Sathrai
No Quarter.
Imperial Republic Of the North
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Posted - 2008.11.08 04:46:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Silver Night
Edited by: Silver Night on 07/11/2008 05:32:58
Yes, though if you read it, it mentions that it makes it so the podder can do the job of dozens of people. Out of thousands on a battleship crew for example.
Edit: Relevant passage from JWG:
""Thank you, captain, I was coming to that. As I said, the captain acts as the central unit in a highly advanced computer. This role allows him to access and evaluate data at extreme pace. He can easily handle the jobs it takes 5 or 10 people to do normally."
Correct. The pod pilot replaces the bridge crew, creating a centralized & consolidated 3CI management centre. Maneuvers that would previously take the actions of a half-dozen officers working in concert now can be managed by one individual who has access to every scrap of information available about their vessel. On most frigates there is only the bridge crew as the ship is small enough for everything to be managed centrally, but this is impossible on larger ships, and thus there are crews.
Robotics can alleviate some of the need for crews, but you're still going to need robotics maintenance crews at the very least - not to mention that in the world of EVE, providing wages, food and boarding for a trained gunner, propulsion tech, shield harmonics specialist, etc. is cheaper than paying for a robotic counterpart and the necessary infrastructure to support that. Manpower, even skilled manpower, is hideously cheap and disposable in the world of EVE - and, when the brass tacks are down, a human is more useful when things go awry (and things often will go awry in combat vessels!) than a machine intelligence of programming-restricted capabilities.
Not to mention the ever-present problem of rogue drones...I am sure there are more than a few captains out there who simply do not trust leaving large chunks of their ship's functionality reliant on machinery that has shown a disturbing tendency to become murderously autonomous with little to no warning.
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