Before I begin, I want to make a few distinctions between terms for this post/thread.
1) An NPC is a Non-Player-Character. These are the guys that fly around mining and picking up jobs because they have determined it to be in their best interests.
2) An AI is a computer program similar to GLADOS, Cortana and the pixies in Red Vs. Blue. They are effectively digital slaves.
Now that that's out of the way, I can start explaining things.

So, drones have been talked about extensively. The same can be said about weapon controls and NPCs. I have tried (and failed) to read them all. Apologies in advance if I repeat someone's idea.

The main concern about drones is that no matter what you do, drones are the better option because NPCs cost money to keep on payroll while AI fleets are a one-time purchase. Solution: Make AI performance inferior to NPCs. (I'll explain later.)

One of my main concerns about combat is as far as I have observed, when you fly a ship, even a capitol ship, you can only fire at one target at a time and you're ship eventually moves to follow. Solution: Hire NPCs and AI as gunners. (Again, later.)

I'll start with the inferiority of AI.

A simple thought is to make AI a researchable object with trade-off points. A good AI might be able to fly a ship, but not be able to track targets with its weapons as efficiently. Or, Maybe it can do both, but it draws power that would be going to the engines, weapons, or shields of an NPC controlled ship. An AI therefore has at least one clear weakness to exploit in a dogfight.

This also means that, in order to be effective, an AI will have to be specialized for specific tasks. Your AI death armada won't be able to harvest ore very well, and your drone miners and traders will be very susceptible to pirate attacks.That is not to say a mining AI won't be able to fight back, but because it doesn't have algorithms optimized for combat, it will consume more energy to perform the same task as a combat AI. (poor efficiency = more clock cycles = more time/energy wasted)

Hiring Gunners

Bigger ships often have more enemies to target. They need to be able to deal with both fighters and other behemoths at the same time. While that is, in part what allied fighters are for, such a gaping weakness as the inability to defend oneself against small fighters, is bound to be exploited. (Death Star anyone?)

Can you see where I'm going with this? If just the piloting entity (PC, NPC or AI) is in the ship, then there is one gunner, capable of targeting one target. Now let's add an NPC/AI and give it control of a single turret group. Suddenly, the ship can track and fire on two targets. I imagine the UI would be as simple as selecting the AI and either giving it targets, or telling it to stop shooting.

The main drawback of an AI gunner, is that it will draw power. Larger ships, with their larger power plants can probably afford several without seeing much of an impact. Small fighters would notice power drops with only one. Another thought is adding "gunner" slots or crew quarters to ships as limiters, but who knows?

Anyway, let me know what you guys think. I know this probably won't be in the initial game release, but it could make for an interesting expansion or mod. My guess is that AI pilots will prefer missiles over energy weapons, but that's just me.

the distinction between RTS goons and full, independent game AI has been established in the game for quite a while now.

its the worker vs Executive split that has been discussed at infinitum when it was introduced by josh

basically workers are the "meat" of the universes population, flying most ships and being the pilots of the RTS like masses of ships.
they get bought like commodities and dont have any self determination.
they do like ordered without asking and wont require wages

executives run the full game AI and behave ideally like a player would
requiring wages and have to be kept in good spirit to continue working for someone, they also command their own worker hordes as their RTS minions.


on turret control:

josh is mentioning it here (under "crew mechanics") and says pretty much what you suggested.
so its going to be that way likely

You mean this?

JoshParnell wrote:Who's piloting a ship? "The pilot. (Duh?)"
When I buy a new ship, do I have to hire a new pilot? "Of course."
Do I have to pay wages? "Yes. If you hire people."
You mean I have an alternative? "Of course. Robots."
So I can have a completely robotic fleet? "If you like."
Can I research better robots? "Yes."
Can I research better people? "That doesn't make any sense. But people gain skill as they increase in experience."
I have a capital ship with 20 independently-tracking turrets. Who's controlling them? "Someone. You decide. Could be you, could be Elroy McWampratSniper, could be GunneryBot 3000."

I guess I misinterpreted something, somewhere, at some point. Or maybe I missed that post. I was under the impression that when you bought ships, you either had to fly them yourself, or you were actually just renting mercenaries to fly them until their renewable contract expired. Thus your fleet could be bought out by an NPC and turned against you. Then again, so could a hacked fleet of AI, but hey, who's counting? Guess I should re-read old dev logs more often.

The link did explain a lot, and is fairly close to what I envisioned though. Thanks.

My pirate drone army will be wonderful. A few NPCs managing different groups intelligently while the meat of the forces will be expendable drones. I guess the other limiter would be maintenance or power. Unless I am a sith master...then "UUUUNLIMITED POOWWWWWWERRR!"

You're delusions of grandeur quickly dissolve as you're ships are crippled by positronium minefields and your robots by emp warheads.
Have fun!

Jazehiah wrote:You're delusions of grandeur quickly dissolve as you're ships are crippled by positronium minefields and your robots by emp warheads.
Have fun!

HAH! You forget that all Thymine conceived ideas cannot harm me. Also, I shall simply catch your men in the E-M-P/Emp conundrum and they won't be able to fire! The joke is on you! Haw haw haw