alex_greene
Guest
If you want your mind blown yet again by High Guard 2e, check out "Virtual Crew" and "Virtual Gunner" on p. 64.
Virtual Crew In HG
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AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
Combine with Expert systems for Engineering, Astrogation, and other INT/EDU skills. When you do not leave them in control they give you a +1 bonus to your skill.
alex_greene
Guest
About the only thing they probably don't do is cook you eggs and hash browns in the morning.AnotherDilbert said:
Unless one of them's a virtual Steward ...
I've never understood why things like astrogation or gunnery even have crew positions. It's not as if anyone can do those tasks by hand - they'd be computer operators at most (entering start and end points, or determining that combat processing should start), but "astrogators" aren't going to be literally calculating a course to another star or planet when a basic program can do it far more accurately and in a fraction of the time, and a "gunner" wouldn't be able to track where ships are in space to fire weapons at in their heads (and in combat a split-second makes all the difference). So "virtual crew" makes more sense in those cases at least.
For decades now (literally), I've run a PC ship in which all support crew but the Chief Medical Officer are robots. Kind of a precursor to MongTrav's 2nd Edition virtual crew.
While they may initially be considered expensive by some, the benefits of using self-propelled expert support systems are many. For example, the crew is capable of round the clock shifts without any reduction in performance levels, all crew members have above average technical skills which can be changed virtually within a moment’s notice, and required work space is minimized. Indeed, the overall ship design requires that the majority of the crew be robots; replacement with “biocrew” would result in severe degradation of overall ship capability due to the physical limitations inherent in living crew members.
One of the best advantages is Gunnery robots never leave their posts, allowing the ship to maintain a constant Combat Ready status indefinitely, if necessary. Came in darned handy during the FFW.
While they may initially be considered expensive by some, the benefits of using self-propelled expert support systems are many. For example, the crew is capable of round the clock shifts without any reduction in performance levels, all crew members have above average technical skills which can be changed virtually within a moment’s notice, and required work space is minimized. Indeed, the overall ship design requires that the majority of the crew be robots; replacement with “biocrew” would result in severe degradation of overall ship capability due to the physical limitations inherent in living crew members.
One of the best advantages is Gunnery robots never leave their posts, allowing the ship to maintain a constant Combat Ready status indefinitely, if necessary. Came in darned handy during the FFW.
Nathan Brazil
Banded Mongoose
SSWarlock said:
So why stop there, get really really virtual...
Reynard
Emperor Mongoose
No need for crews so stay planetside except there's no need for workers there so stay at home except there's no need for organic life form as they serve no useful purpose.
That's why I think Star Trek is one of the sanest scifi series. They decided organic sophonts are more important than robots. Robots are tools not replacements.
That's why I think Star Trek is one of the sanest scifi series. They decided organic sophonts are more important than robots. Robots are tools not replacements.
Tom Kalbfus
Mongoose
Interesting idea, at what point would the virtual crew need character sheets? Suppose a player wanted to play a virtual crewmember, and in order to interact with the real world, he would need a robot to do it. Sort of like the Emergency Medical Hologram in Star Trek Voyager, except instead of having a hologram emitter, you have an actual robot. The robot can either be remotely controlled by the ship, or have the actual virtual crew members program downloaded into it. But I'm guessing the standard virtual crew is not that advanced.fusor said:
alex_greene
Guest
This could be perfect for a laboratory ship - replace several fractious scientists with a virtual science crew just running the sensors and measurement devices, and handing the data to the organic scientist to make determinations.
Alternatively, the scientists could just run Virtual Crew and tell the ship where to go, and let the ship do its thing, unnoticed in the background, while the only living crew - the scientists - just get on with doing their research.
Alternatively, the scientists could just run Virtual Crew and tell the ship where to go, and let the ship do its thing, unnoticed in the background, while the only living crew - the scientists - just get on with doing their research.
alex_greene said:
My point was that why stop at robots - you could just have AI doing the job instead. They'd do all the data processing and correlation and would probably come up with far better conclusions than organics would.
But the thing with Traveller - or at least the OTU - is that it's traditionally deliberately ignored the effect of technology on society. In 5000+ AD, people still do things and have jobs and nothing else has changed since 1980 AD except that they have spaceships and bigger guns (which of course is utter nonsense. If we keep advancing at the rate we're going today, in 5000+ AD society would be as unrecognisable to us today as today's society would be to an ancient Egyptian). But throwing in Virtual Crewmembers opens up that huge can of worms (if that's how you want to see it), if you did actually want to consider the effect that technology would have on the setting.
alex_greene
Guest
Of course, it's only restricted to some limited Bridge positions such as Comms, Sensors, even Pilots (and Astrogators and Sensors, too, I am assuming). Oh, and Gunners, too, even though Virtual Gunner takes care of that far more efficiently.
Reynard
Emperor Mongoose
Personally I will stick with human crews doing the adventuring discovering and interacting with new civilizations organic or otherwise and new lifeforms and robotic entities. I'm all for the addition of the virtual crew mechanics for game diversity. As I said with my Star Trek remark, robots and expert systems can still be tools of a civilization rather than the successor. Even Star Wars makes the very commonality of robots in society still tools assisting organics. I, Robot to me shows robots removing the human element from society. The only reason we see virtual systems and robotics replacing human labor today is greed rather than sensible efficiency. It only serves the people at the top. People should always be the most important component to a society and economy.
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
I agree completely, but the AIs can't be completely ignored. I would use Virtual Crew as basic automation, the Pilot can tell the ship to "maintain this course for 47 minutes, don't crash into anything, call me when something happens" and it will. You still need the Pilot to make decisions and handle the tricky manoeuvres.fusor said:
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
Only Pilot, Sensor Operator, and Gunner. Astrogation can be done by an Expert system. Engineering can be handled by an Expert system and Repair Drones?alex_greene said:
alex_greene said:
Sure, because no other profession or career would dream of having an automated AI expert system replace its humans. Good gods, it's happening now. Expert systems are already giving better diagnoses than doctors. Self-driving cars will replace entire industries of drivers within a decade. And you think it's just going to be limited to a few positions on a ship while the rest of society isn't affected?
Traveller's limitations on technology didn't make sense before but at least one could be consistent about it and say there's no AI so no replacement of positions. But as soon as you start saying it's there then you have to follow through with all the implications of it, and that changes the setting completely (unless you enjoy having to do mental gymnatstics and coming up with ridiculous situations that limit it somehow "for the sake of the game").
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