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This isn't to the point of being a house rule just something I'm playing around with and looking for some advice which approach would be better (saying neither will be ignored). I was watching star trek and the various holograms that serve ship functions especially in Picard and it got me pondering about the old leadership feat, VI's and holograms specifically an anti-social being who's entire crew are VI holograms serving on board the ship. Leadership came into it solely as a semi-rules legal way of explaining them all.
Anyway do people think it'd be better to have one computer say tier 10 running all the holograms simultaneously or each hologram/follower having its own computer system? That is one computer per hologram/follower or one computer capable of running multiple VI's?
You know Senko, I always love reading the questions you bring up. They're always intriguing. I would not have multiple VI's at all. I would have one VI that controls the entire ship. Now I might not be remembering the ship operations manual, but I thought there was an option to have a VI control components.
But out of the two options you have put I would pick one computer controlling multiple VI's
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You know Senko, I always love reading the questions you bring up. They're always intriguing. I would not have multiple VI's at all. I would have one VI that controls the entire ship. Now I might not be remembering the ship operations manual, but I thought there was an option to have a VI control components.
But out of the two options you have put I would pick one computer controlling multiple VI's
There is the option but unless I'm misreading it they've made it unable to multitask. So if your ship has a VI it can do the pilot, science officer OR gunnery role (not engineering, magic officer, chief mate even if you have a holographic projection system, doctor or so on role). It's not a sci fi AI with massive multi-tasking capabilities that can do all three roles at the same time.
I assume this is so it can fill in on smaller groups or ones where players are doing the roles it can't but not do everything itself. Which gets odd when you realize you can have a VI become an AI and get the legal ownership of the ship it's on even though its only doing one role and not the captains one. Not to mention that your houseruling if you want a second VI anyway.
Is there a rule preventing a second VI? I thought you could add as many as you have BP for?
Is there a rule preventing a second VI? I thought you could add as many as you have BP for?
Pretty sure you can, though that may have been an oversight.
So, in answer to the original question, if you are operating a ship and need multiple roles filled, multiple VIs would be the way to go. It's what I would write down on the sheet.
However, flavor wise, I prefer the one computer operating multiple personalities/holograms/hardlight contructs/whatever. It just seems more fun, and that's the whole setup would actually work for any part of an adventure dealing with this ship.
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Hmmm I always read that in a singular tense interesting idea of one VI per computer/ship.
I shall give this some thought perhaps if you pay for the VI processing facilities you can get 1 VI per ship size category e.g. a tiny ship can run 1 VI while a large can run 4 and a Ultranaught as many as desired for the BP. Level/skills are identical across all VI's from that core e.g. if you put in a medical skill upgrade they all have the medicine skill. To increase the number of VI's buy another VI unit or a personal computer with the artificial personality upgrade and plug it into the ship.
I think I'd prefer that. Maybe as an optional rule have the ability to choose between multi-tasking and VI's so if you had a medium transport with the VI upgrade you could run 3 VI's (medium ship) or 1 VI that can perform 1-3 roles at the same time i.e. it acts in the pilot, gunnery and science officer phases or if you have the holographic projection system pilot, chief mate and runs the onboard security robots to prevent boarding. I suppose you could also go with ship tier or computer tier e.g a tier 10 computer can run 10 VI's or a tier 20 ship can run 20. Computer tier might be the better choice as it fits in nicely.
Yes pay for the VI upgrade and you can run a number of VI's equal to computer tier with each VI able to perform a number of roles equal to the nodes (multiprocessing capacity). That actually gives more reason to compare tier vs nodes you can have a computer that gives a smaller bonus (+2 to roles and 2 VI's) but allows it to be spread over more functions (4 people can get that +2 and each VI can perform 4 different things at the same time). For fun and brokeness take the leadership feat and reprogram a VI with class levels in place of a cohort even thought they'd still be limited by hologramatic projection limits but that's unnecessary.
I think I can work with this as joking aside it moves it away from a player feat to the ship building options, gives another reason to weigh up higher level vs lower level computers and allows for VI crews to form most/all of smaller ship crews but not larger ones without significant investment.
Yeah it seems like the best option. Personally I wouldn't bother limiting VI, cause they have a cost already and buying a bunch limits other things.
I noticed it looking at the consciousness uplink drive. I didn't remember if those were limited to 1/ship or what cause they specify only a single crew member can use it, but it technically doesn't say you can't have 2 or more (which it's logical to say you can only have 1 from the way the item is worded, but still lol)
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Yeah it seems like the best option. Personally I wouldn't bother limiting VI, cause they have a cost already and buying a bunch limits other things.
I noticed it looking at the consciousness uplink drive. I didn't remember if those were limited to 1/ship or what cause they specify only a single crew member can use it, but it technically doesn't say you can't have 2 or more (which it's logical to say you can only have 1 from the way the item is worded, but still lol)
I'd be inclined to say one per role on that item if I were GMing. That is you buy the conciousness uplink drive and then each role (pilot, gunner, etc) can use it. That way on smaller PC sized ships all the players could use one but on the bigger NPC ships with dozens or hundreds of crew you would have command stations for the officer in charge with the drive while the general crew under them use physical interactions (holograms, buttons, etc).
At the moment the rule as I'm considering it is roughly.
1) Buy VI.
2) A VI can during ship combat act in a number of roles equal to the computers nodes e.g. duonode the VI can act as pilot and gunner in combat. It doesn't have to and obviously wont if you have players for those roles.
3) A single computer can create and run a number of VI's equal to its tier e.g. a tier 3 computer can run 3 VI's each with their own personality and skills as written.
4) In the event you buy a dedicated computer housing (Unlikely even with my house rule that its assigned to a role not a task) you must decide on purchase if it is tied in to the main computer as an extra node or acts as a seperate secondary computer. This decision can be changed when leveling up the ship and spending BP. If you select node then the VI's can act in an extra role e.g. tier 3 duonode + dedicated tier 3 monodoe = VI can perform 3 roles in ship combat. If you select it as a seperate computer then it can run its own suite of VI's however they are only able to perform 1 role and the main computer VI's can act in 2. In the event you buy a dedicated computer housing (Unlikely even with my house rule that its assigned to a role not a task) this counts as an extra node e.g. duonode tier 3 and dedicated mononode tier 3 = 3 roles the VI can perform. Each computer needs the VI upgrade purchased seperately if you chose it to act as a seperate computer core. That is you can have 3 VI's capable of acting in 3 roles each or you can have 3 VI's able to act in 2 roles and 3 VI's able to act in 1.
5) If GM allows leadership a VI can be assigned as a specific players cohort and given their own levels/skills becoming an AI under GM control.
I'm still not sure about leadership, I know its generally considered one of the, if not the most broken feat in pathfinder but a lot of those issues are not present here. The VI is already effectively present under other rules and by adding class levels/skills you may actually make it weaker than it is currently (14 ranks of pilot vs the base VI's 20), the VI without house rules is limited to the ship and 30' outside it so they're not likely to be adventuring with the party. Which cuts the cohorts effect down significantly. Of course the followers could be an issue but at higher levels they cap at 6th level so limited value and you could always use them as other crew if the party has a larger ship. Something to think about anyway.
I'm currently debating if the skill expander should be tied to one computer giving all VI's run on that computer the same skilsl, be an array with specific skills assigned to different VI's e.g. skill expander gives you 2 extra skills so you pick life science and physical science for VI Jim the science officer and medicine and profession doctor for VI Albert the ships doctor. The problem compounded by my uncertainty if they should be like projectors a shipwide upgrade or a purchase for each computer. I can see arguments and a way to work either option.
That's an interesting idea but it seems a bit overly complex. But hey, if your group likes it, that's all that matters lol.