Stopped by after work to get a video, sorry to all the conspiracy theorists. There's a couple of hopeful dating candidates at the end if anyone is interested.

TL;DR: Started experimenting with a $50, 13-year-old "best money can buy" build and a collection of obsolete NVIDIA GPUs to see whether they could run modern LLMs. Ended up building a functioning, locally hosted, voice-controlled AI bridge crew for Star Citizen, with five specialist AI officers coordinated by an executive AI called Riker(I know, but I had to call it something). The next goal is to give each officer independent visual awareness, autonomous decision-making, and the ability to communicate naturally with the captain, commander and each other.

This project started with a simple question: could I make obsolete NVIDIA Kepler GPUs run modern AI models?

Using an ASUS Rampage IV Black Edition, an i7-4960X, and a collection of GTX Titan cards, I eventually got five Kepler GPUs working with legacy CUDA drivers and a patched llama.cpp. Qwen2.5-32B ran at roughly 2.8 tokens per second, which was hardly impressive. But running five independent 7B models produced around 72 tokens per second in aggregate.

That got me thinking. Instead of having five models doing the same thing, why not give each one a job?

And that's how BigBoy Kepler became AI Bridge Crew.

The system consists of five AI specialists: Helm, Tactical, Engineering, Sensors, and Communications. Each handles a specific operational area of a spacecraft, while a separate executive AI coordinates the crew, interprets commands, and manages responses.

I also developed Eyes, a custom python application that observes Star Citizen's HUD and MFDs and extracts live telemetry, including speed, fuel, power allocation, shields, contacts, and ship damage. That information feeds into the crew's operational awareness rather than relying entirely on information invented by the language models.

The system already works. Using push-to-talk, Whisper speech recognition, and Kokoro speech synthesis, I can speak directly to Riker. I can request an all-stations report and receive individual responses from each specialist, followed by Riker's summary. One complete test delivered the first voice response in 6.47 seconds.

Riker also maintains persistent operational information, remembers contracts across restarts, and can retrieve live UEX commodity and trading data. You can ask "Riker. Wheres the best place to buy Gold?" And Riker will answer location and price. Works with items too.

This is just whats been done so far.

The next stage is changing how Eyes works. Rather than simply extracting and interpreting HUD information centrally, Eyes will identify Areas of Interest and send the relevant images directly to individual specialists. Each specialist will use vision-capable models to analyse its own displays, maintain situational awareness, and draw conclusions independently. Each will have its own state engine and database, so it can keep things in memory, like the different layouts of ships, HUDs, MFDs and other relevant information.

Engineering will understand component health, power distribution, cooling, and damage. Tactical will evaluate threats, weapons, and defensive capability. Helm will monitor navigation and flight conditions. Sensors will track and identify contacts. Communications responsibilities will increasingly be integrated into Riker.

Each officer will also have its own priorities and operational thresholds. They won't need to be asked about everything. If Engineering detects a critical failure or Tactical identifies an incoming missile, they should interrupt and report it automatically.

The other major goal is proper conversational interaction between the crew.

I want to be able to ask Riker for a damage assessment, have Riker order Engineering to report, and hear Engineering respond with "Commander..." before delivering its findings. Riker should acknowledge that report, potentially consult another officer, and then brief the captain. Every exchange will be generated and voice-rendered, with officers maintaining their own responsibilities and context.

None of that full inter-officer conversation and autonomous reporting system is implemented yet, but it's where the project is heading.

Hardware upgrades are also planned, replacing Kepler with Pascal GPUs to support more capable specialist models and eventually direct visual analysis. There's plenty of work ahead on latency, memory, coordination, and ship-specific awareness.

The ultimate goal isn't five chatbots pretending to be spaceship officers. It's an autonomous, conversational bridge crew that understands what's happening aboard your ship, coordinates its own specialists, alerts you when something matters, and responds naturally to orders.

All running locally, without depending on cloud AI services.

What started as "Can these ancient GPUs run an LLM?" has turned into "Can I build a local AI bridge crew for Star Citizen?"

I am building this for me out of curiosity and boredom, but is there anything any one else could see a use for this? I am tossing up whether to build a modular installer because not everyone else has 30GB of Kepler laying around.

Edit: Full disclosure, I used Codex to do my UI work. I am terrible at that part. Its not a skill I have. I am a DevOps Engineer, so I can do the complicated systems work and engine stuff, but I am horrible at UI.

So my friend did something to his Perseus that triggered emergency mode and locked all the doors.
When we tried to fix it, we got the rave lights :3

Do you have any song recommendations that match the vibe?

Mvh. Lark

Recent discussion of ship redesign reminded me that I had some old screenshots that included the original Freelancer model. I seem to remember that it never flew. Not sure if that is right, but it was redesigned early. Also some images of the Constellation from early days, plus a few random shots of old armor and Cutlass interior.

This gets me as hyped as seeing the trailer honestly

Running Gillys 7 and approach slowly. SCM, shields up and all full health. See the arrows coming and line up the first one. They shoot a missile and I ignore it....

Next thing I see is a sweeping scene of my ship flying across the screen and wake up in a hospital bed 🤦‍♂️

Not again :(

EDIT.... Take it back. Apparently its not dead - its 53gm away? Going to try and find it - lol

So the ship appears to be in a station hangar (last place I landed) but I can't get into the hangar and it doesn't show on the ASOP??? Can see the name plate on the hangar... teasing me! b@57@/d!!!!

Greycat MFC

Drake Marauder

Anvil HM6 Auxilia

Anvil Liberator

Gatac Hyūn

Super enticed by the marauder, cant wait to see the Liberator.

It's so funny to me that they're the same price

Is this an old reliant model or something? Never heard anything about it and just saw it in this clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE0o_g2hMbk

UPDATE:

Thanks guys! Its just an old placeholder asset that was probably bought here:

https://www.deviantart.com/slingblade87/art/Kal-class-Starfighter-696869824

Took a little while, but managed to shove my 22 PTVs into the Centaurus while keeping the cargo grid completely intact. Yet another great ship for transporting all your buggies! (Though I did lose 1 while in quantum)

Wasn't planning at all to spend any more on ships but after a few glances on the store the wallet came out 😶 (Golem --> MK V(warbond))

Big TAC lover but for some reason this ship was calling to me. Was never a fan of the dorito style ships but this does it for me. It definitely lives up to the "Slow is steady, Steady is smooth" quote and I love it!

- Proud Asgard owner
- Proud MK V owner

The orange isn't the same but the new skin just screams Cerberus inspiration from Mass Effect Trilogy . Specifically their mass effect 2 paint jobs and I love it to be honest.

Personally I am a Paladin fanboy. (Especially since they just fixed the gun convergence issue the pilot had with the side turrets)

So logically I first compared the new Connie to this ship even though they are in different size classes.

And yes, I know, I know, things will change, balancing will happen, ships are preferences and have roles and all that. My point is that the Centaurus seems to supersede several vessels that are dedicated purpose built for their area.

Anyway....

I still somehow had expected the Paladin to have the upper hand in terms of armour. Because that is one of its two main features.
But in fact the Centaurus has nor only more armour (and health) but also BETTER armour than the Paladin. (based on the damage reduction statistics)

Note: I put all the same/comparable components in both.

I see three advantages that the Paladin has:

1. More sustained DPS if manned by two people. (Pilot alone wins clearly on the Centaurus. And if we factor in the missiles the Connie is basically on-par for damage output.)
2. It has one more power plant. (Three in total)
3. It is about 60% smaller (Which at such low maneuverability they both have is not too much of a benefit because you can hit it so easily. - so perhaps the benefit is simply that smaller landing pads / hangars are available?

While the Centaurus is better at:

1. It is cheaper (by 50 USD)
2. Stronger and better armour
3. More health
4. It has a higher tier radar slot (S3)
5. More fuel and with that more QT range
6. Four pilot controlled S5 guns + missiles
7. Much more space (Massive cargo, lockers, etc)
8. It has a good snub fighter
9. Twice as much shield protection (2x S3)

And the little that is left is the same:

• More or less the same maneuvrability
• Same coolers + size
• same QT drive size
• same signature....if I remove one of the three power plants of the Paladin. - while I also see a signature penalty of -7% in erkul? Not sure.

Has anyone compared it to other ships in roughly the same price range?

So far I cannot seem to find any ship in the same range of price or size that is better than it.

Which pilot weapons do you mount on your Constellation Centaurus?

I tested...
- CF-557 Repeater, which are ok
- AD5B are underwhelming and out of ammo fast