Then there's the alternative pov from an (I think) Asimov short story, where two sides have fought themselves to a stalemate because the computers have become so good that they can almost counter what the enemy will do before they do it. Then one side has the idea of putting humans back into their ships - and missiles - because it introduces just enough randomness into the equations to throw the enemy's computers off for just a fraction of a second, which gives them enough of an edge to start winning the battles again.
David Shaw
The short answer re automation of anything and everything in Traveller:1) In the course of any sort of reasonably projected tech and economic development over the next several thousand years, essentially all work involving evaluation and manipulation of the physical world will be taken over by machines, which will be vastly better at these jobs than we are.2) Allowing this to happen in-game produces a feel utterly different from what we expect from Traveller, so we have to handwave it away (or just plain ignore it).There's a great scene in one of Iain Banks' books where the lone human passenger on a ludicrously advanced, highly sentient warship watches as the ship shows off its capabilities by engaging a few dozen opponent ships of lesser technological advancement. The human watches, barely understanding, as a holographic display shows a fast-moving dance of sensors, weapon selection, weapon firing, and hit-effect evaluation. Finally the human hesitantly asks "Are we winning?", and the ship laughs and explains that they're watching a replay, slowed down by a factor of a thousand; the actual battle ended a couple of seconds after it started.That's the likely future of space combat.On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 5:47 AM, Traveller <xxxxxx@btinternet.com> wrote:> On 12 Jul 2016, at 00:26, Jonathan Clark <xxxxxx@att.net> wrote:
>
> So how does Gunnery skill help? I hand-wave it as either a Luck-based skill, or perhaps a Psionic
> one. It gives someone with the skill a chance to sub-consciously predict *how* the missile will
> jink, that is, exactly what course changes will be triggered by the missile's random-number
> generator, over the next few iterations of this.
I don't really go with "Luke the psionic gunner" nor with having my gunner's role be "guess the score on the die".
Instead I'd like to make important decisions.
"There are 10 missiles inbound and point defence can take out 10 missiles, what do you do?"
"Umm, fire? Sorry, FIRE!"
"As above but you can 90% kill 10 missiles or 100% kill 9"
"Umm, max accel on heading 123 will give me another 10 seconds on missile 8"
"As above but the PD system over heats after 9 targets"
"Emergency cooling will get us one more shot and PD offline for three minutes"
"As above but there are also 3 missiles heading for the carrier"
"Bother!"*
(* or similar word)
Phil Kitching
All info vaguely remembered from Qi episodes and, if you're lucky, checked on Wikipedia.
I accept no liability for the consequences of its use in exams, job interviews or in the presence of anyone who knows, or thinks they know, anything about anything.
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