General Can a Robot be hired as a crewmember?

[Spinward Scout]

Would a Ship Captain ever hire a Robot? If a Robot had the equivalent of all Engineering and Mechanic skills at level 3, would the Imperium let the Ship's Captain 'hire' the Robot? Could it be given an actual crew position?

Would that ever be a question? Or am I overthinking it?

I'm wondering if they talk about it in the new Robot Handbook.

 

[Condottiere]

Culture and regulations.

The game encourages human interaction, and the Imperium is a bit paranoid about mechanicals, so the most friction would be docking at Imperium controlled starports.

You get the odd quirks about requiring a conscious mind during jumping, and a biological doing the actual astrogation calculations; but outside of that, it may be regarded as a more advanced repair drone.

 

[mike wightman]

Robots are machines. You do not hire them you rent them or pay to own them.

Yes, a robot can be rented or bought to fill a crew position.

There is not requirement for a biological mind to be the pilot despite a bit of fluff that should neve have made it past the 'inner circle' - robots can have the pilot skill and can thus pilot starships.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Let's just say that the Rules As Written don't explicitly forbid it from happening.
After all, crew positions simply need "skilled individuals" in order to fill those roles ... the "species" of the crew with those skills doesn't matter all that much (with Robot effectively counting as a "species" for the purposes of this discussion).

So generically speaking, there's nothing preventing a Robot from taking a crew position as far as game rules go.

Cultural considerations then come to the fore, such that you might not want to let a Robot be the chief of a multi-position department.
Robot engineers are fine, but you don't want one as your Chief Engineer (for example).
Reasons why WHY this should be the case quickly devolve into roleplaying considerations, and those are almost NEVER going to be covered (properly/adequately) by "rules" of the game.

So long as a crew is willing to live with a Robot, understanding that while it can simulate intelligence it probably doesn't have "actual creative intelligence" the way that (some) biologicals do ... everything ought to work out fine. It's just a matter of tolerance and understanding of cross-species relationships at that point. The Robot is a "skilled alien" that can be understood, with everything being downhill from there.

As to whether or not the economics of having a Robot on the crew, rather than a biological in that position, yields any kind of advantage depends on the details of the crew position and the construction/programming of the Robot.

 

[Dragoner]

In my setting I have a lot of robots, so I would say yes.

 

[kilemall]

The original LBB8 discussed it, but the underlying economics told the tale- robot lifespan plus processor limits make it uneconomical until later TLs.

I always homeruled it that robots were not truly sentient and thus their owner/operator is liable for their actions as though they did the deed themselves.

I could see different rules applying based on local conditions- a frontier area short of pilots may embrace robots as a way to fill the labor crunch, or a pilot’s guild may enact crushing strikes against lines that use them.

Robots make for a high capitalization way to get a frozen watch. I would insist on maintenance facilities and ‘medics’ for a serious investment in them. So they require stateroom space, although more like charging/rest station and workbenches, probably 1 ton each.

I also came up with the concept of the Ship’s Robot- an immobile Robot server plugged into ship power that has all the expensive brains while all the other robots are relatively inexpensive remote drones.

 

[robject]

First off, you can't get something for nothing. So, this old 1980s Traveller concept of buying a cheap totally subservient and ever-helpful slave crew that pays for itself in a short time and works better than people is just asking for the Referee to intervene with disaster.

---

But of course you can hire robots, but there are different types.

"Owned" robots are not very competent for problem-solving. They're Roombas. They are the equivalent of your ship's computer: it can fly you to a destination, as long as nothing strange happens. If something goes wrong beyond the ability of a programmed expert system, it just stops.

Hiring artificial persons, on the other hand, are just like hiring aliens -- they have strengths and weaknesses, you interact with them, and they have both economic and personality-based needs.

 

[whartung]

But, at the same time, why can't you have a "robot" navigator? A robot navigator is essentially an up-teched GPS routing system, but designed to not run your off of closed bridges or out into the wilderness with bad routing.

Not sure if there are other, more passive (i.e. less "hands on") positions that could be replaced with automation.

What about a "robot" chief engineer. Your staff engineer is needed for their "wrenching" ability, but monitoring, troubleshooting, problem solving, much of that can be done by a "robot". It can then direct the staff engineer telling them what parts need to be replaced, etc.

I don't know what all of the engineers do on a ship today, but my guess is most of them are dial watchers, not necessarily skilled labor.

 

[kilemall]

First off, you can't get something for nothing. So, this old 1980s Traveller concept of buying a cheap totally subservient and ever-helpful slave crew that pays for itself in a short time and works better than people is just asking for the Referee to intervene with disaster.

---

But of course you can hire robots, but there are different types.

"Owned" robots are not very competent for problem-solving. They're Roombas. They are the equivalent of your ship's computer: it can fly you to a destination, as long as nothing strange happens. If something goes wrong beyond the ability of a programmed expert system, it just stops.

Hiring artificial persons, on the other hand, are just like hiring aliens -- they have strengths and weaknesses, you interact with them, and they have both economic and personality-based needs.

I don’t see how the LBB8 one is wrong per se.

The command software limitations alone make it clear they are not full AI.

The payoff per robot doesn’t even begin with the high capitalization vs low lifespans until high interstellar. Having a skill-3 was that much more expensive.

One could argue that the relatively low cost of the Mongoose expert computer for both cyberpunk skill augmentation and robots is more problematic.

The one thing I found a bit disturbing with LBB8 was how the skill packages were PC software cost and just a simple multiple for very high skill levels. The real cost was having the brain able to run them, but in my view they should have exponential costs and brain resources due to much greater sophistication.

 

[Condottiere]

Artificial intelligence.

You could scale it down to someone who's mostly cybernetic.

 

[aramis]

Would a Ship Captain ever hire a Robot? If a Robot had the equivalent of all Engineering and Mechanic skills at level 3, would the Imperium let the Ship's Captain 'hire' the Robot? Could it be given an actual crew position?

Would that ever be a question? Or am I overthinking it?

I'm wondering if they talk about it in the new Robot Handbook.

Hiring them would require they be recognized as people.
[SPOILER="canon note, spoiler"]Sabmiqys/Antares 2117 is populated by robots. TL17 self aware true AI, retaining the culture of their creators.[/SPOILER]
Can they be used? yep.
Should they? NIMTU... In the OTU, it's unclear.

 

[bookwyrm]

is the robot a walking toolbox or an engineer? you don't hire toolboxes, but can hire an engineer. is the robot looking for a job? is the captain willing to hire a robot for a job (and actually pay it money) instead of a biological being? or does the robot look like (fill in the sophont) and the captain doesn't realize a robot is being hired. and what about maintenance? Data needed tuning up by Geordi La Forge, and both C3PO and R2D2 needed to get soaked in a cleansing oil bath a few times.

while in the Imperium, your hired robot might be a gifted engineer while on the ship, but considered a walking toolbox while off the ship.

I think TL D-F robots might be aware that they're robots and able to differentiate themselves from the world around them, but not be able to consider themselves as a 'person'. Positronics become available at TL G+, which is the earliest possible self aware robots which might be able to consider themselves a 'person'.

 

[Enoki]

Depending on the polity, outside the 3I you could find robots as common 'crew' on ships depending on which one you look at. That would include everything from some sort of super Roomba to humanoid ones doing complex 'stuff' as part of the crew. How the rest of the crew sees the robot would largely depend on their society's notions.

 

[Garnfellow]

IMTU, the required crew positions on a starship are "enforced" by a combination of the TAS, merchant and broker guilds, insurers and banks, even the Starport Authority in some cases. You'll want to maintain those required crew levels if you want to carry mail, or freight, or passengers. Otherwise these institutions will begin steadily directing business away from your ship.

The required crew are also a reasonable minimum for maintaining a starship. You can run with less, but you increase the frequency and potential severity of failures and malfunctions.

The enforcing institutions won't recognize robots as replacements for certified crewmembers, but do look favorably on robots augmenting a complete compliment. Robots can be perform crew duties under the supervision of a certified crew member, and can be used as backup crew in emergencies, just like emergency skill wafers or uncertified crew.

 

[Grav_Moped]

IMTU (which is generally OTU, before -- and likely without -- Virus happening), functions that cause a ship to pose a threat beyond crew-served-weapon range cannot be automated. This means Pilots, and Gunners for offensive weapons, must be sophonts.

Navigators, Engineers, Medics, and Stewards can be automated; as can Gunners controlling Sandcasters, shields, and short-range point-defense weapons only.

A house rule I use is to price a robot crew member as half the cost of a stateroom, plus 10 years of salary and life support costs, plus 10 years of revenue from 2Td of cargo (for the stateroom space freed up by the robot not needing one). In other words, it costs exactly as much as the crewman they'd replace for their 10 year operational life. Financing is available, and can be rolled into the initial ship loan.

Robots not advanced enough to be considered sophonts cannot be "hired" as such; they're property rather than employees.

 

[Condottiere]

I think there's a need to differentiate between an automated ship/ship functions, and a mobile mechanical, presumably man sized, automaton.

Though essentially, they could both be the same, and if there is some form of robophobia, the ship should be more scary.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I think there's a need to differentiate between an automated ship/ship functions, and a mobile mechanical, presumably man sized, automaton.

Though essentially, they could both be the same, and if there is some form of robophobia, the ship should be more scary.

The auto-nav is at most going to be a box on the dashboard. The robot engineer could be humanoid if the ship's built for human technicians, but it could also be a team of cybernetic hamsters with tiny little tool kits for ships that are designed to be maintained by robots instead of people. Saves on access space.

(Robo-hamsters are the friendly version. They could be a networked swarm of mechanical spiders instead.)

Oh, were you planning to sleep tonight? My bad.

 

[Spinward Flow]

but it could also be a team of cybernetic hamsters with tiny little tool kits for ships that are designed to be maintained by robots instead of people. Saves on access space.

DRDs.

And then there's 1812 ...

 

[Condottiere]

Trapped hamsters.

Who might have their own agenda.

 

[Spinward Scout]

They could be a networked swarm of mechanical spiders instead.)

Then there's Hairy the 'spider' the Engineer accidentally picked up on Inthe has grown up and is now the Engineer's Assistant and sleeps in the corner of the Drive compartment.

But that's not a Robot.