Should maned small combat crafts be deleted from chartered space?

[tytalan]

Ths Zhodani can hack the human pilot...

but psionic shield you say

you electronically hack the psi shield

I mean you are postulating you can somehow hack shielded air gapped AI electronics...

You can’t air gapped anything you communicate with this is a fallacious argument. And have you even bothered reading anything about psionics and the Zhodani? Suggestion is only good for 5-10 meters even read surface thoughts only reaches out to 250 meters. This is another fallacious argument. No the Zhodani can not hack a human pilot.

 

[swordtart]

One of the biggest growing sections of the US military is cyber warfare and security because it’s a serious issue. These are military systems not civilians. Drone are vulnerable to control signals interference and both are very much at risk for hacking. You keep trying to downplay the threat of hacking but I’ll point out that the pentagon has been hacked multiple times in the last 20 years. The vulnerability is clearly a serious issue to day and it’s a serious issue in the Traveller universe. Full military systems with encryption and decent security will provide many negative DMs that will be completely countered and then some by military hacking systems and hackers and the benefits of information gathering.

My comments refer to MGT2 Traveller and the base rules it has for hacking within the time frame of space combat.
Not real life, where we procure systems that are produced by private industry and thus often more open, part of a compromised supply chain or just built to a price.
Not setting information that may or may not support a specific vision of hacking yay or nay.
Not the outcome of an extended espionage effort that defeats the drones in advance and allows specific DMs that are referee fiat. Those scenario specific outcomes can be stacked however you chose them so they are irrelevant.

 

[shirgall]

Just so you know, most of the "I am not a robot"/CAPTCHA stuff is used to train AIs to act more human.

 

[tytalan]

My comments refer to MGT2 Traveller and the base rules it has for hacking within the time frame of space combat.
Not real life, where we procure systems that are produced by private industry and thus often more open, part of a compromised supply chain or just built to a price.
Not setting information that may or may not support a specific vision of hacking yay or nay.
Not the outcome of an extended espionage effort that defeats the drones in advance and allows specific DMs that are referee fiat. Those scenario specific outcomes can be stacked however you chose them so they are irrelevant.

There are very relevant since they provide setting based reasons for not using AI pilots you just don’t like them because they punch holes into your argument

 

[swordtart]

Subverting the robot pilot is going to require time, presumably.

Doing so at long range is going to acquire latency.

It would also depend on the size of the programme that's being transmitted to the target, presumably that it can be reassembled as packages, especially if the transmission can, and is, interrupted.

Security programmes might be able to prevent subversion, but might be able to delay it long enough, to complete the mission.

Hacking doesn't need to be that comprehensive. If you can overrun a buffer with gibberish you can often push execution off its design path. A common password hack was pasting in a shell command that closed the text handling and passed control elsewhere, or used control codes to to confuse it. These are easily caught in good code, but not all code is good. The quicker it is written usually the lesser the vetting, validation and testing.

You don't need to take over a system, just prevent it from doing what the operator wants.

 

[Condottiere]

That would be removing an opponent.

Subverting would be removing one, and adding one to your side of the ledger.

If it can be done undetected, it would create a surprise ambush.

 

[swordtart]

There are very relevant since they provide setting based reasons for not using AI pilots you just don’t like them because they punch holes into your argument

Not really, since setting specific logic was never part of my argument. If you want a setting specific argument you just need to say TI doesn't do combat robots. If, for you, Charted Space is the TI then there is no further discussion necessary.

If Charted Space is more than just the TI and MTU uses a part of it that is not defined in canon anywhere then I can as legitimately say that combat drones are absolutely a thing as the Polity of <insert name here> has hardened drones that cannot be hacked.

The argument is completely meaningless as it is just words and personal opinion and I have no interest in that.

I am interested if the rules support hacking as something that can credibly be done within the duration of space combat since if not you have to move away from the core rules for robot spacecraft to be hacked. I am happy to make my setting fit my vision, I am less happy deviating from rules as that is one more delta I have to keep explaining to my players. Or to put it another way, I am happy not to buy a TI source book, I am less happy having to blue pencil the core rules I paid for.

 

[Elder_Basilisk]

Possibly the best point made in the discussion so far. Well done!

Even in a fleet, I would think the main job for a fighter group would be remote patrol and recon. If a raider jumps in, the main ships may be too far away to engage, but a nearby patrolling fighter group can assess their chances and either fight or run BEFORE the main ships have even received the signal. Their expendability is an asset, over a larger patrol craft (though there is room for those too).

And specific to the manned fighter aspect, the assessment and reaction aspect--are the ships, enemy military craft, friendly military craft, unknown, smugglers, pirates, or civilians?--is a complex assessment that at minimum requires a much more expensive robot to do.

 

[Sigtrygg]

You can’t air gapped anything you communicate with this is a fallacious argument.

You don't communicate with the robot, you give it is orders and off it goes. When it comes back you wait for it to initiate contact with you.

And have you even bothered reading anything about psionics and the Zhodani?

More that you I would imagine,

Suggestion is only good for 5-10 meters even read surface thoughts only reaches out to 250 meters.

So you build a machine to amplify the psi, if you can build magic hacking technology I can build magic psi technol;ogy

This is another fallacious argument.

No it isn't.

No the Zhodani can not hack a human pilot.

Yes they can.

 

[rinku]

Most military ships are set up to run their maneuver and jump simultaneously because if your running from someone you not going to want to shut down your maneuver so you can jump. But even using your numbers 50% for jump drive + 5% maneuver drive +5% power plant I believe that adds up to 60% armor is probably going to run 12%+ so there 72% even if you round things down you get 70% before any systems are added.

Sure. That's about right, and as I mentioned, under the current HG rules you can fill all of that with bays (medium bays use one hardpoint and are 100 ton units; Large bays are 500 dTons and use 5 hardpoints.

Back in the day, though you could only mount one bay per 1000 tons, and the biggest bay size was 100 tons. 5 ton barbettes were 1/100 tons. So aside from spinal mounts (which have a fixed size), the maxiumum percentage you could allocate to weapons was... 15%.

In that era, the only way to increase firepower was through carried craft.

 

[Sigtrygg]

And a few 500t bays are a lot better than a spinal mount as your capital ship killer. Keep the 50t and 100t bays for splashing escort class and small craft.

 

[Condottiere]

Let's say that a fighter is defined by acceleration and cockpittization.

Which limits it to a primary hull of fifty tonnes, in accordance to High Guard.

Attach a weapon pod of, say, two hundred tonnes, complete with docking clamp, to it.

Install medium bay weapon system in said two hundred tonne weapon pod.

 

[tytalan]

You don't communicate with the robot, you give it is orders and off it goes. When it comes back you wait for it to initiate contact with you.

If you don’t communicate than you can’t give it orders or change its orders if the situation requires it this is probably the most irrational argument yet.

So you build a machine to amplify the psi, if you can build

No one built magic hacking tech only a rational situation that has real world comparison.

 

[tytalan]

Sure. That's about right, and as I mentioned, under the current HG rules you can fill all of that with bays (medium bays use one hardpoint and are 100 ton units; Large bays are 500 dTons and use 5 hardpoints.

Cool you do that and I’ll attack you with a bunch of 800dt ships that you can’t hit because you’re only using bays. And those attack craft are going to be even harder to hit with your bays. Bays are anti capital ships weapons.

 

[Sigtrygg]

If you don’t communicate than you can’t give it orders or change its orders if the situation requires it this is probably the most irrational argument yet.

The robot is given its orders before it is launched then it uses its own jusgement to carry out those orders, comply with standing orders, and use emergency protocols as the situation demands. Just like a human crew,

After all if you have to communicate with the human crewed fighter then the human crewed fighter's electronics can be hacked and the fighter repurposed.

No one built magic hacking tech only a rational situation that has real world comparison.

But we are not talking about the real world. We are talking about a fictitious setting described by rules and fluff, If you have inside knowledge of computer and electronic hacking at TL12 I would love to see it, but using real world TL7+ almost 8 technology is as sensible as using the model of trying to hack the US telegraph system to send fake orders to the Civil War generals...

 

[tytalan]

The robot is given its orders before it is launched then it uses its own jusgement to carry out those orders, comply with standing orders, and use emergency protocols as the situation demands. Just like a human crew,

After all if you have to communicate with the human crewed fighter then the human crewed fighter's electronics can be hacked and the fighter repurposed.

But we are not talking about the real world. We are talking about a fictitious setting described by rules and fluff, If you have inside knowledge of computer and electronic hacking at TL12 I would love to see it, but using real world TL7+ almost 8 technology is as sensible as using the model of trying to hack the US telegraph system to send fake orders to the Civil War generals...

Now this is about the most irrational argument you’ve ever posted.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Cool you do that and I’ll attack you with a bunch of 800dt ships that you can’t hit because you’re only using bays. And those attack craft are going to be even harder to hit with your bays. Bays are anti capital ships weapons.

Can you point me to the part that says bays can't be used to hit ships under 1000t?

I can find this:
"All bay weapons suffer DM-2 when attacking targets of 2,000 tons or less and DM-4 when attacking targets of 100 tons or less"

considering the bonuses you get to hit these negative DMs are trivial, they just reduce the effect number of the hit. And even the base damage of bay weapons is sufficient to cause critical hits to your 800t attack craft...

 

[swordtart]

Robots (but not drones) can get secure voice Comms exactly the same as sophont pilots. They are also doubtless getting secure, jam resistant datalink information to their tactical display exactly like thier sophont counterparts (as they do now).

Robot pilots are no more vulnerable to having those Comms hacked than a sophont pilot. The only way they differ is if you can hack the robot itself but for that you need access to its internal data network, not its external data interface.

The drone interface provides that direct connection and that is why no credible combat robot would have one unless it also had very high levels of Security and Encryption.

A robot without a drone interface would need to be tricked in the same way a sophont would be, by breaking codes, spoofing networks etc. This is Comms tech hacking not robot hacking (which arguably is exactly what those civil war telegraph hackers were doing).

 

[Sigtrygg]

Hmm, doesn't T5 have the commcaster that allows for "magic" electronic warfare... need to go read up on them.

 

[swordtart]

Can you point me to the part that says bays can't be used to hit ships under 1000t?

I can find this:
"All bay weapons suffer DM-2 when attacking targets of 2,000 tons or less and DM-4 when attacking targets of 100 tons or less"

considering the bonuses you get to hit these negative DMs are trivial, they just reduce the effect number of the hit. And even the base damage of bay weapons is sufficient to cause critical hits to your 800t attack craft...

As you say there is also a rule about ships of certain sizes, bays and 6+ effect criticals, but this also is not the same as not being able to hit or damage at all. Cumulative damage crits not so constrained.