How To Abandon Ship?

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Looking back I should have more clearly expressed my thought.

I don't think the pod occupants are piloting it down.

I was thinking that having counter grav makes it easier for an automated system to safely autonomously land an escape pod -- with no help from occupants or the ground.

Well, that thought concurs with my original thinking before my post, but I dismissed it after the little voice on my shoulder reminded me of the rumors of the author's decree of no automated piloting.

He said no automated warships (or really starships). Aircars have autopilot; as do pinnaces

In Enemy Hands wrote:Scotty had made one small alteration: he had physically cut the links between the pinnace's sensors and its autopilot. The flight computers could no longer "see" the boat bay about them. As far as they could tell, they could have been in deepest, darkest interstellar space, and so they felt no concern at all when they were commanded to bring the pinnace's wedge up while it still lay in its docking buffers.

There's even on explicit statement in Worlds of Honor about an aircar's autopilot self-landing. And in Service of the Sword Abigail's team use the autopilot feature on their pinnace to fly itself (empty) back up to orbit after they hid on Refuge. (Then some custom programmed fancy stuff when it was hit by radar)

So there's clearly no absolute prohibition against automated piloting. I'd expect emergency pods to be another place it would be used -- since you can't assume there will be someone capable of piloting it aboard when it abandons ship.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Looking back I should have more clearly expressed my thought.

I don't think the pod occupants are piloting it down.

I was thinking that having counter grav makes it easier for an automated system to safely autonomously land an escape pod -- with no help from occupants or the ground.

Well, that thought concurs with my original thinking before my post, but I dismissed it after the little voice on my shoulder reminded me of the rumors of the author's decree of no automated piloting.

Jonathan_S wrote:He said no automated warships (or really starships). Aircars have autopilot; as do pinnaces

In Enemy Hands wrote:Scotty had made one small alteration: he had physically cut the links between the pinnace's sensors and its autopilot. The flight computers could no longer "see" the boat bay about them. As far as they could tell, they could have been in deepest, darkest interstellar space, and so they felt no concern at all when they were commanded to bring the pinnace's wedge up while it still lay in its docking buffers.

There's even on explicit statement in Worlds of Honor about an aircar's autopilot self-landing. And in Service of the Sword Abigail's team use the autopilot feature on their pinnace to fly itself (empty) back up to orbit after they hid on Refuge. (Then some custom programmed fancy stuff when it was hit by radar)

So there's clearly no absolute prohibition against automated piloting. I'd expect emergency pods to be another place it would be used -- since you can't assume there will be someone capable of piloting it aboard when it abandons ship.

Thanks for clarifying that. Not to mention Grosclaude's autopiloted aircar before he died. But I assumed, obviously in error, that no autopiloted warships included the ships aboard -- having something to do with autopiloting in deep space. Rather than in, or relatively close to, the planetary atmosphere/surface -- whereby they are aided by whatever system that assists atmospheric vehicles. I stand corrected, but if that is the case, I have to revisit many of the brilliant notions that I may have prematurely ejected.

Do pardon the double on Thandi err entendre. My tongue, I hate it when it does that—makes those kinds of slips. Doh! I'm just slipping in deeper. No, wait! Doh! ::facepalm::

cthia wrote:Pods? Admiral Gogunov targeted escape pods with Javelin? Talk about a ringside seat for the fireworks. Can you imagine being in a pod after realizing they'd just been targeted? IINM, their beacons is what enabled such small targets to be locked. In such an event, I wonder if deactivating the beacons -- if possible, by the occupants -- would save one or more of them? It seems deactivation would be possible in extremely hostile environments, like so. Of course, they had no idea the Sollies were murderous bastards. Wait, what? At any rate, just wondering if the capability is there, and hoping a few of them realized what was happening and shut off the beacon. But then, how'd they know when to reactivate it? Wow, what a rock-and-a-hard-place of a time to be stuck in a pod.

I doubt they would have considered the beacons a threat. Normally beacons would at worst mean POW rather than dead. It would take a war crime for them to be a problem.

At any rate, the blocking ships used to protect Ivaldi were automated, iinm. Well, remote-controlled at any rate. What gives? Has the author released the prohibition against automated ships?

cthia wrote:At any rate, the blocking ships used to protect Ivaldi were automated, iinm. Well, remote-controlled at any rate. What gives? Has the author released the prohibition against automated ships?

Drones are automated too, they follow their program without the need for human intervention

What David meant, was (forex) a drone who sees a sensor ghost at the edge of it's programmed search area WILL NOT vere off course on it's own accord and investigate, automatically turn on and off sensors and stealth systems to avoid detection AND increase range, then identify the ship and determine if it should attack using the Missiletoe system it carries, all without taking orders from a human source.

Can you program a ship to run a course with waypoints, yes it is done all the time under the crew's watchful eye. Can you program a ship in advance to fire weapons when a certain criteria is estabilished, sure, it is done all the time in battle. However, you cannot program a Ship to wander around a system and defend it on it's own with human intervention. It cannot make complex decisions on it's own, it just follows programming.

Smart systems, not full AI.

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:At any rate, the blocking ships used to protect Ivaldi were automated, iinm. Well, remote-controlled at any rate. What gives? Has the author released the prohibition against automated ships?

Drones are automated too, they follow their program without the need for human intervention

What David meant, was (forex) a drone who sees a sensor ghost at the edge of it's programmed search area WILL NOT vere off course on it's own accord and investigate, automatically turn on and off sensors and stealth systems to avoid detection AND increase range, then identify the ship and determine if it should attack using the Missiletoe system it carries, all without taking orders from a human source.

Can you program a ship to run a course with waypoints, yes it is done all the time under the crew's watchful eye. Can you program a ship in advance to fire weapons when a certain criteria is estabilished, sure, it is done all the time in battle. However, you cannot program a Ship to wander around a system and defend it on it's own with human intervention. It cannot make complex decisions on it's own, it just follows programming.

Smart systems, not full AI.

The "prohibition" was less sweeping that you seem to think.
Because there's no true AI in the Honorverse RFC said that there won't be fully automated warships - they just can't match a crewed ship in combat.

And he wasn't explicitly said that I remember, but I suspect the reason there aren't fully automated freighters is because on those long voyages you need people to notice when things start to go wrong and to fix them. The ship should be perfectly capable of flying itself on autopilot - after all the hyperlog is basically an inertial navigation system. But if anything goes wrong it can't fix itself (and depending on the issue may not even notice something going wrong)
(Not to mention the crew's role on some freighters in finding and negotiating for cargo with freight brokers)

A modern airliner or cargo ship can pretty much pilot itself; but even with drones we want people at least monitoring it in case something goes wrong. Though what they can't do is follow traffic control instructions or listen and understand other craft on the common radio frequency. But with the distances in the space it's not that practical to closely monitor ships in the same star system, and impossible to monitor them in hyper.

But for shorter periods, if you didn't mind if some broke down and weren't able to complete their task [potentially catastrophically break down], and couldn't handle anything even marginally outside their programming, there's no physical or technological barrier to automating an Honorverse ship.