Yay, another NPC thread. Maybe this one will be different enough. While I'm okay with AI blades existing on paper, I vastly prefer and would advocate for NPCs to exist on ships allowing for pros and cons of each form of "automation". I also believe that soloing any ship you want should be possible because flying a capital ship shouldn't require scheduling a pseudo MMO raid party. Blade VS NPC I believe that both of these need to exist, however they need to have various strengths and weaknesses to balance them out appropriately. A Blade should work as described by CIG, consuming power to automate a given task. Those tasks will be limited to things that could reasonably be automated by a computer such as turrets, navigation, or whatever, but they would be a major weakness if you end up being boarded, EMP hits the ship, navigating through an area that disrupts electronic system functions, or anything that requires physical interaction. The upside to an AI Blade is they only consume power or fuel to operate, and they also require no real commanding or "orders" to complete a given task or role they are assigned to. A NPC would allow a ship owner to "automate" a given function by assigning roles or commands, however a ship owner should be able to setup complex logic webs if they wish to in order to further "automate" a task. For example, you can assign a NPC as an engineer, set logic for them on what tasks to prioritize, when things should be done, and the frequency of tasks. To make this a relatively simple reality, a block based "coding" or "logic builder" should exist, similar to Scratch, that allows a ship owner to clearly define a role for a NPC to take. You can assign them a simple loop of just tracking and shooting at targets, or you can assign them to significantly more complicated loops and tasks for things like taking care of refueling and rearming ships when they dock and they have nothing else prioritized above that. A NPC would be a completely different thing, in that they will require a place to sleep, food, consume general ship resources like ammo and cargo to resupply or manufacture things abord. They will have varying levels of skill and will also need to be paid. While this may not seem like a lot on the surface, and I know a lot of you have only thought about crew from the surface level, setting up NPC logic on a Connie is VERY different from the logic on an Idris, Polaris, or Javelin. Death and Taxes Running a capital ship isn't something you will be able to just do early on. Unless you bought a ton of UEC and can get contracts to pay out a good bit, I seriously doubt it will be viable to main an Idris on Day 1. I'm sure people will try, but the cost of fuel and munitions for just the base ship will be significant on it's own, and that isn't taking into consideration stockpiles for fighters on deck, ground vehicles, crew food and drink, and engineering costs. If the ship is lost, it would take a large period of time to get it replaced, so unless players know they aren't going to lose it from incompetent crew, someone deciding to turn on everyone and hijack it, or whatever else, it isn't worth doing. NPC crew would at the very least ensure that a solo pilot could enjoy the ship they've bought/earned/built without having to worry about meta gaming players or those with ill intent. With that, it is already pretty cost prohibitive to begin with, but when you have to then pay for NPCs to fill the crew capacity on a ship, that's a significant increase to running costs. Players can be cheaper, as a lot of players will gladly crew a ship for free initially for the experience alone. If you then also have the potential of life insurance costs on NPCs, it would make it vastly cheaper to run with an all player crew but it wouldn't make it so you NEEDED an all player crew to operate it. However, since the Idris has a crew of ~20-40 and the Javelin is at ~60+ people, that's a significant amount of players to wrangle at any given time. Let's just ball park a few numbers here just so we can get a perspective on this. Let's assume that a single generic unspecialized NPC is 15,000UEC per hour in salary, not counting food and drink cost. Based on that, here are some numbers: 5 man crew for Corsair - 75,000UEC/hour 15 man crew for Polaris - 225,000UEC/hour 40 man crew for Idris - 600,000UEC/hour 200 man crew for Javelin - 3,000,000/hour Those are just ultra conservative numbers, but just looking at that and taking the average earnings per player, manning a Corsair is obtainable and doable for a good percentage of the player base. However, a Polaris starts to edge on being almost paycheck to paycheck for a solo player. It should be noted that, knowing CIG, NPCS would get tired and need to sleep, which means you would NEED to get a FULL crew to be active all the time. NPCs would work in shifts, while players wouldn't need to do so. Consider that in ideal conditions, as in the NPCs are already aboard your ship, capital ships will be slow enough that they wouldn't be able to speed run HRT bounties as fast as a Corsair, Constellation, or heavy fighter. Needing to land or take off would greatly reduce profit per hour. The game is already tedious in how long it takes to do things, and as such you would likely be able to complete the average HRT contract that includes an atmospheric bounty in 15-20 minutes from start to finish. With players, this would be SIGNIFICANTLY faster, especially with an Idris allowing fighters to split farm and have a mobile repair and rearm point. I would imagine that the actual numbers on hiring NPCs would vary greatly because CIG seems to like making things painful to keep your ship in the sky. Solo Capital Ship Woes Anyone that has a mind for logistics and leadership should have been in for a reality check as soon as we walked the Idris interior this year. The sheer amount of coordination to man the flight deck, keep ships in decent shape, managing resources of the ship and crew from food to missiles, navigation, flight control, weapons systems, and more are a lot to take in and consider. Onboard an Idris, being the person in charge of the flight deck, getting ships launched, repaired, and refueled WILL BE a FULL TIME thing to focus on. With engineering being a thing, as well as persistence and crafting, this won't be a simple task to manage all of those roles. As a solo player, it would be a monumental task in management to keep all of the NPCs in line. Even if they did exactly what you script, there is nothing you can do to account for every possible outcome, loss of crew, or have the logic break in some way. A Polaris with 10-15 people would be quite a bit to manage for most people, but an Idris would be next level. Optimizing crew shifts, assigning optimal schedules to keep them in peak performance, and otherwise while also managing whatever contract you are on, navigation tasks, and more would be a lot to handle. While I'm positive you could reduce that by having a couple of players as "managers" to keep track of the NPCs doing what they need to do, it would still be a significant amount of work. A lot of people seem to think that having NPC crew just means that they have turrets that work. All they see is NPC crew lets a solo player fly in and blows up everything because the NPC gunners do their job. The reality is that even getting to that point would already be a significant amount of effort and work, but NPCs wouldn't be nearly as good or intuitive as players. There's a reason player can fly circles around most the NPC pilots, avoid most NPC gunners, and in general be untouched by them. People have destroyed an Idris in just an Aurora. NPCs aren't the be all end all way a ship is operated, it just means you don't have to wait for others so you can have fun. Star Citizen isn't about Raids to Fly Anyone that is advocating for solo players to not be able to solo their ships are dumb, want to limit fun, and don't understand that you don't simply buy a Polaris and win. Operating a capital ship, even on a theoretical solo scale, is a lot of effort. The financial strain of doing so on your own deletes zeroes from your account balance. While it isn't disputed that the only way to effectively use and afford a capital ship is to do so with an Org or group of players, that shouldn't take away from being able to solo a ship you paid for, take on the financial burden, and forge your way in the galaxy. I shouldn't be at the mercy of people's schedules as to whether or not they have time to be a gunner or pilot. I don't want to wait hours for crew to fly to where my ship is, get aboard, and then have it take too long and have critical positions unfilled because people don't have time for it. This isn't World of Warcraft. I shouldn't have to create 20-40 man raid teams to pilot a ship for a few hours a night once a week. Once more, if anyone thinks this is a good thing, you are dumb. That should never be the barrier to flying a ship, but it could be a barrier to engaging in an instanced event or public event. Group content should absolutely exist, but the mere existence of a capital ship shouldn't make the act of flying it an inherent group event. If I want to fly my Polaris and allow a group of friends to land their ship and come aboard while my NPC crew takes care of refueling, rearming, and repairing their ship while also doing other tasks, I should be able to do so. At the end of the day, NPCs are mandatory for capital ships. There is so much to manage and take care of, the scope of which is seemingly ever expanding, and NPCs are incredibly important to keep it smooth. However, a player should NEVER be at the mercy of other players' schedules to enjoy flying a ship. NPCs have been promised for years that will allow this to happen anyways, so fighting against a player being able to solo their capital ship is pointless. And stations.....those are another story...