Driverless Starships

[Timerover51]

Does anybody here use jump-capable message torpedos?

Per Adventure 4: Leviathan, I do allow for them, but not on every ship.

6. Main Magazine. Missile and other munitions storage. Excluding those listed at locations C2, D2/3/5, and E2/3/5, normal complement is four jump message torpedoes, sixteen missiles, eight RPV drones, and four personnel capsules, plus various explosive stores for planetary expeditions. (Page 31)

I add a proviso that the torpedoes emerge from Jump Space in a highly unstable state, and can only transmit stored messages. No attempt can be made to pick them up, as they tend to explode violently when contacted.

 

[aramis]

Does anybody here use jump-capable message torpedos?

They're called Type S Scouts...

 

[Whipsnade]

Does anybody here use jump-capable message torpedos?

I used them decades ago in a barely developed ATU which I don't think I used for more than three or four sessions. I don't remember much about their "nuts & bolts". I don't even remember if I got around to much of the "nuts & bolts" but I do know I didn't have SS:3 at the time. One dTon in size is something I seem to remember and because that was the size of the equally vague sensor drones in Leviathan with which they shared launch tubes.

The one thing I do firmly remember is that you "shotgunned" them. You needed to send multiple torpedoes due to the failure rate.

 

[McPerth]

Does anybody here use jump-capable message torpedos?

Just larger ones (and again not by 3I): again the Zhodani light fighter drone

 

[BwapTED]

They're called Type S Scouts...

:coffeegulp:
Or Aramis class couriers, then.

You recall the design.

 

[Julius9999]

From a RPG standpoint, it is probably a terrible idea. Games are about people doing things at places. If the ship has no crew, then who cares about the ship, or transportation between worlds or Jumpspace. Characters might as well teleport from starport to starport and just skip the ships. All of the "action" will take place where the people are and skills like Pilot, Navigator, Gunner and Engineer are no longer needed ... the ship already handles that.

I would agree to a certain extent but automation is implied already in the 1970's Space Opera based technology of the original Traveller. From auto-pilot, mission computers, jump navigation, docking technology, weapon deployment etc a pilot or engineer is a systems manager rather than a stick and flying cap guy or a crewman with a spanner. An extension of automation just means an extension to the systems that need to be managed.

I'd also like to mention complexity. At the moment driverless automation is difficult to deliver because the problem cannot be scoped. It's OK to deliver driverless technology in advertisement land but not where there are an almost infinite set of conditions that you have to cope with for example driving in New York, London or New Delhi. It almost requires sentience as has been expressed earlier in the thread. To encompass this complexity the cost of these systems would be ludicrously high if at all possible and would probably need faultless infrastructure.

These things provide hooks to hang some adventures off of for a crew. For example defence of in space infrastructure, consequences of automated system malfunction (starship crash), a cyber attack on automated ships etc. In my campaign, corporations provide a backdrop for the campaign, for which the money-making driver is automation.

 

[Blue Ghost]

:coffeegulp:
Or Aramis class couriers, then.

You recall the design.

There's a recall on Type-Ses?

 

[Ulsyus]

I'd also like to mention complexity. At the moment driverless automation is difficult to deliver because the problem cannot be scoped. It's OK to deliver driverless technology in advertisement land but not where there are an almost infinite set of conditions that you have to cope with for example driving in New York, London or New Delhi. It almost requires sentience as has been expressed earlier in the thread. To encompass this complexity the cost of these systems would be ludicrously high if at all possible and would probably need faultless infrastructure.

(my bold)

Fortunately the 3I is not set at the moment. After some few thousand years of interstellar travel, I would have faith that the problems that present at the moment would have been solved by then. If sophonts could do the maths to build vessels that could travel FTL and also navigate accurately IOT take advantage to the drive technology, automated messenger vessels sent to make a single jump would probably be viable. They could have all their jump and navigation info provided by the mother-vessel and simply make the transition. That's even before any discussion is started on expert systems, machine intelligences and such that could be used to run the thing.