[gurps] Failing autopilots and RVO

[Hal]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: gurpsnet-l-bounces at sjgames.com 
> [mailto:gurpsnet-l-bounces at sjgames.com] On Behalf Of Troy Guffey
> Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009 7:14 AM
> To: The GURPSnet mailing list
> Subject: [gurps] Failing autopilots and RVO
> 
> -------------------------------------------------
> From: "Knapp" <magick.crow at gmail.com>
> 
> > In what way is a routine operation different from an emergency one?
> > Plane companies have records of what goes wrong and how often. They 
> > can program for this just as well as anything else. On top 
> of that the 
> > computer can react faster and will never make a mistake with good 
> > programming. Also the computer might have data that a pilot 
> could lot 
> > get quickly enough in an emergency like air pressure over the wing, 
> > material stresses and other subtle factors of flight. Did 
> you look at 
> > just how much ground info that robot spy plane can gather? 
> I am sure 
> > it could be programmed to use that for a very nice ditching. This 
> > plane could take off, fly, land and taxi 10 years ago!
> 
> 
> Even if an autopilot *has* been programmed to respond to all 
> previous emergencies, vehicles will still find new ways to go 
> wrong that require genuine *creativity* to handle.  There is 
> no possible way to program *every* possible emergency.
> 
> obGURPS:  Does the Routine Vehicle Operation program include 
> things like "if both wings are blown off and the fuel is on 
> fire, and the megaton nuke missile armed but failed to release"?  :-)

One way of looking at this is simply this...

If the robotic's program value is listed as being a 17, it is programmed to
handle just about everything that is possible - except the truly unexpected.
When rolling to see if one's "skill is up to the task", one is really saying
that the circumstances involved at that precise moment are either within
parameters of the programmer's abilities, or the circumstances are outside
of what the programmers provided.

Thus, a skill 16 program will generally handle 98.1% of the problems that
may arise.  It just happens that the remaining 1.9% of the times, the
program just can't handle anything that was envisioned by the programmers -
and the "in case of event not being covered, try best likely course of
action" just can't handle it.

It appears that most of the programs in GURPS 4e tend to cluster around the
skill value of 12 or so - which means that ths software tends to be able to
handle roughly 74% of the situations.  When you roll dice against the
computer's skill - you're essentially asking "Are the problems involved
inside, or outside the programs parameters".  When you roll a 13+, the
answer is "Yes, the problem lies outside the program's parameters".  When
you roll a 17 or 18, you're saying in effect "this is outside of the
programmer's expertise or, the program itself contained a bug in it that did
not execute the intent of the programmers, but followed the wrong track"

Just one way of looking at it.  ;)