Drone ships

[dragonfett]

Considering that the US Military uses Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAV's) for various things, including launching missiles, what role do you unmanned spaceships would have in the 3 Galaxies? Advanced Drone Fighters with robot AI's? Long distance cargo haulers? Mining ships?

[glitterboy2098]

Considering that the US Military uses Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAV's) for various things, including launching missiles, what role do you unmanned spaceships would have in the 3 Galaxies? Advanced Drone Fighters with robot AI's? Long distance cargo haulers? Mining ships?

The main cultures of the three galaxies tend to distrust AI due to a war with intelligent machines in their pasts. Think the butlerian jihad from dune or the cylons from battlestar Galactica. As a result AI is something most have avoided research on, and their capabilities in that area are limited.

Their AI tech isn't really up yo drone fighters as a result. And with remote piloted systems too easily jammed, and usually limited by light speed issues over a distance, they aren't going to be very common either.

[say652]

Naruni Enterprises has the market cornered. Mercenaries Book for stats. I'm sure for the right price space mods can be added.

[taalismn]

Naruni Enterprises has the market cornered. Mercenaries Book for stats. I'm sure for the right price space mods can be added.

This.
Any newcomer cultures that come out with drones are likely to either be subject to acute scrutiny, especially with an eye towards countering that culture's drone capabilities, and/or would be shunned altogether. Even if allied to a major faction, the drone-users would be seen as a battlefield liability due to the perceived vulnerability of the drone systems.

Older culture(i.e. Ancients, like in THundercloud Galaxy) drone systems tend to be regarded as dangerous artifacts best treated with caution in handling.

Societies like Neil Asher's Polity and Ian Banks' Culture, with their demigod-tier AIs running things, and fleets of AI-run warships, would make the Three Galaxies cultures plotz themselves with anxiety.