You know, I've had this idea for quite a while - and I haven't seen it in use anywhere yet. Of course, that doesn't mean someone else hasn't had the same idea and written it down somewhere, but I sure don't know about it.
Anyway - you know how all small fighting crafts are manned? Why is that so? Wouldn't it be much better if the pilots were doing their piloting from a nearby base or even the mother ship? I mean, they'd have a good chance of not getting shot down. Plus, if their crafts get shot, they could launch another one without any human losses. That also allows for gambits - sacrificing a couple of unmanned fighting vessels in order to do a lot of damage.
Limited range. The problem is that you need FTL communication and the only way that exist is with drones or craft that are FTL capable. Even the moon, only about 400,000 Kilometers away is about 2.6 seconds round trip for a radio wave or light beam. That is a very slow response time.
This doesn't mean that you can't have a manned mother ship and a couple dozen drones controlled from it.
Unmanned craft, even those controllers by operators on a mother ship would be largely run by computer AI. Computers don't think like people do, programmed tactics could be discovered by the enemy and used against them. They could potentially malfunction and act or react too quickly, too slowly, not at all or in error. Control could be overridden by enemy hackers, your ship is now their. In TFS fighters are often light minutes/hours away from their mother ship, too far to monitor/ control. Pilots have experence and can make gut decisions, and have crazy nicknames.
and have crazy nicknames.
Or crazy piloting styles... Right, got it. 🙂
