jobs somewhere else and a home that doesn't require 10s of thousands of credits of upkeep a month to cover the mortgage, and skipping a little maintenance won't leave you stranded in space facing a slow death.



Again though, why? Or more precisely, why do I need a crew of tens or hundreds to maintain the ship, man the turrets, fly the fighters, etc. etc. etc... when all I really need to satisfy even that requirement is a few officers?

Just playing Devil's advocate

_________________
Dan "far-trader" Burns

Original material in this post may be employed for personal non-profit use with the origin noted. Any other use is subject to permission from the author. Contact me through the private message feature of this board.

Tell that to the gov's of current day Earth.

Really I don't care how realiable something is, **** breaks. It breaks when you absolutely don't want it to, it breaks especially if you have a back up, and that back up does not necessarily work. Call it Murphys law, call it whatever you want, things simply break, and nine times out of ten you are left with the low tech solution which is so simple it is more difficult to break. Thats how assembly lines break down, thats how mechanical failures occur, thinking you can maintain everything in the kind of condition where multiple redundancy is viable is a fallacy, things will be missed, and if not you have machines monitoring machines monitoring parts of machines, and quite simply the cost will grow into the astronomical until it is cheaper to put a crew on it. The only thing that breaks the cycle is a true AI.

Not necessary, they are well aware of it and quite likely to
agree on an international law which restricts the use of au-
tonomous weapons. The currently emerging consensus is
that such weapons need an operator or supervisor of com-
battant status who has the legal responsibility for all activi-
ties of the weapon. In short, if the weapon commits a war
crime, there has to be someone who goes to jail for it.

Umm, no. They already exist.

For pure cargo there is no reason. But as I said before. People want people around them, servant robots are one thing but on those big passenger ships the passengers want to have crew around to talk to and interact with. The entire ships crew may be a load of stewards and a bridge crew with no skills and nice uniforms but as long as everyone thinks they know what they are doing the passengers are happy.

Modern aircraft are capable of taking off, flying and landing with no more than 1% pilot involvement. There are a couple of stories doing the rounds now about pilots found asleep in the cockpits while the autopilot flew the plane.

Which does of course lead to some interesting problems when the players find that they are the only qualified crew on the 100,000Dton liner as the entire crew have steward skills and a few pilot/engineer zero's and that random acident just took out the entire AI and its backups along with main engineering

_________________
Traveller: Nonsense, those rumours about me and crashes, no truth in them at all. I never had a landing I didn't walk away from!

ACTA-SF: Who are we, GORN. What do we want, Cruisers that can turn.... Wait, OK Escorts... Wait. I'll get back to you !

Well it would, but...

...where did the player characters get that kind of experience in a universe of fully automated ships with barely competent "show" crews?

_________________
Dan "far-trader" Burns

Original material in this post may be employed for personal non-profit use with the origin noted. Any other use is subject to permission from the author. Contact me through the private message feature of this board.

If the flight comp is taken out it can't be flown anyway. Just like the newest jets today...

Bah, no need to have some uplifted gorilla hanging around to talk to. The biologicals can just do their own thing like they normally do, or if they really feel the need can travel in groups or congregate with other passengers.