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Steve Jackson · 10-12-2017, 10:51 AM

Getting back to the original not-stupid question, the intent of the storyteller is that expensive, sophisticated AI produces the most effective combat units, but if you can't make AI that good, you can fake it by putting humans in the loop - and that solution was embraced, at least for a while, by the Chinese.

The question of how to represent the frailty of the human operators was never completely settled. One option was to ignore it, of course, and have the Chinese Ogres ignore all D results the same way that other Ogres do. It's possible that for brief engagements, and most Last War engagements were brief, the difference would not be visible. But you'd probably run through a lot of crews, and you wouldn't be able to send the unit on a "squat at the bottom of the ocean for two months" sort of mission.

10-12-2017, 10:51 AM	#16
Steve Jackson President and EIC Join Date: Jul 2004	Re: Stupid question; manned Ogres? Getting back to the original not-stupid question, the intent of the storyteller is that expensive, sophisticated AI produces the most effective combat units, but if you can't make AI that good, you can fake it by putting humans in the loop - and that solution was embraced, at least for a while, by the Chinese. The question of how to represent the frailty of the human operators was never completely settled. One option was to ignore it, of course, and have the Chinese Ogres ignore all D results the same way that other Ogres do. It's possible that for brief engagements, and most Last War engagements were brief, the difference would not be visible. But you'd probably run through a lot of crews, and you wouldn't be able to send the unit on a "squat at the bottom of the ocean for two months" sort of mission.