Welcome to the Firestalker Drones ™ recruitment/feedback/update thread. Brought to you by Prosper Industries, these drones are an, I hope, interesting twist and approach to non-human but also not quite AI roleplay. We have seen our fair share of non-human roleplay and I am sad to say, I have personally grown rather tired of the whole asterisk-ridden representation of what is considered ''non-human-speech'' in these encounters and the sheer lack of fantasy and imagination in the characters themselves.
I have personally always found AI roleplay potentially fun, because you are playing an entity with a consciousness and rationalization based on math, which can be unemphatic and brutal at times. An AI would easily save a civillian transport from a pirate, then destroy the damaged ship, because the probability of it making to the nearest dock was too low and a quick death for all passengers onboard would be more humane. However, the level of AI roleplay on Discovery tends to boil down to what we have by now called ''toaster speech'' and this in by itself is the very source of the first writeup of the Firestalker Drones, back in early 2010s.
The Firestalker Drones are based on the notion that playing a completely static, pre-determined character with absolutely no input on your part as a player might be a fun experience.
At this point in time, the Firestalker Drones ™ is a brand used by the drone control software created and distributed by Prosper Industries ™ and does not imply that the ship loadouts must contain these weapons.
Technical Information
Faction ID: Freelancer ID
Faction IFF: Freelancer / None
Faction Diplomacy: None*
Allowed Ships: Generic Civilian
Allowed Loadouts: See Below
Faction Recruitment: Closed - Invite Only
Naming Convention: Firestalker.Drone-XXX (or XX[Y] for non-SHF models)
Behavior and Roleplay
The player's character is one of the many Firestalker Drone models, produced and operated by Prosper Industries. A drone is exactly what you think it is - a completely automated weapon with [HIGHLY] basic actions. Your overall purpose when flying a drone from an RP standpoint is to:
*Seek out potential patrons.
*Shoot/Heal/Escort Target/Execute Command
*Get Paid.
One of the most defining points is that the group is quasi-lawful. This means that you can be hired by anyone at any point for any job. And you, as per the faction rules, must accept the [FIRST] offer, rather than the best offer, or the offer that is more likely to allow you to succeed. If a group of five pirates, all flying bombers is staring down a single navy officer and he manages to hire you first - you must accept, no excuses. If someone requests you to shoot at another drone - accept the contract. Someone pays you to fly into the sun - well, I hope you have packed your sunscreen, mate. This is the unique beauty of playing a character that has no free will, a complete machine. You have no agency in trying to obtain the best outcome for you as a player. You'd like to win a PvP fight, but you won't get to, if your patron hasn't scanned your equipment and has decided to send your spatial to deal with a K'Hara dreadnaught with two Maxims equipped.
Drones aren't as good as trained military pilots. Do not be afraid to die horribly. Or even on purpose for that matter.
The actual verbal roleplay is limited intentionally. As a completely automated drone, you have the ability to recognize target names and commands such as to engage, follow, form up,
disengage and so on. The short version of the Drone Dictionary™ is found below:
[BEEP] - Used for standard encounters or to acknowledge the presence of a player. Neutral in its usage. Also may imply telemetry between multiple drones. [☐☐☐☐] - Ditto as above, an acknowledgement of a player's presence or a response to player roleplay. Used in cases, where the drone is addressed, but no specific command is being inputted. [___ Combat drone for Hire] - Your standard go-to roleplay for most cases. Repeatable until someone hires you or shoots you to shut you up. The blank spot can be tailored to specify the type of drone that you are flying. [Error: Unknown Command] - Used to respond to ANY player roleplay directed at you that does not include a valid command. Also is used in the cases, where the command is not specific - a.i. the target name is not specified. [Please enter target name and bounty amount] - Usually following after the previous command. This tends to quickly make people realize what you are and what you do. It should be noted that you must be paid BEFORE you execute the task. If the player does not transfer the money, you can remind them by giving another line such as [Awaiting payment]. If the contract issuer is under heavy fire and is incapable of typing, you can choose to accept the contract as delayed payment, but must bill them on the forums later on if they do not pay you. [Target Confirmed]+[Executing Contract] - Pew Pew, etc. [Contract completed] - Self explenatory. [Error: Already on Contract] - In the case where a player has issued (and paid) for a command to, say, follow them - if they suddenly order you to attack, they must issue it as a new contract. They must cancel the current command and input the new one. Be careful though, as once they cancel your previous contract, you can once more be hired by anyone - including their target. [Contract Canceled] - Players cannot issue more than one command to your drone without proceeding with another payment (minimum 1m). If a player tells you to follow them around, they will need to cancel your ongoing contract in order to order you to attack a target. The moment your contract is canceled, you can be hired by anyone again - even the potential target itself. [Task requires prepayment] - Any escorting duties, etc should be charged beforehand.
Faction members are expected to stick with as limited of verbal roleplay as possible and resort to non-standard writing as little as possible.
Drone hiring specifics and quirks
Being that the drones are depicted as very limited in terms of understanding verbal commands, there are certain limitations as to what a character can do. Or to be more precise, a limit to what the player character can say in order for the Drone to understand. For most roleplay encounters, the drones will understand and accept contracts based on three main orders - ''Follow'' a target, ''Attack/Engage'' a target, "Move" to a position that is within the immediate area/system. It should be noted that all of these rules are still somewhat flexible within the context of the situation itself. As long as the order is clear enough, your drone will interpret it as such.
Due to certain issues that are specific to on-the-spot hiring, the drones will not accept contracts without the contract issuer in scanning distance and, in specific cases, without the target being in view for attack orders. It should also be noted that drones can only be contracted once they have stated so. Usually a drone will issue two lines - one stating its type ''____ drone for hire'' and the second line being a request to "Please specify target name and bounty amount" and will accept contract requests only after these two lines are posted.
That being said, one of the more specific quirks is how the drones treat every single order as its own contract. Needing to be paid to execute the order is one thing, but a drone that is told to follow a ship will do just that. Assigning a drone to follow a, for example, Liberty Navy ship will simply mean that if the Navy ship encounters and engages a hostile, the drone will impotently continue following their assigned target, usually meaning that it will eat every single mine the Navy ship drops during the combat. Their previous order must be canceled and, for them to engage the target, the Drone must be instructed with a ''target name and bounty amount'' as already mentioned before.
This specifics will often lead to amusing results.
Faction Rules
The faction has an invite-only recruitment and lacks a designated recruitment thread. That being said, you may request membership by PMing this account. Bear in mind that we have a strict set of faction rules that all members need to follow to the latter. By joining the Firestalker Drones, you agree to obey all of the following rules.
1. Loadout Rules:
Your ship choice is limited to Civilian ships and gear. While the old Firestalkers exclusively used the Spatial SHF, you are welcome to adapt any Civilian Generic ship that suits your needs - this includes House Civilian ships. Faction tech in terms of ships and guns are is forbidden. You must appear as neutral as possible.
Your ID must be Freelancer. You may or may not have an IFF.
If your ship allows for double missiles/torpedoes, then your loadout must contain two identical ''types'' of said weapon. A supernova antimatter cannon can be supplemented by an Asuras as they are the same ''type'' of energy based torpedo.
In the case where you would be giving up a Cruise Disruptor, do not worry as you meant to be hired on the spot.
2. Upon stating you are available for hire, you are obligated to accept the first valid offer, no matter the circumstances. Due to fairplay reasons, you need to issue a statement that you are for hire, before being able to confirm such requests. This is to allow both sides of a conflict to react to your presence and intentions.
3. You are responsible for making sure that the engagement falls within the server rules. You cannot be hired to engage someone by generic IDs. You cannot be hired to kill transports without a demand issued by your hirerer and declined by the target. You may not be paid any less than a minimum of 1 000 000 to engage another player as per the current rules.
4. By joining the Firestalker Drones, you are obliged to follow our naming convention and roleplay convention. For the examples, please read the text above as well as the second post in this thread for the naming guidelines. Due to the repeated nature of the text you will be using, we highly suggest using a macro for them or sacrificing enough [CATS] at Alley's altar for Setmsg to come back.
Recruitment
Due to the type of gameplay involved the Firestalker Drones has a closed-recruitment policy. Inquire the forum account @Firestalker Drones for membership.
The Firestalker Drones™ software has been introduced and passed testing on most of the CTE line of ships. Many of these drones posses unique code in order to improve their capabilities on any given individual craft and installation is done depending on costumer feedback as well as reclaimed data of drone operation and success rate. Below are some, but not all of the available commercially approved drones.
Experiments on other ship hulls are always in progress and will often be sighted out and about for field testing purposes. While not all of them will pass on to commercial production, their existence alone means that they were deemed to be ''good enough'' to be built in the first place.
"Vanila Firestalker" Primary Support Drone
Sometimes also referred to as ''Type 0'' and built on the E78-12 chassis, this is the main fleet vehicle of Prosper Industries. This model is built and equipped for front-line engagements against both snubcraft as well as larger ships, depending on loadouts. Interceptor variants are often equipped by dual gatling uplinks to gun down fleeing targets, while mini-razor variants exist to take out snubs that are much less prone to watch their surroundings. Others may come with missile systems, perfect for dealing with targets that lack countermeasures. The name of the drone comes from the fact that these were the first type of combat models, long before the foundation of the Prosper Industries™. This model of Drone is popular to this day and still widely used despite its infamous weakness to bombers, gunbots as well as cruisers that are equipped with Light Mortar loadouts.
Built by the Prosper Industries™ Bretonian Wing, the Type D is a purpose built medium support drone. This variant is a favorite for traveling trade ships, who can count on the drone to keep them safe against individual threats. The unit's main streanth as the name implies, is the amount of EMP damage it can apply to a single target, often enough to completely keep an enemy bomber drained of their powercore, severely reducing their damage output against friendly targets. This same reason is favored by bomber pilots to leave deshielding to the drone. Sometimes hired by the Bounty Hunters Guild, the Type D secondary role is that of an interceptor, capable of traveling at a maximum cruise speed of 400m/s. Standard units come equipped with a Maxim grade chaingun and the more costly models even come equipped with Cloak Disruptors.
As the name implies, the Type R was created as a support drone for capital vessels. This drone has very little in terms of combat capability, especially against bombers and missile ordinance, but it will keep friendly capital ships from falling apart when there are no obvious areas to perform more in-depth repairs. Note: The ship requires the target's shield generator to be disabled in order to perform repairs at a sufficient rate. As such, the target capital ship should face away from the enemy target with their shield bubble lowered and at sufficient range to allow the drone to repair all incoming damage without interruptions.
A heavier bomber variant of the ''Vanila Firestalker'' drone type. This unit comes equipped with Nova Torpedoes coupled with Incapacitator Torpedoes, or a duo of Supernova and ASURAS. Type B drones with the newly developed bomb variants are still being tested at this point in time.
"Type H" Heavy Combat Drone
Currently the most heavy (and expensive) combat drone model made by Prosper Industries, the Type H is a dangerous opponent to any ship equipped with a cloaking device. Often being shipped with Cloak Disruptors, the drone employs two kinds of missile turrets that cause distress to small targets, while its Cerberus turrets allow it to remain at reasonable range from larger ships. This drone variant sees very little popularity in House space due to its expensiveness to hire, but has gained traction in the Omicrons and Omegas. Due to the expensive nature of the drone, there are only two currently active Type H variants in all of Sirius.
"Type L" Light Combat Drone
Due to manufacturing costs where the software often is more expensive than the ship itself, a Drone type that was specifically designed for mass deployment was created on the 1440AV chassis. While not possessing the forward firepower of conventional VHF class ships, the Type ''L'' makes up for its versatility and ''relatively'' high survivability, especially in large fights. The most popular models come equipped with Gatling cannons for taking out fleeing targets or to deliver a constant stream of damage to the priority target, and Screamer Mines in order to assist against larger vessels. Other models may come with other torpedo or missile setups for assist damage.
Easily the cheapest Drone on the market, the Type 1 is an inexpensive solution for managing missile ordinance in fleet battles. While lacking in any sort of firepower and survivability, the drone is designed to provide a limited amount of capital ships protection from incoming torpedoes and other guided ordinance. Due to emphasis on production costs, any particular drone model may or may not come with armor reinforcement - though some units are reported to wield Screamer mine setups though analytics say that getting the drone within dropping range may prove detrimental to its survival.
"Type J" Hyperspace Drone Platform
Easily the most expensive vessel within the Prosper Industries ™ fleet and a collaboration between the company and its shareholders, the Type J HDP is a combat-ready hyperspace drive platform equipped with the Firestlker Drone software. Equipped with both a Jump Drive series 4 as well as a cloaking device, the HDP's role is to provide relatively cheap jump solutions (10 million per jump) or a non-hostile removal of undesirables via cloak device assisted jump. The drone also sports docking modules.
The Firestalker Drones™ refers to an automation system designed by Daniel Prosper, later founder of Prosper Industries™ and is becoming a popular and very cheap alternative to in-house designed AI within the houses of Sirius.
While often being described as a glorified autopilot, the Firestalker Drone™ software allows ''acceptable'' automation of standard sirian ships for combat, mining and escort services. The hunter wing is currently one of the most popular viariants often found for hire, but the company has made statements that their mining and repair-ship models have been launched for testing as well.
Note: Please read the full manual before hiring a combat drone. Failure to do so may lead to collateral damage that ProsperIndustries™ have no legal obligation to cover in the case of mishandling.
Updated a few of the parts, especially the section regarding hiring. If you wish to accept someone's 0$ bounty to fly into the planet, go ahead, but for shooting people you do need to follow the 1 000 000$ credit minimum and, if you did it right and offered your services in local, it should cover the making-everyone-aware part of the rule.
The first post has been updated.
After a thorough discussion, we have decided that it would be easier to incorporate all of our xxxxxx.Drone- ships under the same name. In other words, the name Firestalker Drone is simply the name of the software used by the automated ships. The reason for this is that we already were bending the name by not enforcing dual-firestalker missile loadouts on our ships. As such, the Medpack.Drone and Mining.Drone ships will be renamed to the same scheme and will be differentiated by their number. The ''vanila'' drones retain the three digit number, while the ''specialized'' versions such as repair ships and such will have dual-digit numbers and a model key in brackets ( Firestalker.Drone-15[M]; Firestalker.Drone-65[D]).
Keep an eye out for an even more lighthearted twist on this faction with our new Drone-A-Friend™ song message courier service, where we will deliver your message with a merry little jingle to your specified target and sing it to them. Even if we must pin them down with CDs to do so.
The Firestalker Drones™ refers to an automation system designed by Daniel Prosper, later founder of Prosper Industries™ and is becoming a popular and very cheap alternative to in-house designed AI within the houses of Sirius.
While often being described as a glorified autopilot, the Firestalker Drone™ software allows ''acceptable'' automation of standard sirian ships for combat, mining and escort services. The hunter wing is currently one of the most popular viariants often found for hire, but the company has made statements that their mining and repair-ship models have been launched for testing as well.
Note: Please read the full manual before hiring a combat drone. Failure to do so may lead to collateral damage that ProsperIndustries™ have no legal obligation to cover in the case of mishandling.
I actually met one of your players in NY a while back, took me a bit of time to figure out what "it" wanted but when I did figured it out, I was gonna hire the drone to cause mischief near Manhattan, unfortunately "it" left before I figured out what to do with it.
The changes are mostly related to the ''Behavior and Roleplay'' section and the descriptions of what certain lines mean, while the newly-added section of ''Drone hiring specifics and quirks'' will specify some of the nuances of hiring a Firestalker Drone.
The Firestalker Drones™ refers to an automation system designed by Daniel Prosper, later founder of Prosper Industries™ and is becoming a popular and very cheap alternative to in-house designed AI within the houses of Sirius.
While often being described as a glorified autopilot, the Firestalker Drone™ software allows ''acceptable'' automation of standard sirian ships for combat, mining and escort services. The hunter wing is currently one of the most popular viariants often found for hire, but the company has made statements that their mining and repair-ship models have been launched for testing as well.
Note: Please read the full manual before hiring a combat drone. Failure to do so may lead to collateral damage that ProsperIndustries™ have no legal obligation to cover in the case of mishandling.
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