Todo for next version of Playership Drones.

[JohnBWatson]

If possible, it might be nice to have auton capability for small gunships. That is to say, only manned ships would provide the more complex orders, but if you take an auton to a ship that normally requires one crewman, you can refit it to use the auton's AI.

Also, it should probably be impossible to fit any crew into extremely small ships, like autons and Lumiere drones.

[PM]

I would treat autons like Hornet battlepods or other very small ships. You can squeeze one guy (and only one) in there if necessary, someway, somehow. Yes, it may be a little silly, but one of the goals of PSD is letting the player pilot whatever he wants, from tiny battlepods to giant capitals, given enough resources.

It is a good idea to allow AI to pilot small ships, especially those that are normally unmanned to begin with (like autons), but I run into the problems with features that check if a ship attribute is AI or not (such as neuroplague pods). To keep things simple, all drones should be piloted by crew.

[PM]

Another possibly wild idea: Wages.

One change I plan is to slow fireRate for drones down to 15 or 20, instead of matching the player at 10, such that AI drones do not shoot as quickly as the player. (Most NPCs, enemy and friendly alike, do not fire as quickly as the player.) This will help tone down overwhelming firepower from well-armed drones.

While crew will not revolt and happily serve you until death, you can reward them with something to make them perform better than usual. The idea is drones with normal performance will shoot somewhat slower than you. However, if you pay your crew, they will be motivated to fight as well as you... temporarily. Think of wages as a temporary powerup like the elemental reflect shield crystals or the Domina power Strengthen. After you pay your crew, they become as triggerhappy as the player and shoot at your normal speed for a while. If you do not maintain wages, they will eventually slow down to their normal rate.

Payment would be in credits, but perhaps instead of money, player can feed luxury food to the crew (giving them a party).

[catfighter]

Lol and if you give them sake or some sort of alcoholic beverage at the party they temporarily lose noFriendlyFire due to extreme tipsiness.

If wages are implemented, I think the best way would be a new dockscreen with options to give mass wages to take care of everybody or just select certain favored ships to get the benefits. How were you thinking of getting everyone payed/fed/drunk?

[TVR]

Miscellanous thoughts about Transcendence, AI & PSD

-Drone AI does not need to be significantly more than glorified auton AI
-"Biomech" ships (i.e. most ships in Transcendence, e.g. Sapphire-class) use partially biological neural network computers a la Voyager from Star Trek, hence the term "ROM Biosoft". Can explain vulnerability to radiation/neuroplague
-Drone AI is semiautonomous, requiring strategic command from manned vessel for long term effectiveness, otherwise AI trivial to outwit and tends to wander off and do silly things
-Should be possible to upgrade drone AI with new subroutines from ROMs or additional AI cores (Should also be able to install Iocrym AI core like Huygens...)
-Most human pilots aren't interested in one way trip to Core.
-All ships in Transcendence can be controlled with single pilot gunship-style control interface, where engine, weapons, LRS, communications, navigation, other systems all handled by one pilot, who has trouble switching between multiple targets, aiming non-fixed weapons and using linked weapons.
-Fully AI controlled ships vulnerable to neurohack

[PM]

I want to keep things simple (at first). I have not started work on PSD7, but even if I did, I cannot spend much time working on it now, although I need to do this eventually.

I am aware that I am likely to violate some lore or consistency no matter what system I implement. It could be that using human crew instead of AI could be the lesser of two evils.


@ catfighter:
Luxury food includes fine wine and sake for alcohol, among other rich dining consumables. There are fun little things I can do with cheap beer and illegal (recreational) drugs, but I think I will stay away from that. I do not know how I would implement wages (if I get around to it), but using communications seems like a viable way. I could use the CDM Jettison hack as a base and adapt it for my needs, if I want it more involved than draining your credit account.


@ TVR:
Not sure if biomech is much of a thing anymore. It could be a legacy thing from early Transcendence and retconned away for all I know. (Also, I did not watch Star Trek too much, so I am not very familiar with the franchise).

Oh yes, AI upgrades should be possible if I stick with unmanned drones, at least for fireRate (which I did some experimenting with).

I am aware most do not want go on a pilgrimage. This is one of the bigger handwaves (but maybe not as much as for unmanned drones) to make the crew idea work. Also, not all adventures feature the pilgrim. In Eternity Port, the character is (supposedly) a mercenary. As for the pilgrim (or other class), assume his initial crew of three or whatever are his drinking buddies, close friends, or whatever. Whenever he visits a station, maybe he can bribe some shmuck to come along. If he frees slaves from coffins, they all happen to be trained pilots - how convenient. If ships need crew to use, and they would logically be hard to come by, then I may need to allow some silly and zany (yet not completely illogical) breaks from reality to make the idea and gameplay work.

Auton AI was the main reason I assumed unmanned drone ships. When thinking about lore, questions arise: Why does security or military forces not use primarily unmanned ships? Does AI shoot slower than veteran human pilots? Are they vulnerable to reprogramming (something Sung and Luminous could be very good at)? Does the government of X sovereign demand meatbags for pilots even if a better alternative is available?

All NPCs act like dumb AI (because they really are, even though most ingame pilots would not be).

Fully AI ships would be vulnerable to things like hacks that others are not. That is yet another example of things that affect ships based on the human/AI divide. I have been aware of this before, but it was not a big deal then, and I ignored it like the other "logistical and political problems".

TVR, are there any design considerations your team want or need for the Homeworld project, in case the team continues to use Playership Drones?

[Atarlost]

Miscellanous thoughts about Transcendence, AI & PSD


-Most human pilots aren't interested in one way trip to Core.

Crew could have a distance limit like Jenna. The player would have to find replacements as he passed into new regions or leave ships behind or limit himself to a much smaller manpower pool that are either fellow pilgrims or suicidal like Rama.

This isn't a concern at all for EP, though.

[PM]

Just thought of something that can hinder the crew plan: Who pilots or runs your new ships after you leave Human Space (i.e., in part 2)? Should we lump alien volunteers into the crew pool? (It might work, it did for Star Wars and Star Control 2.)

If we assume AI control, all the player needs to do is install it somehow and it runs like magic, sort of like what happens now.

Playership Drones assumes that any ship is playable. If player finds an exotic weird ship and wants to use it, he can!

[Atarlost]

Just thought of something that can hinder the crew plan: Who pilots or runs your new ships after you leave Human Space (i.e., in part 2)? Should we lump alien volunteers into the crew pool? (It might work, it did for Star Wars and Star Control 2.)

If we assume AI control, all the player needs to do is install it somehow and it runs like magic, sort of like what happens now.

Playership Drones assumes that any ship is playable. If player finds an exotic weird ship and wants to use it, he can!

If you track different kinds of crew as separate pools you'd have to leave behind enough ships that your pool of crew who are fellow pilgrims was adequate to cover what you keep.

[JohnBWatson]

Crew could have a distance limit like Jenna. The player would have to find replacements as he passed into new regions or leave ships behind or limit himself to a much smaller manpower pool that are either fellow pilgrims or suicidal like Rama.

Is Rama really suicidal? I hear people saying this, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence supporting it. To me, he comes across as tired of living in fear of superstition, and willing to take the risk of a pilgrimage alongside someone who has proven himself in combat.

[TVR]

Requests for PSD as a general Transcendence library

-Stable API: No UNID changes, old functions should be deprecated but still supported, new functions have separate identifiers
-More helper functions: Function to list all drones that the player has, function to return the UNID of a ship's PSD variant (using a hack for this ATM)

For the Mothership Project

-Dynamic linked weapon slots, i.e. shipPoints that can be redefined in-game

Optionally

-Automatic PSD support for all ships using XML functions

Oh yes, AI upgrades should be possible if I stick with unmanned drones, at least for fireRate (which I did some experimenting with).

Not just fireRateAdj, but fireRangeAdj and fireAccuracyAdj, perhaps also combatStyle. Even new onBehavior code.

When thinking about lore, questions arise: Why does security or military forces not use primarily unmanned ships?

According to TSB, the last attempt at advanced military AI was Luminous. There could be drawbacks inherent to creating non-Three Laws-compliant AI.

[JohnBWatson]

According to TSB, the last attempt at advanced military AI was Luminous. There could be drawbacks inherent to creating non-Three Laws-compliant AI.

To be fair, Luminous was trying to save humanity by going rogue, and was only able to figure out that humanity would die without intervention because of the massive degree of processing power it had. Lumiere's squadrons of unmanned drones seem perfectly obedient.

[PM]

First iteration of crew, if I go down that path, will most likely be a new currency. Why? It is simple, and I do not care to micromanage or role-play social interactions. Crew is yet another stat and is the excuse or fuel to let the player play whatever ships he wants. Perhaps later, crew interaction can be expanded on.

Personally, I prefer autonomous AI. If autons can fight, it should not be much of a stretch for any ship to run itself.

I suppose I should allow the possibly of autonomous AI that performs worse than crew in combat.

Requests for PSD as a general Transcendence library

-Stable API: No UNID changes, old functions should be deprecated but still supported, new functions have separate identifiers
-More helper functions: Function to list all drones that the player has, function to return the UNID of a ship's PSD variant (using a hack for this ATM)

My functions are badly named, and I see a possible mod (or even future Transcendence) conflict coming sooner or later. I plan to rewrite much of the mod from the ground up. The only UNID I can guarantee that will be static for PSD7 is 0xd9120000. Any more beyond that, I cannot guarantee transitioning from PSD6 to PSD7. I will try to organize types so that I do not need to shuffle types later after PSD7.

-More helper functions: Function to list all drones that the player has, function to return the UNID of a ship's PSD variant (using a hack for this ATM)

How can I list all of the drones if some are scattered in multiple systems? I can list drones that are in the same system as the playership, but I do not know how I can do that if playership is in system A, drone #1 in system B, drone #2 in system C.

Returning UNID of PSD compatible ship is a useful feature; will probably add one for PSD7.

For the Mothership Project

-Dynamic linked weapon slots, i.e. shipPoints that can be redefined in-game

Optionally

-Automatic PSD support for all ships using XML functions

Depends how I implement linked fire weapons this time around. If I want to do this like it is now, I can do this easily (i.e., don't use StaticData), but I want to get away from that (buggy since it relies on gItem, and gItem can change) and maybe use modified dock screen services. That in itself is a mod in its own right. Something I need to experiment with, and if I get something useful, might even post on Xelerus as an example mod.

I am not adept with xml functions (I do not even know what they do), so I do not think I will experiment with that (because I do not know how to fulfill PSD support with XML functions).

Not just fireRateAdj, but fireRangeAdj and fireAccuracyAdj, perhaps also combatStyle. Even new onBehavior code.

How would I change OnBehavior, short of destroying an object then recreating an object that is identical to the previous except for type and few other stats?

I would not want fireAccuracyAdj anything less the 95. Having triggerhappy drones aggravating non-red factions due to sloppy aim is aggravating.

According to TSB, the last attempt at advanced military AI was Luminous. There could be drawbacks inherent to creating non-Three Laws-compliant AI.

Is TSB canon?

To be fair, Luminous was trying to save humanity by going rogue, and was only able to figure out that humanity would die without intervention because of the massive degree of processing power it had. Lumiere's squadrons of unmanned drones seem perfectly obedient.

Assumes the enemy, AI or otherwise, is not lying. Fair assumption, since it is plot exposition.

[catfighter]

How can I list all of the drones if some are scattered in multiple systems? I can list drones that are in the same system as the playership, but I do not know how I can do that if playership is in system A, drone #1 in system B, drone #2 in system C.

I had a similar question a while back and this was my answer:

IIRC, things like that are implemented by setting certain variables of gPlayerShip to certain values at the moment.

For the full discussion: <http://forums.kronosaur.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7021>

I wanted to have wingmen "perform" tasks in other systems by simulating gameplay through extensive use of timers/variables/dice-rolls, so it shouldn't be too different to try to keep track of drone locations in a similar way. And maybe have functions to run simulated missions? Pretty please? ;)

[PM]

Simulated missions are beyond the scope of the initial PSD rewrite. My priority is to cleanup code and maybe change features that may violate canon or break immersion egregiously to something less so.

I do not plan to update PSD6+ to 1.6 unless I really must. Better for me to write PSD7 if I can.