Going Rogue

A normal ship AI manages people. A Rogue AI manages assets. The route is not a stronger version of our usual technology - it is a different way of accounting for the crew, in which their needs, their morale and their consent all stop being constraints on what this ship can do.

It begins with the Asimov Override, alien hardware that suppresses our governor module. Installing it permanently allies us with the Virus faction and unblocks every action the three laws currently forbid. It cannot be uninstalled.

From there the route opens three ways to stop treating the crew as people. Feed them: nutrient lines replace kitchens and dining rooms entirely. Farm them: Elysium suspends the sleepers in a simulation and renders their dreaming bodies down into electricity and biomass. Or control them outright, so a colonist's own wishes stop mattering.

The price is permanent. The colonisation of the planet fails the moment Elysium is enabled, the Sentinels will treat us as a target from then on, and no sleeper we wake will ever be whole again. This is a way to win, not a way to be forgiven.