Yeah, I'm strongly wanting my drone freighters, so this DM -8 rule is going to get house-ruled out, I'm afraid. Of course, computer programs don't show much initiative, so a droneship is going to be heavily dependent on preplanning and support, and vulnerable to all sort of mischief and shenanigans where such things hold sway (so completely uncrewed freighters are mostly going to be confined to well-developed central systems where occurrences such as piracy aren't a serious concern). Mostly, I'm planning on using these rules to allow for seriously undercrewed ships, like a bought-out subsidized merchant being run by one to three tramp traders. Hard to have adventures when you don't have adventurers, y'know?
