Saronsen's eyes flick back and forth as the members of this gathering speak to each other, hands drumming on the table before him as he sits impatiently, left leg shaking up and down. He waits until there's a few seconds of silence, and begins to speak up once more.
"There's a solution for.. some of these problems." He looks around slightly wide-eyed at the group. "Automation. It's expensive, the software development is difficult;" Saronsen sits up straight, briefly making himself appear more important. "But it greatly cuts down on the crews needed for construction, both of the Shipyard and the vessels, and can effectively half the crew sizes needed for capital craft. In fact.." He makes a quiet throat-clearing sound once more. "I wager we'd be able to mass-produce smaller craft at the fraction of the cost needed with manual labor. Discounting the upfront investment, of course." He turns his gaze towards Deacon briefly. "On the subject of Carrier operations, there has been a surge of automated strike craft in the markets. Something to consider." The specialist looks back towards the ranking members of the Natio. "And I recall something about.. artificial intelligence?"
Kane lifted his head slightly and saw scenes from memories burned into his brain a decade ago. "Yes, we had a series of... mildly strong AI drones once upon a time. Unfortunately they could be unpredictable, so the ones that lasted more than the initial few years were both too sapient to just shut down and too enthusiastic about murder for anyone to consider attempting it anyways."
VR-02.
"Semi-strong artificial intelligence is a lot more manageable these days," Clemens chimed in, clearly enthused by the idea. "Even if we don't have any personality gestalts we can grow one fairly easily. An AI strong enough to do general tasks would be able to cut down the body requirements to complete the underway routines of the crews of any ships we installed it in, and it would have no issues with coordinating systems during combat. You'd still need extended maintenance crew, damage control teams, emergency crew in case the AI dies, and obviously the bridge officers, but I reckon you could run a battleship with 20 officers and 300 enlisted instead of 50 and 700 respectively."
Kane remembered 02's appreciation for limericks, and finding new and complex ways to tell people off with them.
"If we could make the construction less painful, possibly by reusing parts, then that solves both of our potential issues right there. Assuming our AI actually works, we could install it on smaller warships as well."
He thought of the Broadsword that was 02's original host body. The ship was long gone now. And 02, well...
"As I recall, the Raiders' experimentation in semi-strong artificial intelligence used Ageira quantum neural processing technology that fell off the back of a truck. It's like the off-the-record runs of guns that flow out of some of Ageira's factories, but for AI brains. Which, admittedly, is pretty terrifying, but the point is that we could probably get a hold of some q-blocks that ran through an actual quality control pass, an AI base, and start growing one as early as tomorrow. Especially if we had something to work off." She thought for a moment, and then looked over in the direction of the Minister of Intelligence. "Whatever happened to our happy little killbot, V?"
Great, Kane thought. There's going to be a defective AI brain with the personality of a serial killer running my flagship.
Victor glanced toward the doorway, still half expecting VR-02 to show up again. "Officially, deactivated. Unofficially, we let him loose on a transport into the Gallic core worlds as a diversion to cover our escape from Kansas. We lost his signal around five months after our departure. We do have backups of the core programming, though without the... experience-based adaptations. Likely for the best, Proteus was perhaps a bit too... independent for this project."
Jones leaned forward in his chair. "I'm not letting that crazy bastard or any derivative thereof anywhere near my team," he said. Not angry, but clearly not passive with his objections.
"An intelligence without the same experiences isn't the same entity. Philosophy aside, the AI will be reconfigured for the different operations profile. Less capable of independent murder."
Harold nodded. "So he won't really remember us, or at least not enough to remember he used to be a mildly deranged killbot. I guess that's better than having to start from a blank slate, both personality-wise and time-wise. Between Victor, Saronsen, and some presumably Zoner-sourced q-blocks, we can make that happen sooner rather than later. Doesn't solve the problem that even if we do grow ourselves a new 02, we don't have a ship to put him."
"Right, so that's next on our agenda," Florence began. "My initial thought based on previous discussion is doing what we always do: rebuild some wreck we've got. The reconstruction of the Black Cloud II isn't going well, but that's a Rheinland problem, not an Octavarium problem. We rebuilt the Metropolis from nothing but the hab and core sections, for fuck sakes. We can slam two halves of a battleship together as long as they look close enough, armour them up, pressurize the amalgam, bolt some turrets on, and fire it up. No problem."
She paused for a minute to bring up a model of a visibly older and visibly damaged Sarissa-class battleship. "Last known position of the Sarissa Mk I-class VCS Systematic Chaos was Omega-3, somewhere near the corona. It was missing one of the secondary thrust nodes in the engine array, there was a hole punched in the midsection lengthwise from razor damage, and the forward-most fifth of the hull was missing due to a ramming manoeuvre initiated within the first few minutes of the Battle of Freeport One. It's frankly a miracle anyone made it off that ship alive." She looked up. "Victor, any idea if that's accurate? If so, that will at the very least decrease our turnaround time on one option."
Victor shook his head. "The Battle of Freeport 1? Kane, that was seven years ago. The odds of the Junkers not already scrapping what remained of it within three months are negligible at best, and if they didn't, the Hessians, Corsairs, and Coalition all would've had a similar interest in the thing. Even if it escaped the notice of all those groups, that still leaves drifting asteroid impacts and the likelihood of the ship finishing its path into the corona and melting down to slag."
"So what you're saying," Darren replied, "is that it doesn't look good."
So far, John Riley had been keeping quiet. He was a veteran shipmaster, and knew almost every major type of merchant vessel from stem to stern. When it came to military capital ship design, however, he was a bit out of his depth. As the conversation had yet to touch on logistics, he'd had little to contribute. Still, an idea came to mind. He cleared his throat and spoke up.
"If I may, Ms. Deacon's suggestion of converting a Pilgrim-class liner has potential. I would say that there's potential in the more recent Oasis-class liner as well. Both are robust, well engineered designs well appointed with plenty of interior space for upgraded equipment and reinforced hull plating as well as generous docking bays for carrier operations."
John paused for a moment.
"One important thing to consider, however. Whether we convert a merchantman, rebuild an old wreck, or build from scratch, we're going to run into the same problem. The lack of shipyard facilities will hamper our ability to start such an ambitious project. Even if we had the necessary facilities, it would still take time to bring the project to fruition, both for construction and the necessary R&D. Time we may not have.
This project is indeed worth pursuing, but while it's in progress, we need something more immediate. As I'm sure you're all aware, the Republic of Liberty has instituted a lend-lease program to send Libertonian military hardware, including ships, to Her Majesty's Armed Forces. As co-belligerents in the war against Gallia, perhaps we should consider acquiring one of their battlecruisers or carriers until our own ships are ready for service. I wouldn't suggest this as a long-term solution, however, as it would leave us beholden to the Libertonian Government for spare parts."