During the 21st and 22nd century, Artificial Intelligence technology progress peaked then unexpectedly plateaued before the singularity was reached (to the surprise, relief or despair of humans, depending on their convictions). Way before super-A.I.s assisted the governments in every decision, machines were at the helm of starships.
    Because even when a flesh-and-bone captain is in command, the real heart and soul of a ship is its onboard A.I . Indeed, only a machine can really comprehend and finely control a such complex beast as a spaceship.

    In Ceres, every ship has an A.I . This A.I is defined by the following specs:
    - Name
    - Type
    - XP
    - Age
    - Traumas (% of erratic behavior/ seizure under stress)

    Now, there are quite a few of A.I types in Ceres' universe (the Cataclysm brought back many obsolete types back):

    - Poly-Crystalline/ doped
    - Simili- vegetal
    - Electronic non-sentient
    - Photonic sentient
    - Quantum -interpreted
    - Organic (lower cluster, reptilian, mammalian) , augmented
    - Chimera/ hybrid
    - Amalgamic - inherent sentient
    - Crew gestalt (uses crew interfaced brains to amplify and extend its consciousness)
    - Cyborg (willing/ forced/ enmatrixed)
    - Human Deceased (A.I constructed around the re-built consciousness of a deceased and altered Human)
    - Human pseudo-construct (A.I built around a fake human persona)
    - Self-re-arranging / inner-loop meiotic
    - Fractal metamorphic
    - Pure Quantum/ non-aristotelician
    - Poly-dimensional
    - Time-drifting
    - Across the 'brane
    - Deity (lesser/ full)

    Of course, not all types are available to all factions: the more advanced A.Is will only be found in technologically advanced factions -such as the Hydras. Expect most of the ships to be equipped with old tech or suspiciously patched-together pieces of dead monkeys interfaced with a glitchy quantum computer.

    Then, every AI type has different specs:

    - Intelligence (how fast it reacts to new information)
    - Scanning and Detection modifier
    - Attack modifier
    - Repair modifier
    - Engineering modifier
    - Cyber-warfare offense modifier
    - Cyber-warfare defense modifier
    - Resilience (resistance to shock (massive damage) or nearby death of other cluster AIs)
    - Collateral damage (% chances of death for every crewman if the A.I goes down)
    - Sanity (how stable the basic A.I type is)
    - Uprooting difficulty (how dangerous it is to replace the AI)
   - Cost

    Some AI are slow but resilient, others intelligent but with many weak spots, while some AI can literally see beyond the time horizon (at the expense of mental sanity - like Lovecraft) or be super-intelligent with psychotic characteristics.
    You can train some AI in simulators, while AI of damaged ships may suffer past nightmares or glitches (or post-traumatic disorders). Unloading or expurging a malfunctioning AI of a ship is like brain surgery: it is a complex and costly process and might leave malign residue that might turn the next AI into a monster or a mad AI.

    An AI is made of a core and its system extensions: energy, propulsion, sensor, weapons and bridge. Hacking might break into the extensions, and turn them off or destroy them. Or worse: hacking might allow access to the core of the AI and stun/ take over / wipe out the ships' system in their totality.

     Hello everybody, I am Pavlos Germidis, the designer of Ceres. In this blog, I will try and share with you the thoughts behind the designs of the game -be it ships, weapons, space stations, machine-monsters or just plain meta-trans-humans like you and me.
    This post is about weapons and stuff that goes zapp and boom and <sound effect for space-time shear>. The science in Ceres is both familiar and unfamiliar: this is due to the fact that machines have taken over most of the research over the last decades (or centuries?). It is based on this science that we design the weapons for Ceres.

    Soooo physics have progressed a lot in the last centuries, and the New Einstein (fancy name given to the new Indian super-Artificial Intelligence in Uttar Pradesh Science University) resolved quite a few cosmological mysteries of old. In Ceres we fight with lasers, guns and missiles but also with graviton beams, plasma exhausts and even quantum forces (or weirder devices I came across in my evening conversations with the Mothership -but let's skip that for the moment ;)  ).

    Each ship comes with a given number and size of 'slots' for externally mounted weaponry. The same with the internal weapons (see more about that below). This cannot be changed as basically ships were built around their engine plant and weapons -changing the layout of the weaponry means you have to redesign the whole ship ! What you can do is put any weapon anywhere you like -and there's a lot of possibilities in that department.

    A weapon needs something to lash itself to, and this is a turret. A weapon is contained in the turret, which itself is part of a weapon mount. You can mix and match any of them, as long as the weapon is of the same size as the turret: every item comes in 3 sizes: small, medium and large/ heavy. Of course, should the need arise, you can stick a medium or a small turret on a heavy weapon mount -say you are short of cash and you still need a weapon.