Shaalira D'arc
   |
Posted - 2010.10.01 17:53:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Toshiro Greyhawk
snip
[disclaimer] This is my own speculation [/disclaimer]
Pods are a ship in their own right - they're capable of inserting into and leaving other ships nearly instantaneously. It is this process of insertion, integration, and escape that would normally leave the pilot 'smeared against the bulkheads.' Without the gel, the pilot would be crushed by the inertia of shooting out of an exploding ship. Pod technology allows the pilot to escape that vessel and 'reship,' a valuable tactic that more traditional command crews cannot replicate. Since the ship's non-capsuleer crew does not do any of this, they do not have to be in pods.
Aside: Capsuleer frigates do not require non-capsuleer crews because of their simplicity. This may also allow capsuleer frigates more capacity for agility and extreme speeds than their non-capsuleer counterparts. Tight maneuvers performed by capsuleer 'skirmisher' pilots would be a death sentence to a traditional crew flying a frigate. Larger ships fitted to fly at speeds comparable to a frigate could have the room to sport inertal dampeners for the non-capsuleer crews and, in any case, do not have the agility to change vector as dramatically as a frigate.
Why use Pod Pilots? And why use regular crews alongside Pod Pilots?
Aside from the advantages of survivability and adaptability outlined above, pod pilots can replace the command center of a ship. Instead of a bridge module where you have a ship captain coordinating various officers, listening to reports, delegating authority, and making decisions, you have a single literal nervous center. The benefits in efficieny and response-time (though perhaps not judgment) are obvious.
On larger ships, a bridge module is insufficient for controlling all of the ship's functions. The crew hierarchy continues to exist in these vessels, except the pod pilot replaces the higher-level officers on the top of the pyramid. The pod pilot directly controls functions that require immediate response time, such as fight path, desired speed, module activations, and targeting solutions. The rest of the crew receive the orders as they would from a traditional bridge and calibrate the ship systems to provide the desired output.
Because these lesser roles can be made as reliable as automation through redundancy, training, and AI backups, it's not necessary to have a pod pilot perform these functions. A traditional human crew is used because it's more cost-efficient.
Pod pilots require many years of training and expensive implants. Some pilots may also be psychologically or genetically incompatible with the process of becoming a pod pilot, further limiting the number of candidates. Therefore, a traditional human crew is used for the rote functions. Given the countless billions which comprise empire populations, there is a near-endless pool of qualified technicians willing to work on the high-risk jobs in a capsuleer vessel.
What's Next?
It's possible that further efficiency gains may be made by using several pods in a hierarchy instead of a pod commanding a traditional crew. With the proliferation of the larger (and expensive) ship types, it may be cost-effective to have several pod pilots operating the vessel, instead of one pilot atop a pyramid of thousands and thousands of individual crew members.
The limits of what a pod pilot can directly control illustrate the limits of the human brain, however improved through state-of-the-art implants and training. Experiments may be underway to genetically engineer better brains, or fuse several brains into a multiple processor core setup.
Continuing evolution of rogue drones, some the size of battleships, may eventually provide a purely AI-based competitor to the pod pilot.
|