Starship Attunement (an idea for starship upgrades and modifications)

[Chadawc]

I have issues with the narrative of just hand waving your ship to be better. It isn't a bad system really just something that I as a story teller have a problem with when trying to run the game.
I thought of a solution and needed help figuring out if it is a good one or I am trying to hard.

My thoughts are that all starships have some kind of AI or spirit or a combination of the two that attunes with it's primary crew. I say primary crew to indicate the officers of larger ships or the entire crew of smaller ships. Primary crew determines how much the ship learns and adapts to the needs of said crew. As they advance in level and become more powerful the ship does as well. Almost like a character class for the ship it's self. The UBP can be changed by the ship it's self when it is docked and the crew no longer boarded. It will of course do so only at the request of the PC's but this would explain as to why it changes as it does. The AI also has the ability to be stored with the party and should the worst happen the ship can be reformed as per the with the right amount of credit and time.

This of course does not mean that you have to have an NPC as the ship it could of course speak to the party if you like but I see it as more of an internal system that works with the party as opposed to an individual that has it's own goals.

This could be a bad idea and I am not sure if I am missing something but I would love some feed back. Thank you in advance and have an awesome day!

[Cellion]

I wouldn't say the existing rules "Hand wave your ship to be better".

CRB Starship Upgrading Rules Introduction wrote:

This could represent salvage gathered during their exploits, an arrangement with a spacedock, or called-in favors from a wealthy patron. Some GMs might require PCs to visit a safe, inhabited world before they can spend these Build Points, but this shouldn’t be allowed to impact the campaign too much.

The current rules leave the justification somewhat up to individual GMs, but they do ask you to justify it. I know some GMs choose to hand wave the upgrading of the ship, but many in my experience do actually provide narrative justification each time and require the party to return to home base or civilization.

Not that I think your idea of a "self-upgrading" ship is bad, in fact its a pretty sweet sounding variation, but I don't think that the issue you're purporting to solve is something caused by the current rules.