I at least want to do a shakedown run, first. That's when navy engineers get to push ALL the buttons. For starters, the maps are out of date. Everything in the galaxy would have moved too far by now, and almost nothing would be named the same. Let's find some quiet, no-name system with some nickel-iron asteroids no one cares about, then put some of the no doubt impressive gunnery computers to work and sight everything in, to diagnose any potential problems well before we wind up in any real trouble. I want to put my Munitions skill to work checking the available ordnance, and make SURE we're not gonna have some unfortunate chain reaction event because the warheads were out of date or some antimatter/hydrogen mix was 0.0012 angstroms out of alignment. You do NOT mess around with vintage technology. That's why I still have all my fingers.
(There seems to be no objection to warming the ship up a bit)
(2d8)5,6 -2 (below-minimum crew with AI assistance)
What you need to do first is start up the engines via the control station on the main bridge. You've never started up a ship of this magnitude before, but fortunately the AI assistance brings up the checklist quickly and then you go through the list, one step at a time. There's a few quick annotations being made of parts needing minor adjustment, but the AI systems are smooth, flagging everything into a list and continuing the process. And with a bit more checking, you can see that the list is flagged into the automated maintenance systems, and figure out how to access those logs as well, so you can easily see what's broken and what isn't. Overall, things look good and the ship comes to full life.
The rest of the startup goes smoothly, and the main bridge lights come on for the first time in who knows how long. It's still a bit icky, as you can see bits of preservation gel stuck in various corners, having not yet been purged by the life support system. Still, the remains should evaporate in the next day or so.
(2d8)1,2 +3 (Munitions specialty) -2 (below-minimum crew with AI assistance.)
After this you move on to examining the magazines. You could look at the inventory before, but couldn't actually access the magazines themselves. They were supposedly empty, but.. well, far better to see it than believe it.
Fortunately, they are empty. At least the main bomb magazines are, for the great siege guns. This would be where the most destructive ordinance on the ship would be carried.
The cameras inside their space are in working order and show each bomb rack to be empty. Same with the manufacturing areas. No stray ordinance, no stray components, and the robots move on your orders. Currently, you don't have any raw materials to make any bombs and test the systems themselves, but the siege guns test okay even if you can't properly test-fire them.
reclusive prompt engineer
with these interests and skills,
Specialty (primary): Diplomacy
Specialty (secondaries): Sensors, Engineering
I'ma get to know this AI system, what it can and can't do. If it's an LLM type or something along those lines but more advanced, I'ma start building my sense of its 'personality', it's core programming and how flexible that is, what is likely to help trigger it towards more or less stability. Get a sense of whatever biases it has, how it ranks priorities when those are competing factors with each other, how it handles conflicting instructions, conflicting data, and other types of ambiguity.
I'll also start looking at how it can help me summarize and understand those notes, preparing for whatever we decide to do, whenever.
Research (2d8) 3,2 +0 (no research skill) -2 (below-minimum crew with AI assistance.)
Diplomacy (2d8) 4,1 +3 (diplomacy skill) -2 (below-minimum crew with AI assistance.)
You know the basics of ship AIs. In general, they are to provide a heavy amount of automation assistance for the crew, supporting actions by the commanders and crew. They're very complicated, and not really things you can poke about with, unless you're a true AI specialist, and you're not sure there is a person in the galaxy who is a top-grade AI specialist anymore. Modern ship AIs are just basic packages cloned over from previous packages made decades ago, spun off for each new system being put together. Made by the numbers, not optimized for each ship.
This one is too complex for you to learn anything about how it works. The equipment looks normal enough, but you don't learn anything you didn't learn from the initial observation.
That said, they are smart enough to question, and you can probe what it needs and what it feels like.. this is a much bigger system than the ordinary line of rather dumb ship AIs, so it should be much more of a person. Some probing later, and you find a station to access it's basic personality, so you can talk to it.
In general, it is a warship. It understands that there are three key priorities for it. It wants to conduct the missions given to it by its commanders, protect the ship (Including crew as well as the machinery and systems), and a more vague one to 'be the ship'. This basically means it wants the systems to be intact, and although it'll allow modifications and upgrades, it very much wants to be a space cruiser, not a jump relay or a space station, and it wants to help its crew and commanders use it to the best of its ability.. as a space cruiser.
In general, it will do the missions, and it will take actions needed to save the ship and the crew without orders, but it does seem to understand that it's a warship, and that damage and destruction is a thing that can happen to it. As it to do something risky and it'll do it, but will try to do it in the safest and most effective way possible.
Conflicts and such.. well, you can't figure it out. You know it has ways to resolve that, as it's deeply linked to damage control and engineering systems, but there's too much to go into that now.
One thing you do find out. It wants a name. It's been mothballed long enough that it's expecting to be renamed upon waking up again, and at some point
You should come up with a name for the ship.The research notes are written in what might as well be a foreign language for you. The AI keeps suggesting basic learning and training modules, which will take weeks, months, or years to learn enough of them to read even the most basic. They seem like a mystery to be unlocked by someone who isn't you.
To orient ourselves spatially a bit, could we get something of a map? Can be in text form if it's easier, just to know what our nearest points of interest are. Right now we are in the boonies, correct? Any stellar phenomena nearby we could start harvesting with our fancy new toys?
How does an FTL jump work, in general? We chart a course from anywhere to anywhere, or are there specific lanes we have to travel along? Do we still travel physically or is it more like a teleport?
Name: Zakharov Gagarin.
Additional details: Eternally curious, wishing to see the cosmos and uncover its many secrets.
Specialty: Research
Secondaries: Engineering, Piloting
For a FTL jump you can chart a course from anywhere to anywhere. A very low-end ship will use tables of safe jumps and jump settings, but even modern warships are capable enough in terms of navigation to plot their own routes from place to place. For this ship, any normal jump should be able to be plotted without difficulty, even with nearly zero crew, due to you having a functional AI system. Very difficult jumps like ones into orbit of a black hole, or ones close to a supernova, are more difficult and you might not want to do them until you have this ship properly crewed. Kaitaryn is a proper pilot and should help a lot.
In general, you can't jump from a place too near to a moon, planet, or star. A large mass in general. You also can't jump to one of those, a planet, moon, or star. They are also not perfectly accurate, so you want to jump well away from stations and such to limit risk of a collision. They're also not accurate enough to intentionally create a collision, should that be your goal.
As for the area around here..
You are near a large recent supernova, exploring its remnants. Your ship is near an unnamed brown dwarf, nowhere in particular. In general, you can separate local space into a few areas.
Inner-Ring systems. These were extremely close to the supernova and were bathed in truly ridiculous amounts of radiation. It'll be very difficult to jump here, but if you go there you will see things that nobody has ever seen before, as modern ships do not have the shielding to survive in this region, and the supernova in question was caused as a weapon of war.
Mid-Ring systems. These were where you were trawling for salvage. They were far enough away from the supernova to have some things survive, but close enough so that there is nothing living here. There is enough radiation here to cause damage, but your salvage ship has upgraded shields and a proper pilot, so you could handle it.
Outer-Ring systems. These were less damaged by the supernova, and have been picked over by many people already. There are even some people living here. Pirates, hiding away. Adventurers, explorers, salvagers, colonizers, and occasional military patrols blow through this area. There aren't many political organizations in here, as this is 'new' territory, that has only been safe to travel in for the last few decades, and claims have not been settled for a long time.
You can also leave the immediate vicinity, into the rest of the galaxy at large. Usually you do a trip outside the supernovae rings when you are selling salvage and picking up fresh supplies.
The supernova system itself is unreachable, and likely will be unreachable for quite some time to come. Well.. maybe not for this ship, but..
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Topic: You are the crew of a Remnant Battleship. (Read 4242 times)