[jr2]

Oh. Well, in that case...at least allow guns pointing OUTWARDS.

Two second burst of thrusters, and those are no longer pointing outwards. 

...I'd bet my shell...

[Kie99]

Some people are psychotic.  Some people are terrorists and like to blow up expensive sh*t.

How many terrorists or psychotic people will gain control of an orbital weapons platform?

[Stormkeeper]

How many terrorists or psychotic people will gain control of an orbital weapons platform?

You never know... Bush might have one ...

[Wobble73]

How many terrorists or psychotic people will gain control of an orbital weapons platform?

You never know... Bush Bosch might have one ...

  

[Snail]

Dude, Bosch has 10 Orion destroyers and a Hecate. He could destroy modern day Earth in like 2 minutes.

[Wobble73]

Dude, Bosch has 10 Orion destroyers and a Hecate. He could destroy modern day Earth in like 2 minutes.

Don't forget the Iceni.......


and I know I just thought it appropriate joke for the topic! 

[NGTM-1R]

Your argument about security on its base doesn't really apply since access to the base would allow similar sabotage to pilots or piloted ships. Alternatively, with that sort of access, one could just break the base itself.
Also, it relies on the assumption that every drone would be using the same program which doesn't work if we allow per base or per drone learning or even any of the usual upgrades.

Drones are easier to screw up then piloted craft, and more importantly, screwing up a drone is more difficult to detect, because it leaves less in the way of physical signs. Damaging a system truly vital to a manned craft tends to leave marks; engine, controls, things like that. Put simply, a manned craft could have total computer (even total electrical) failure and still come back. A drone won't. They would also, perforce, require more work to maintain, raising the number of people who have access to the drones above what is required for manned craft.
And just to make a final mockery of the argument, saying that it would be as easy to access the computers on the drones as it is to obtain access to the main computer of a destroyer? Come on. The base or ship will have far fewer vunerablities both because its systems are simpler and because there is only one of it, meaning each vunerablity is not duplicated ten or a hundred times.

This learning argument is ridiculous. First, we don't even know if it would be true. Second, they're all going to come out of the factory the same way, and upgrades or learning or whatever you want to call it are going to add to, not alter, their base programming. The vunerablities they came out of the factory with may be eliminated by post-factory patching, but it's just as likely that new vunerablities will be added.

[Spicious]

You're saying that a ship most likely controlled using a computer can come back after being disabled, but a ship controlled by a computer directly can't?

Surely one could sabotage the program used to control the fighter when piloted similarly to how one would sabotage the drone software. I seem to recall an event where a decent number of piloted ships are sabotaged, some even being completely destroyed, without any sort of early detection too.

I think we can include obvious things like checksums and maybe some guards. You may wish to read up a bit on machine learning too.

Saying that something is easier to sabotage because there are a lot of them is a bit absurd. Consider that to sabotage one computer with X vulnerabilities requires at least one action while sabotaging Y things each with the same X number of vulnerabilities would require at least Y actions. Why would a computer program designed to operate a large ship be simpler than one designed to operate a small ship? Would there be a simple command console on the outside of each drone so that anyone passing by can do whatever they want with it?

I'd like to know how you'd find these massive vulnerabilities so quickly given that you still haven't shown that you can obtain a complete version of the drone code.

[S-99]

I imagine that replacing human pilots with AI would require less people. If there's a  problem with the AI, fix the problem, upload and apply the fixes to the other AI craft. You'd still need your team of engineers to maintain the craft. And probably just one team of software techies to constantly improve the software, fix the bugs, and fix any reported problems. That team would probably be a company that makes stuff for the military. I can see where a release schedule similar to debian stable. You certainly don't want your craft with bleeding edge software, oh god debian sid is a nightmare.

In the mean time remote control features to override AI would definitely be kept for reasons when the time arises to need to do remote control.

[General Battuta]

I have to say that I found Spicious' argument pretty compelling, ngtm1r. Given the prevalence of computers on fighters (or FS ships), it doesn't seem like there's really all that huge a difference.

Plus, heck, I think everyone agrees today that unmanned aerial combat is the future of aerial warfare, just because machines are so much less fragile and it takes away the mass requirement of a life-support system. That would go triply for space warfare.

[Stormkeeper]

*snip*

*snip*

It's all fine and dandy up until a surgical strike takes down your control centre, or the enemy starts filling the sky with EMP blasts.

[Spicious]

Hence the AI rather than remote control (which of course has many other weaknesses).
EMP is overrated and would likely have the same effect on piloted ships, whatever that effect may be.

[Stormkeeper]

Actually, you just have to keep your own fly boys out of the skies or at least, bait them into range of EMP battery, if they're using remote control, a signal disruptor would do fine.

For AI, I'd say ... create a system disruption field, and activate it once the drones are in your target area, and make sure your fly boys have bugged out.

And make sure your ejection seats work, just in case.

[SPARTAN-367]

Might not be a good title, but how much do we know in real life about the universe, that can proove FreeSpace as totally impossible?

Ship speed: as not to need to resuply so often, and due to subspace, it isn't needed very high.

FTL travel: there is this thing called wormholes here, being researched. But who's to say that something like subspace can't exist ?

Shivans and Vasudans: it's impossible to find any life outside our Solar system with out current tech... And compared to them too. Who's to say that they DON'T or DO exist? We may never know.

Etc.

Might have played too much FS2 for starting this kind of topic, but what the heck. Post your opinions wheter you think that something like FS2 is possible in real life.

P.S. If I get flamed, I'm removing this post and pretending this never happened.   

I know that you won't hear sounds in space.
I know also that if your going in one direction with your ship and you turn, it will take time to adjust due to inertia. Sorta like in the game Allegiance, if any of you played it.
I do think there are other races in the galaxy, being the only ones is too good to be true. Freespace as a game gives a good message, because it shows how Humans have to stick together because it ain't as pretty as we think out there.

[General Battuta]

Actually, you just have to keep your own fly boys out of the skies or at least, bait them into range of EMP battery, if they're using remote control, a signal disruptor would do fine.

For AI, I'd say ... create a system disruption field, and activate it once the drones are in your target area, and make sure your fly boys have bugged out.

And make sure your ejection seats work, just in case.

Wait...how would any of these work differently on unmanned ships than on piloted ships? They're all totally dependent on electronics.

Also, EMP in space is overrated.

[S-99]

*snip*

It's all fine and dandy up until a surgical strike takes down your control centre, or the enemy starts filling the sky with EMP blasts.

Do you know  how far away the control centers actually can be? In arizona there's people piloting drones in iraq and afghanistan. Yes start filling the skys with emp blasts. Why don't we fill the skys with lots of missiles and bullets as well. Those take down fighters too. Emp blasts will also make a human piloted craft go crashing into the ground also. There's no point in mentioning emp blasts really.

Drones can control themselves, be controlled by humans via satellite/wireless..whatever. If anyone says that updating a drones software is a task so mighty to complete it wouldn't be worth having drones. How hard is it really to setup a server for drones to update from automatically? How hard is it to do that with computers?

Drones are great, their self contained, can be piloted by humans from a great distance away, and it takes actual humans away from the danger.

What should i care about saying any of this. Someone's just going to tear it apart anyway. Who really actually cares about thinking of the difficulties of actually hacking a drone in here besides the sheer possibility of it? Someone could hack it...lets not make drones. Someone could hack it...let's not use the internet.

The best one i thought was "emp's can take it down...lets not make drones". Followed by my "bullets and missiles can take down drones too". This thread has some funky logic. Just because you can perform a surgical strike at a control center, just the possibility of it doesn't mean it's easy **** to do stormkeeper...all for not making drones as well. You'd need lots and lots of intel, lots of fake passports, getting into another country, know the locations of stuff, how to get in, which people to talk to, which people to kill...etc. Go ahead and do a surgical strike at my control center, i've definitely got multiple redundant ones. Better just sticking with emp's. Even still, the army is working at shielding craft from the affects of emp's.

For every possibility there is a counter-possibility/solution/correction.

[Snail]

Whatever the answer is, Drones weren't used in FreeSpace in any known combat situation, so there was probably a very important reason like, "they can be hacked"

[ShadowGorrath]

There were drones in training. But it appears they are inneffective.

[Snail]

Yeah, another possible reason why they weren't used in combat.

[Kie99]

Pretty sure there were no drones used in training, they were just simulations.