Bots

Called 'Drone Ships' in other galaxies or environments, Slaves are remotely-directed ships in Star Sonata. A player can out fit his slave with gear, equip a controlbot, and then give it orders.

Slave ships can be identified by the 'S' and a number prefix on the ship name. For example, a slave might be named TS165SomeName or CS3SomeName. The T indicates that the slave is a Trading slave, and the C indicates that it is a Combat slave.

How to Make a Slave

Temporary note: Slaves do not need stasis generators.

In order to use a slave, you must first have the Remote Control skill equal to the tech of the ship you want to slave. For example, if you want to slave a hotrod, you need Remote Control 5. Tech 0 ships require Remote Control 1.

Slaves are just like a normal ship. Slaves need a Shield, an Energy, an Engine and Radar to be useful, in addition to the Controlbot. Once outfitted with a Controlbot, they become remotely controllable, and thus slaves. The minimum requirement to make a slave is an Engine and a Controlbot

There are now 2 distinct types of controlbots, trading controlbots, and combat controlbots. Trading slaves can trade commodities at bases, whereas combat slaves cannot trade, but instead fight.

Once the Controlbot is activated, and if the other major components are activated, the slave ship will leave the dock and wait for the player ship to also leave the spacebase. Then it can be selected and given commands.

In short:

1. outfit your slave ship
2. activate the Controlbot last
3. un-dock to cause it to appear
4. issue some orders:
   1. select the slave and hit [X] to bring up a menu
   2. choose to Edit Orders, and use the interface to lay in some orders
   3. hit [X] again to bring the menu back
   4. choose Follow Orders
5. the slave will execute all its orders from the top down, and repeat them forever.

Slaves used in this capacity will most often be given repeating trade missions, so as to re-supply stations or just make the player some money.

More Than Just Pack-Mules

Instead of issuing a set of orders, a player can also choose to have a slave ship guard another object of an area, for instance, or just follow the player around.