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Old 11-14-2017, 08:25 AM   #281
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: [Space] Fighter-to-ship ratio: what is it and why?

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
Aside from the general bizarre character of trying to forcibly redefine what the subject of the discussion is this way - yes, assuming that GURPS Ultratech must describe the technology of anybody's game is a huge and quite grotesque presumption.
I never used the word "must". However, assuming that published books written by very well informed professionals normally form the default seems the opposite of presumptuous.

"Gurps UT is wrong, wrong,wrong!" probably needs to be its' own thread rather than being assumed to be the default.
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Old 11-14-2017, 08:29 AM   #282
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Default Re: [Space] Fighter-to-ship ratio: what is it and why?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Oh, that. I decided against that due to the "not able to learn technological Skills" clause. If there were "replace Human for use of Skill X" programs listed you could use one of these but gnerally there aren't.

Some of it may be my Transhuman Space background but that's where these rules mostly originated and the way to do it there was to get an NAI with Skills on its' character sheet. The NAI is the thing that's one level up from the Dedicated AI.
If you are using third edition TS rules for that, wouldn't it also make sense to use the -1 complexity for Dedicated 3e rule you mentioned earlier?

What were Dedicated AIs used for then?

By the way, even if there aren't many non-AI program which can perform at human levels for all activities covered by a GURPS skill (GURPS skills do after all tend to be rather broad), in a setting like TS there should be a huge number of programs which can independantly do a good job at somewhat more narrow tasks (piloting only a specific set of aircraft for a certain set of tasks for example, rather than everything points in the Piloting skill would enable). We have after all gotten rather far in that regard already.
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Old 11-14-2017, 08:33 AM   #283
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Default Re: [Space] Fighter-to-ship ratio: what is it and why?

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Originally Posted by Rupert View Post
Slave Mentality means if it runs across something outside its programming, it's extremely likely (especially if you go with the "low IQ, high skills" idea of dodging complexity limititations) to not do anything about it, including mentioning the thing to its superiors.
Unless the SOP is to report anomalies, in which case it will reliably do so.
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The only way round that is constant oversight and management, which might actually work pretty well as long as your comms are secure and somewhat reliable - a human ground 'pilot' to manage decisions and to keep an eye out for the unexpected, and an on-board AI to run dogfights, targetting, & etc., and to run the mission if comms are lost.
Is this not normally true of air missions? And, to the earlier topic, very true of space missions?
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Old 11-14-2017, 08:38 AM   #284
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Default Re: [Space] Fighter-to-ship ratio: what is it and why?

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And then, yes, implying that internecine fighting among US forces was more important than the Soviets, which is a bit of a stretch.
Just so. I was engaging in a bit of hyperbole.

As for the Marines, I don't really perceive them as being heavily involved in the "fighting" I was talking about. In particular, they aren't generally seen as taking part in a lot of politicking to take away or deny any other branch a capability they see as rightfully theirs.

Though this is getting into off topic political discussion, so best not to pursue it further.
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Old 11-14-2017, 08:39 AM   #285
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Default Re: [Space] Fighter-to-ship ratio: what is it and why?

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If you are using third edition TS rules for that, wouldn't it also make sense to use the -1 complexity for Dedicated 3e rule you mentioned earlier?

What were Dedicated AIs used for then?
4th edition is usually assumed as the norm for these forums. Questions about 3e rules probably need to labeled with that in the title.

3e used dedicated for one-trick ponies like gunnery computers. One of those computers couldn't even run Artillery(Guided Missile), Pilot(High Performance Aircraft) Sensor Operator(Radar) and Tactics(Aerial) at the same or even ever. You'd only get one of those.

Even with "replace Human for Skills " programs I just came up with 4 Skills that are probably needed at the same time and even a High Capacity computer can only run 3 of its' full Complexity.
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Old 11-14-2017, 08:40 AM   #286
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Default Re: [Space] Fighter-to-ship ratio: what is it and why?

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Originally Posted by Rupert View Post
Slave Mentality means if it runs across something outside its programming, it's extremely likely (especially if you go with the "low IQ, high skills" idea of dodging complexity limititations) to not do anything about it, including mentioning the thing to its superiors. Incurious means it won't even bother to check out something that doesn't look like it's anything to do with the job at hand. If you think that this is acceptable in a fighter pilot, well I fully expect your aircraft (and such an AI will be worse on the ground where there's so much more clutter) to lose you the war, almost no matter what their kill ratio is. The only way round that is constant oversight and management, which might actually work pretty well as long as your comms are secure and somewhat reliable - a human ground 'pilot' to manage decisions and to keep an eye out for the unexpected, and an on-board AI to run dogfights, targetting, & etc., and to run the mission if comms are lost.
Unless mentioning everything that (according to some messures) are outside the norm is part of its orders (which if it is important for the war, it would be). The AI not paying a lot of attention to things unrelated to its job isn't a bad thing. You don't want your humans to for example focus on the music on a public radio station either (even if there theoretically could be some hidden message there relevant for the war).

With reasonable orders Slave Mentality and Incurious will almost certainly not lose you the war (at least not for fighter pilots, the situation is as you mentioned more complicated on the ground).

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Originally Posted by Rupert View Post
There's the 'weak dedicated AI', UT28. It can have quite a high IQ, but it can't learn, so it's basically junk in this context, despite its high IQ (Complexity = IQ/2). Also on UT25 as 'Dedicated AI' with Compexity (IQ/2)+1. Not sure which is correct.
They just can't learn (or improve) skills and familarities etc. They can still remember new things and use that knowledge to adapt to changing circumstances. There really is no reason to declare them to be junk in this context, it depends on which skill levels they start with.

Last edited by Andreas; 11-14-2017 at 08:50 AM.
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Old 11-14-2017, 05:50 PM   #287
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Default Re: [Space] Fighter-to-ship ratio: what is it and why?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Not if you're playing Gurps it's not. If you're talking "future reality" whatever that is you're the one who's off-topic.
GURPS is not limited to settings that slavishly adhere to the values printed in Ultra-Tech without any modification. Even the book itself talks about variants with suggestions on how to change things for different settings. For that matter, stating that Ultra-Tech's values are wrong for something is hardly off-topic for a GUPRS forum (Witness the dozens of threads doing exactly that). Even different GURPS books can disagree with each other.

You can perfectly well run a campaign that doesn't use the values in that book. That's especially true if, say, you're wanting to run a campaign set in the real world that makes use of modern developments in AI and don't want to tell the players "you can't have this real-world item because this eleven-year-old speculative technology book says it's not possible for several more tech levels".

As for being "off-topic", I just gave the thread a quick skim to be sure: it has consistently been about taking real-world, speculative, and other-setting technology and working out how to represent that in GURPS. Your post appears to be the first that starts with GURPS technology (More specifically, one particular version of such) and then tries to go the opposite direction with it. That's not what we've been talking about this whole time. Saying "you can't do that at TL 9 according to GURPS" is utterly unconvincing when we can point to existing technology and say "we can do that now, and for a fraction of the cost."
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Old 11-14-2017, 05:55 PM   #288
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Default Re: [Space] Fighter-to-ship ratio: what is it and why?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
I never used the word "must". However, assuming that published books written by very well informed professionals normally form the default seems the opposite of presumptuous.

"Gurps UT is wrong, wrong,wrong!" probably needs to be its' own thread rather than being assumed to be the default.
Do you suppose that ALPHA isn't a TL8 program on a Complexity 3 computer in GURPS terms?
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Old 11-14-2017, 05:59 PM   #289
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Default Re: [Space] Fighter-to-ship ratio: what is it and why?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
4th edition is usually assumed as the norm for these forums. Questions about 3e rules probably need to labeled with that in the title.

3e used dedicated for one-trick ponies like gunnery computers. One of those computers couldn't even run Artillery(Guided Missile), Pilot(High Performance Aircraft) Sensor Operator(Radar) and Tactics(Aerial) at the same or even ever. You'd only get one of those.

Even with "replace Human for Skills " programs I just came up with 4 Skills that are probably needed at the same time and even a High Capacity computer can only run 3 of its' full Complexity.
In that case, we should probably look at the 4th edition rules for AIs, for which there is no prohobition for Dedicated AIs to have a large number of skills (they just have to start with them rather than learn them later).

Ah, so that was for dedicated computer hardware rather than for dedicated programs? That is rather different from the Dedicated AIs mentioned in UT.

Would they have to be at full Complexity though? Narrow programs often use up far less computer resources than equally powerful but much broader programs.
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Old 11-14-2017, 06:44 PM   #290
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Default Re: [Space] Fighter-to-ship ratio: what is it and why?

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post

The...air fight? Are you proposing airliners dogfighting over a working airport? Or air support for a ground fight? In the latter case a human pilot in a fixed-wing aircraft couldn't possibly perform any meaningful target discrimination.
I am proposing a fleet coming out of jump in a high traffic zone. Or guarding a high traffic planet. Where terrorists are harassing merchant ships by coming in in ships that look like frighters and carry missiles instead of cargo.

Or a blockade of an interdicted world where the blockade runners use the same hulls friendlies are using for normal commercial traffic.

A fleet that is totally composed of AI is vulnerable to asymmetric desception.
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