Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - Keeping humans relevant in the shadow of TL10 AI.

Michael Thayne · 08-03-2018, 08:55 AM

As far as spaceship combat goes, if drone AI only has skill 11 while it's very possible to train humans up to skill 14, that's a non-trivial advantage, but it doesn't really change the fundamental problem with the combat side of Spaceships in that missiles are still ridiculously under-powered. If you're firing missiles at a SM+8 frigate, base skill 11 + 2 (from sAcc) + 8 (from target SM) + 4 (from proximity detonation) is effective sill 25, which virtually guarantees 10 hits.

Alternatively, it lets you soak up huge penalties from a high-speed attack run, which in turn increases damage. In tactical combat, it's quite easy to arrange missile attacks with 10 mps relative velocity. That's only a -6 penalty, so your effective skill is 19. You'll still score 8-9 hits most of the time, while making a 16cm missile inflict 840 points of damage!

So spaceship combat is broken, what else is new? It was probably over-optimistic to think limiting drone AI would fix this.

You could go with significantly more limited AI, but this ends up being fairly implausible. One thing Spaceships never really reckons with is that while worked examples of drones just remove control stations, Ultra-Tech microframes weigh less than a human pilot and cost less than 2% of what the cheapest drones cost, so there's no reason for drones not to have microframes installed. At TL10, this means a drone can have that IQ 10 fast non-volitional AI running. Even with only 1 point in Artillery (Guided Missile), that's still skill 9, which is adequate (if not ideal) for high-speed missile attack tactics.

08-03-2018, 08:55 AM	#10
Michael Thayne Join Date: May 2010	Re: Keeping humans relevant in the shadow of TL10 AI. As far as spaceship combat goes, if drone AI only has skill 11 while it's very possible to train humans up to skill 14, that's a non-trivial advantage, but it doesn't really change the fundamental problem with the combat side of *Spaceships* in that missiles are still ridiculously under-powered. If you're firing missiles at a SM+8 frigate, base skill 11 + 2 (from sAcc) + 8 (from target SM) + 4 (from proximity detonation) is effective sill 25, which virtually guarantees 10 hits. Alternatively, it lets you soak up huge penalties from a high-speed attack run, which in turn increases damage. In tactical combat, it's quite easy to arrange missile attacks with 10 mps relative velocity. That's only a -6 penalty, so your effective skill is 19. You'll still score 8-9 hits most of the time, while making a 16cm missile inflict 840 points of damage! So spaceship combat is broken, what else is new? It was probably over-optimistic to think limiting drone AI would fix this. You could go with significantly more limited AI, but this ends up being fairly implausible. One thing *Spaceships* never really reckons with is that while worked examples of drones just remove control stations, *Ultra-Tech* microframes weigh less than a human pilot and cost less than 2% of what the cheapest drones cost, so there's no reason for drones not to have microframes installed. At TL10, this means a drone can have that IQ 10 fast non-volitional AI running. Even with only 1 point in Artillery (Guided Missile), that's still skill 9, which is adequate (if not ideal) for high-speed missile attack tactics.