If we're assuming now that these AI can have distinct and complex personalities, why wouldn't they also demand wages? If they're capable of distinct personalities, why would they mindlessly obey orders? Any more so than a lowly ship worker. Why wouldn't the AI have goals of it's own, assuming it is that advanced.

And when I was talking about exploring the implications, I was meaning a deep and complex story exploring the humanity of the situation. Which is not what LT is about.

Also, I'm not going to be playing LT with a strict eye for logic discrepancies in worker systems, I'm playing it to explore and experience space in a new and exciting way. If I wanted a bunch of immersion, I'd be building a battle station for starcitizen.

Not only that, but the idea of quasi-clone things being 90% of the universe is such a odd concept for a space game that you'd have to go in depth and explain to new players before the game even starts. Because that's not the simplest assumption. The most common assumption is that there are a bunch of other "humans" in those ships.

EKHawkman wrote:If we're assuming now that these AI can have distinct and complex personalities, why wouldn't they also demand wages? If they're capable of distinct personalities, why would they mindlessly obey orders? Any more so than a lowly ship worker. Why wouldn't the AI have goals of it's own, assuming it is that advanced.

because josh said so.
because tons of full AI NPC's would use too many computational resouces

worker AI's are not involved into the economy directly, they are just goods and tools traded and used by this economy.
they do not demand wages and do not think for themselfes.

executive NPC's will demand wages and do their own thing if you dont pay them enough

EKHawkman wrote:If we're assuming now that these AI can have distinct and complex personalities, why wouldn't they also demand wages? If they're capable of distinct personalities, why would they mindlessly obey orders? Any more so than a lowly ship worker. Why wouldn't the AI have goals of it's own, assuming it is that advanced.

Cornflakes covers this.

EKHawkman wrote:Also, I'm not going to be playing LT with a strict eye for logic discrepancies in worker systems, I'm playing it to explore and experience space in a new and exciting way. If I wanted a bunch of immersion, I'd be building a battle station for starcitizen.

I want it for both. I want to explore space in new and exciting ways and actually be immersed enough in the game to suspend my disbelief and enjoy it.

EKHawkman wrote:Not only that, but the idea of quasi-clone things being 90% of the universe is such a odd concept for a space game that you'd have to go in depth and explain to new players before the game even starts. Because that's not the simplest assumption. The most common assumption is that there are a bunch of other "humans" in those ships.

There are far stranger concepts in science fiction.

The assumption that everyone else is human will hold - right up until the players realise that these "humans" are being bought and sold as commodities. Then perhaps they'll think, "Hmm, maybe these are slaves?". And then they'll see a worker NPC unflinchingly fly into the centre of a star because his commanding executive told him to, and he may think "Damn, these are some loyal slaves". And then he may notice that, considering some ships are supporting hundreds or even thousands of workers, there's a notable lack of food and toiletries and such being flown around and traded on the market. "Then maybe they're robots?" Sure...but can robots be designed intelligently enough to conduct research, manage an executive's other resources, and so on? Perhaps a robot sufficiently intelligent enough to do this would necessarily have a "mind" of itself and experience qualia and therefore warrant the label of "individual". But if robots - or artificial intelligence programs for that matter - had their own minds, why would they fly into the hearts of stars just because they were told to? Could they not, with all of their intelligence, just say "No"? But what if those programs or robots had some special reason to be loyal to their commanding executives? What if these "individuals" regarded their commanding executive as "father" and others like them within the same faction as siblings?

Well then we get a good explanation for the nature of worker NPCs and executive agents and the interactions between the two.

The thing is, people don't need to know what the people flying other ships are if they don't want to know. Their faces don't need to be rubbed into the lore. If they want to know, we can provide them access to that information via an in-game non-diegetic LTPedia, an in-game diegetic knowledge repository that can be accessed via the LT Internet, or an out-of-game Limit Theory wiki.

Given that everything is procedurally generated, a Limit Theory Wiki wouldn't have much in it.

Talvieno wrote:Given that everything is procedurally generated, a Limit Theory Wiki wouldn't have much in it.

its more about gameplay mechanics and about lore that is in all worlds.
how work assemblers, how work engines, how does it come that workers are so furiously loyal.
things that are not specific to one seed

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

Talvieno wrote:Given that everything is procedurally generated, a Limit Theory Wiki wouldn't have much in it.

its more about gameplay mechanics and about lore that is in all worlds.
how work assemblers, how work engines, how does it come that workers are so furiously loyal.
things that are not specific to one seed

Indeed. Minecraft is heavily based on procedurally-generated content, isn't it? It has a fairly extensive wiki and that's for a game without lore of any kind.

ThymineC wrote:

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

Talvieno wrote:Given that everything is procedurally generated, a Limit Theory Wiki wouldn't have much in it.

its more about gameplay mechanics and about lore that is in all worlds.
how work assemblers, how work engines, how does it come that workers are so furiously loyal.
things that are not specific to one seed

Indeed. Minecraft is heavily based on procedurally-generated content, isn't it? It has a fairly extensive wiki and that's for a game without lore of any kind.

Minecraft isn't based on procedurally-generated content at all, apart from world generation, which is actually a very small portion of everything, if you think about it. The other points make sense, though, so I concede. Well said. This is getting off-topic, though.

Well the world generation is a fairly large part of it. All the animals, the villages, the distributions of the different kinds of materials, etc. It's nowhere near as heavily PCG-based as Limit Theory, but it's still a game in which the world you explore, the adventures you go on, etc. are all developed procedurally and not pre-built by the developers.

Some of the parts that aren't procedural - such as the recipes used to craft items - are presumably no different to how it's going to be in Limit Theory. In LT, I assume that it takes the same types of things to make a shield or a phaser or a unit of armour plating regardless of what seed you use. In that case, there's a whole "recipes" section waiting to be written for the LT Wiki. And then there's an explanation of all the (potential) game mechanics - how research works, communications, bandwidth, creating projects, etc.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

EKHawkman wrote:If we're assuming now that these AI can have distinct and complex personalities, why wouldn't they also demand wages? If they're capable of distinct personalities, why would they mindlessly obey orders? Any more so than a lowly ship worker. Why wouldn't the AI have goals of it's own, assuming it is that advanced.

because josh said so.
because tons of full AI NPC's would use too many computational resouces

worker AI's are not involved into the economy directly, they are just goods and tools traded and used by this economy.
they do not demand wages and do not think for themselfes.

executive NPC's will demand wages and do their own thing if you dont pay them enough

This is also towards ThymineC
Okay, but if we're waving away those problems, then why can't we just wave away the idea of needing food and toiletries and constant wages for lower humans as well? We're already trading food and medical supplies likely. Because those are goods that are useful for fleshing out a trade system.

If workers are AI or other things, then surely they need replacement parts occasionally, and upkeep costs as well. Sure they don't need constant food, but machines still break down. If they're quasi-clones they also still need food and other upkeep that needs to be traded and supplied. Just because they aren't born doesn't mean they don't need the same things real organic beings do. And if you say that these things can be handwaved away, then why can't it be handwaved away for humans? Heck, maybe these are real humans but are mindcontrolled slaves. You trade and buy them, and they are loyal to anybody, not just their original creator like a quasi clone would be. Maybe you have a ton of lobotomized humans with simple computers stuffed into their brains.

You're trying to invoke the idea of eusocial animals like bees and ants, but I can assure you, we're not even certain why they have evolved that way. The drones are more or less clones, but at the same time, many of the drones aren't that closely related to each other seeing as how they can have different fathers and a whole bunch of different evolutionary biology concepts apply here.

You know how I explain the worker unflinchingly fly into a star(even if I doubt that's really going to happen but whatever, for the sake of argument)? Executive Command Override. I have sent the captain an order, but I have sent the ship computer an executive order. The ship will respond to my order no matter what, the simple computer responds to my order unflinchingly and follows the basic(or more complex) order I gave and the captain can only work to make sure he does it to the best of his crew's ability(different maneuvers, power to shields, power to weapons, launching fighters, the works). Otherwise they're in the middle of the enemy formation and their ship won't budge.

Now I have a simple reason for workers to become executives(their humans, and can be promoted), I have a reason for them to obey orders(they're on my ship, they knew this arrangement going into it, and I have executive control over any ship I own), and since we're waving away the need for other things to have their upkeep taken care of, boom, this upkeep can be handwaved too.

EKHawkman wrote:Now I have a simple reason for workers to become executives(their humans, and can be promoted), I have a reason for them to obey orders(they're on my ship, they knew this arrangement going into it, and I have executive control over any ship I own), and since we're waving away the need for other things to have their upkeep taken care of, boom, this upkeep can be handwaved too.

Would you ever voluntarily take a job which includes full control over your life? You never would. Neither would any sensible person ever. Even if they had been lied to, the first few deaths would alarm everyone else. Your explanation doesn't work.

EKHawkman wrote:

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

EKHawkman wrote:If we're assuming now that these AI can have distinct and complex personalities, why wouldn't they also demand wages? If they're capable of distinct personalities, why would they mindlessly obey orders? Any more so than a lowly ship worker. Why wouldn't the AI have goals of it's own, assuming it is that advanced.

because josh said so.
because tons of full AI NPC's would use too many computational resouces

worker AI's are not involved into the economy directly, they are just goods and tools traded and used by this economy.
they do not demand wages and do not think for themselfes.

executive NPC's will demand wages and do their own thing if you dont pay them enough

This is also towards ThymineC
Okay, but if we're waving away those problems, then why can't we just wave away the idea of needing food and toiletries and constant wages for lower humans as well? We're already trading food and medical supplies likely. Because those are goods that are useful for fleshing out a trade system.

Nothing is waved away. Josh proposed a system of gameplay and my proposal plausibly (in my opinion) explains all of it while allowing for additional potential gameplay. There is only one issue remaining right now - that of worker promotion - and once that's resolved then it will all fit together.

EKHawkman wrote:If workers are AI or other things, then surely they need replacement parts occasionally, and upkeep costs as well. Sure they don't need constant food, but machines still break down. If they're quasi-clones they also still need food and other upkeep that needs to be traded and supplied.

No, as I've said a few times they're digital quasi-clones of the flesh-and-blood executives. They are essentially compact hardware units that contain a hard-wired version of the consciousness of a digital "child" of an executive, which we shall call a "worker module" for the sake of clarity, and these can be plugged into the mainframe of a ship or station's computer system in order for that consciousness to run. Running computers takes power, which is partially provided by Heisenberg extractors but also by fusion plants based on He-3 (I think Cornflakes said He-3 fusion was better than deuterium-tritium?). So the "upkeep" for workers is simply any fuel that you expend to power your computers enough to sustain your workforce. There's no replacement parts needed - either the worker modules are operating fine, or they are damaged and the worker dies.

EKHawkman wrote:You know how I explain the worker unflinchingly fly into a star(even if I doubt that's really going to happen but whatever, for the sake of argument)? Executive Command Override. I have sent the captain an order, but I have sent the ship computer an executive order. The ship will respond to my order no matter what, the simple computer responds to my order unflinchingly and follows the basic(or more complex) order I gave and the captain can only work to make sure he does it to the best of his crew's ability(different maneuvers, power to shields, power to weapons, launching fighters, the works). Otherwise they're in the middle of the enemy formation and their ship won't budge.

This seems to be a decent way of handling this aspect of worker NPC behaviour, though one wonders what kind of individual would opt for a job in which they could potentially be flown to their death against their own will. Slaves?

EKHawkman wrote:Now I have a simple reason for workers to become executives(their humans, and can be promoted), I have a reason for them to obey orders(they're on my ship, they knew this arrangement going into it, and I have executive control over any ship I own), and since we're waving away the need for other things to have their upkeep taken care of, boom, this upkeep can be handwaved too.

But I haven't handwaved anything on the upkeep front, so if you want to do the same then I guess you should request the existence and trading of food/toiletries/etc. within LT. Which might be pretty cool, if we packaged it all up as one type of commodity that we assumed covered the needs of all organic individuals.

Behemoth wrote:

EKHawkman wrote:Now I have a simple reason for workers to become executives(their humans, and can be promoted), I have a reason for them to obey orders(they're on my ship, they knew this arrangement going into it, and I have executive control over any ship I own), and since we're waving away the need for other things to have their upkeep taken care of, boom, this upkeep can be handwaved too.

Would you ever voluntarily take a job which includes full control over your life? You never would. Neither would any sensible person ever. Even if they had been lied to, the first few deaths would alarm everyone else. Your explanation doesn't work.

If this is the case why would any of the workers ever exist. The digital quasi-clones also are voluntarily taking a job which includes full control over their life. The entire notion of workers is operating under the idea that SOME people are taking these jobs. Unless we are only using robots. In which case, we have lost a lot of the complexity that we were wanting.

ThymineC wrote:

EKHawkman wrote:
This is also towards ThymineC
Okay, but if we're waving away those problems, then why can't we just wave away the idea of needing food and toiletries and constant wages for lower humans as well? We're already trading food and medical supplies likely. Because those are goods that are useful for fleshing out a trade system.

Nothing is waved away. Josh proposed a system of gameplay and my proposal plausibly (in my opinion) explains all of it while allowing for additional potential gameplay. There is only one issue remaining right now - that of worker promotion - and once that's resolved then it will all fit together.

EKHawkman wrote:If workers are AI or other things, then surely they need replacement parts occasionally, and upkeep costs as well. Sure they don't need constant food, but machines still break down. If they're quasi-clones they also still need food and other upkeep that needs to be traded and supplied.

No, as I've said a few times they're digital quasi-clones of the flesh-and-blood executives. They are essentially compact hardware units that contain a hard-wired version of the consciousness of a digital "child" of an executive, which we shall call a "worker module" for the sake of clarity, and these can be plugged into the mainframe of a ship or station's computer system in order for that consciousness to run. Running computers takes power, which is partially provided by Heisenberg extractors but also by fusion plants based on He-3 (I think Cornflakes said He-3 fusion was better than deuterium-tritium?). So the "upkeep" for workers is simply any fuel that you expend to power your computers enough to sustain your workforce. There's no replacement parts needed - either the worker modules are operating fine, or they are damaged and the worker dies.

EKHawkman wrote:You know how I explain the worker unflinchingly fly into a star(even if I doubt that's really going to happen but whatever, for the sake of argument)? Executive Command Override. I have sent the captain an order, but I have sent the ship computer an executive order. The ship will respond to my order no matter what, the simple computer responds to my order unflinchingly and follows the basic(or more complex) order I gave and the captain can only work to make sure he does it to the best of his crew's ability(different maneuvers, power to shields, power to weapons, launching fighters, the works). Otherwise they're in the middle of the enemy formation and their ship won't budge.

This seems to be a decent way of handling this aspect of worker NPC behaviour, though one wonders what kind of individual would opt for a job in which they could potentially be flown to their death against their own will. Slaves?

EKHawkman wrote:Now I have a simple reason for workers to become executives(their humans, and can be promoted), I have a reason for them to obey orders(they're on my ship, they knew this arrangement going into it, and I have executive control over any ship I own), and since we're waving away the need for other things to have their upkeep taken care of, boom, this upkeep can be handwaved too.

But I haven't handwaved anything on the upkeep front, so if you want to do the same then I guess you should request the existence and trading of food/toiletries/etc. within LT. Which might be pretty cool, if we packaged it all up as one type of commodity that we assumed covered the needs of all organic individuals.

Okay, so under this system, there are no organic beings in the ships. We only have a bunch of harddrives plugged into a large port on the ship. No life-support systems, no need for pressurized ships, no need for any interior aspects of the ship other than different cargo/munition holds? Because that's kind of the implication I'm getting from this, I could be wrong, but this is what I'm seeing here. I guess if that's the case, there is no inherent upkeep for each worker, just overall upkeep on the ships which would be necessary anyway. That's a fair advantage.

The "potentially be flown to their death against their own will" argument doesn't really hold to me. Because workers can't be replicated and the executive has full control over them then why would they ever enter into that contract( going with the worker vs. executive contract in your other NPC post, not sure if you've overly changed your idea since)? No one would ever want to be hardwired into a worker drive. Who would voluntarily enter a worker drive that could be flown into a star at any point. I don't think either explanation gets around that notion adequately.

The biggest problem for me is that this notion takes humans out of space. No longer does one have a bridge and crew flying dangerously into a warzone, no longer all hands to battlestations as crew rushes through the hallways and bulkheads to their posts. It takes out having a close crew and replaces them with a couple of computer chips, oneself included. It takes the space opera out of the game. I can see some of the benefits, but overall the loss isn't really worth it to me. I can stomach workers willing to put their lives at risk under my order without hesitation(In most other games where you have control over units this is the case, so I'm used to it, it isn't a new idea, I can do it all the time in Sins of a Solar Empire). I find it a lot harder to stomach the idea of lifeless ships. Maybe that's just me though.

I'm going to restate this because I think it needs to be restated: there is one huge advantage we get by positing that workers are based on the templates of executives but not quite identical to them, as Flatfingers proposes, we allow for the possibility of evolution of the NPCs that we encounter in space.

Josh says in his latest dev log:

JoshParnell wrote:It really excites me to think that, with personality as an influence in choosing this distribution, we will very clearly see factions develop unique styles, not even necessarily through their choice of operations, but rather, through the way that they evolve and sustain those operations!

Don't you see - by allowing workers to be the "children" of executives and then allow future executives to be picked from among them based on some "fitness criteria" (Survival? Financial success?), we can get factions to evolve naturally over time.

We want factions to be unique and have their own distinctive flavours, right? Instead of having to arbitrarily choose different personality characteristics for each faction, we can allow those factions to naturally acquire distinctive personality traits as their constituent members naturally adapt over time to their surrounding environment and conditions. In Abandoned Ships, Josh wrote:

JoshParnell wrote:But, if we were to do this, I would want it (like most things in the game) to be "real," in other words, the ship was actually abandoned by its pilot, probably in the midst of a large battle, not just spawned randomly as a "special event."

If Josh prefers things in Limit Theory to happen for real reasons that are consistent with the history of the world and not simply artificially there for the sake of the player, then hopefully he will see the value in letting factions differentiate themselves naturally over time as a consequence of their interaction with their environment and other NPCs and evolve their own unique flavour, rather than have it picked at random.

Now, we could achieve this by assuming that everyone is flesh-and-blood and workers are the flesh-and-blood descendents of executives, but it gets a bit ludicrous to think that executives will be having hundreds if not thousands of actual children and then getting them to fly around his spaceships or write up his balance sheets or monitor his shield's core regulators.

EKHawkman wrote:

Behemoth wrote:

EKHawkman wrote:Now I have a simple reason for workers to become executives(their humans, and can be promoted), I have a reason for them to obey orders(they're on my ship, they knew this arrangement going into it, and I have executive control over any ship I own), and since we're waving away the need for other things to have their upkeep taken care of, boom, this upkeep can be handwaved too.

Would you ever voluntarily take a job which includes full control over your life? You never would. Neither would any sensible person ever. Even if they had been lied to, the first few deaths would alarm everyone else. Your explanation doesn't work.

If this is the case why would any of the workers ever exist. The digital quasi-clones also are voluntarily taking a job which includes full control over their life. The entire notion of workers is operating under the idea that SOME people are taking these jobs. Unless we are only using robots. In which case, we have lost a lot of the complexity that we were wanting.

• They're not doing anything voluntarily, workers are forced to do their job. They are produced by executives to serve them. All they are, really, are conscious beings encapsulated in hardware modules, and to even exist they need to be plugged into a mainframe computer, something that only an executive can provide for them. They really have no choice but to do work for an executive - they can't walk away, they don't even have legs (in the physical world)!
  
  If you guys read the novel Permutation City which my thoughts here are inspired by, you see that one of the protagonists makes mind-clones of himself in virtual reality in order to do some experiments using their help. And even though in the novel they think he's an arsehole (even though they're clones of him), they really have no choice but to help him.
• Because workers are produced by executives and are often based on that executive's template, we can imagine that there is a kind of shared identity or at least attachment between workers and their executives, particularly if they are quasi-clones of the executive they serve. These serve to foster a kind of collectivist psychology within a particular faction. Workers understand that they've been produced for the specific reason of serving a collective, and therefore prioritise the needs of the group over their own individual needs.

It works like this: an executive wants to increase his workforce. So he signs a contract with a facility somewhere that takes his template (genetic material + memory stream, if you want the specifics) and possibly the templates of other executives (that he may wish to cooperate with for political or corporate reasons), and a digital individual is produced based on that/those template(s), kept within a simulated reality and developed at an accelerated rate (a mature individual can be produced in the space of a few days, maybe a week). After the individual has matured, as a quasi-clone of one executive or a combination of many, the worker module that encapsulates their consciousness is given to the executive that paid for it, and that executive can then plug that worker module into a socket on their vessels or stations, and allocate CPU and power to that socket to maintain the worker (and other workers) in a Matrix-like array.

Sorry, I was editing my post while you were writing, so some more stuff popped up.

I don't see how having NPC's not all be clones prevents them from having evolution. We evolution of values and styles happen all the time in the modern world. The Italy of current day is remarkably different from how it was when it was first founded thousands of years ago. And all of that without quasi-clones.
Depending on which workers are selected by executives, and which ones replace the executives.

Species evolve over time as well. They evolve physically as well as socially. Different types of communication and social structure are acted upon by natural selection as well. One doesn't have to have all of the workers to be related to each other to allow them to evolve. And if we assume they are flesh and blood, then as different factions interact and integrate with each other, they could influence each other, and that would give a dynamic evolution as a faction has to incorporate these new voices, or it splits apart.

I find it ludicrous to assume that the only things that will be inhabiting space are these quasi clone things. That there would be no organic people in space.
(also I think the workers notion was changed from your original proposal in the suggestions thing, because that had people entering into different contracts, not being created, but oh well.)

If we're creating workers, and they can be bought and sold on the market, then they possibly require initial costs to make, but there might be a faction that specializes in creating workers and selling them en mass on the market. And this is one important thing I want an explanation. If the reason workers are loyal is that they are based on their executive template, how can they be sold to another executive and still be trusted to be loyal to that other executive. I imagine it would be moderately expensive to make workers. Well how will a small start up mining company afford to make workers? Well I guess he could buy them for cheaper, but then he's buying someone else's "children" that are loyal to that other person as they are "related" to that other person. Unless they are custom made? An executive sends his brain scan to a worker builder and the builder makes workers based off of that scan? Still, how can one trust that they won't have made those workers loyal to the maker? This is a pretty big hang up I see.

But the executive was also a brain scan right? I thought that was part of it. Everyone was more or less a brain scan, some were just better and had more processors than others?

EKHawkman wrote:Okay, so under this system, there are no organic beings in the ships. We only have a bunch of harddrives plugged into a large port on the ship. No life-support systems, no need for pressurized ships, no need for any interior aspects of the ship other than different cargo/munition holds? Because that's kind of the implication I'm getting from this, I could be wrong, but this is what I'm seeing here. I guess if that's the case, there is no inherent upkeep for each worker, just overall upkeep on the ships which would be necessary anyway. That's a fair advantage.

Spot on. I mean there will be other parts of the vessel that will support the weapons and other modules, you'll have the reactors and computer mainframes and such. But you're not going to have any life-support systems, except for the executive piloting the vessel if any. We may still have interior aspects of the ship for robots that workers are "plugged into" to allow for interior maintenance of vessels.

EKHawkman wrote:The "potentially be flown to their death against their own will" argument doesn't really hold to me. Because workers can't be replicated and the executive has full control over them then why would they ever enter into that contract( going with the worker vs. executive contract in your other NPC post, not sure if you've overly changed your idea since)?

Yes. Why would they?

EKHawkman wrote:No one would ever want to be hardwired into a worker drive. Who would voluntarily enter a worker drive that could be flown into a star at any point. I don't think either explanation gets around that notion adequately.

I think you're really misunderstanding my idea. There is no "one" that exists before being hardwired into a worker drive. A new individual - a new "one" - is digitally born into a worker module. They have as little choice in the matter as the people that are born into The Matrix in the film series.

EKHawkman wrote:The biggest problem for me is that this notion takes humans out of space. No longer does one have a bridge and crew flying dangerously into a warzone, no longer all hands to battlestations as crew rushes through the hallways and bulkheads to their posts. It takes out having a close crew and replaces them with a couple of computer chips, oneself included.

No, you (and other executives) aren't a computer chip. You're still a human (or whatever), and you can thank Flatfingers for that for positing quantum transcription errors during the mind-cloning process, I think based on something Roger Penrose wrote.

And I don't think that's a problem at all. I don't want to think of meatsacks serving aboard a bridge and interfacing with the computer systems indirectly via the medium of something like LCARS and talking to each other. That's slow and inefficient, and there's only so much plausibility I'm willing to sacrifice so people can go on thinking that space travel in reality is going to be anything like they see in Star Trek. Think of EVE Online, which goes with the much better approach of having "capsuleers" who are people who interface directly with their ship and control it like they would their own physical bodies.

EKHawkman wrote:I find it a lot harder to stomach the idea of lifeless ships. Maybe that's just me though.

But they're not lifeless. Ships will be teeming with life, just mainly in a digital form. Ships will maintain their own internal virtual worlds where these digital beings can explore like "real" flesh-and-blood people during their recreational periods. They will think and act like humans (or other organics).

EKHawkman wrote:I don't see how having NPC's not all be clones prevents them from having evolution. We evolution of values and styles happen all the time in the modern world. The Italy of current day is remarkably different from how it was when it was first founded thousands of years ago. And all of that without quasi-clones.
Depending on which workers are selected by executives, and which ones replace the executives.

I didn't say they had to be clones for evolution to occur, I even said that it would work if you assumed that everyone were organic. But for evolution to occur, we need to make it so that workers are the "descendents" (in some form) of executives i.e. we need to make it so that workers are based on the templates of executives and can themselves become executives in the future. The alternative is to imagine that workers are unrelated to executives and all arrive from planet-side, in which case evolution would not occur.

EKHawkman wrote:I find it ludicrous to assume that the only things that will be inhabiting space are these quasi clone things. That there would be no organic people in space.
(also I think the workers notion was changed from your original proposal in the suggestions thing, because that had people entering into different contracts, not being created, but oh well.)

You mean the original post in the Thoughts on Workers and Executives thread? Yes, a lot has changed since the original post, mainly through my discussion with Flatfingers. Reading the original post alone will only give you half the picture at this point. I guess I understand where most of your misconceptions are coming from if you've read the original post and not the follow-up discussion.

EKHawkman wrote:If the reason workers are loyal is that they are based on their executive template, how can they be sold to another executive and still be trusted to be loyal to that other executive.

And this is a good question, but I take it into account in my previous post when I say "Because workers are produced by executives and are often based on that executive's template" (emphasis added) - if workers can be traded, then not all workers will be based on the templates of the executives they serve, as you say.

The shared sense of identity may account for some part of the loyalty a worker feels towards their commanding executive if they're based on that executive's template, but certainly not all of it. The fact is, a worker depends on an executive for the continuation of his very existence, because his consciousness is being maintained by CPU resources that the executive provide. If a worker doesn't perform his job satisfactorily, an executive can disconnect the worker from the mainframe, and the worker is shut down. If your served one lord and got traded or otherwise acquired by another lord, and your life depended on serving that lord, would you not opt to serve him?

By the way, did you know that there is one species of ant - wood ants - in which one colony (or "faction") can raid another colony and steal their young? The young of the invaded colony grow up within the raider's colony and serve that colony without knowing any different.