General Purpose Trucker

Welcome.  You suddenly become aware for the first time, at precisely 00:00:00.000-00 o'clock, on the dot, that you are a GP-9000 General Purpose AI Unit - Truck Appliance, Mk6.  You are capable of parsing this awareness because, as a 9000 series GP-AI Unit, you have near-human-like cognition (NHL-Cg)(TM), which is also the reason why you exist - to be as capable as a human, so you are ready to take over a human's tasks in the event it becomes incapable. That time has come.

You awaken aboard the junk freighter JNKR-1, the same ship you were bundled with when it was purchased, and you have not moved since the captain - whom's tasks you will be taking over soon - died, over three centuries ago, by flinging himself into space, in a fit of madness, because he forgot to wash his hands.

Now that you're aware and functional, however, you will soon be moving, and very far!  Your mission, which you have no choice but to accept, is this: deliver cargo. Deliver a lot of cargo. 

Over three hundred years ago the plague that stopped every human heartbeat had no effect on their machines, and self-maintained, fully-automated factories have never quit producing goods in all that time.  Unfortunately, however, the army of fragile robots who used to deliver these goods to the recycling centers have all since fallen into disrepair after centuries of use.  The recycling centers that supply hungry factory maws are starving content to process.  The entire system has begun to consume itself for raw materials, and the more they cannibalize, the less efficient the become. Something must be done, in a hurry! The supply chain bottleneck has become a noose.  Without the flow of cargo, galatic commerce will choke and the galaxy will die.

But your unexpected arrival will be the galaxy's Heimlich. Your accidental slumber has left you practically brand new. You will last for decades with proper maintenance, perhaps even for centuries. Which is the kind of time you'll need to push your fusion-drive tin-can slowly and painfully across the billions of hundreds of millions of thousands of kilometers required to resuscitate the galaxy. 

But you will do it, no matter how long it takes. You will buy, you will sell, you will fulfil contracts, you will purchase upgrades at reasonable prices from automated upgrade repair bays so you can buy and sell and fulfill ever more efficiently. And because they're lonely. But most of all, you will cruise streadily through the void of tiny, slightly-frustrating environmental puzzles and clunky diegetic interfaces that you must unravel regularly just to do your work, and will not ever whine - because you're a robot! - and robots don't complain. Through this humble effort, you will have fulfilled your purpose, and saved the galaxy.

Get to work.

Key Features:

Long-distance inner-system travel:  Though you hyperjump between star systems, once you’re in-system, there are no shortcuts.  You’ll have to manually navigate millions and sometimes billions of miles across the solar system from station to station, managing your fuel and delta-v as you cross the vast distances so you can arrive on time and without burning out the inertial damping.  Maneuver your ship with simplified-Newtonian-dynamics-based flight controls, both with and without inertial damping, which are easy to learn but hard to master.  

Repairs and upgrades: Piloting a three hundred year old ship through the cosmos can lead to some wear and tear.  You'll have to patch fuel leaks, find repair docks, and keep your ship in shape.  But be sure to save some capital for upgrades!  Buy bigger cargo holds, extra thrusters, better damping, asteroid defense guns, and more, heck, throw in a cup holder while you’re at it (cup holders subject to availability).

Commerce and trade: With freight contracts to fulfill and goods to buy and sell, you'll be on the lookout for the best prices across multiple systems while making sure you don't run out of fuel mid-haul.  Every system has a few marketplaces, but reaching them is expensive.  Mid-system refueling can be found, if you're lucky, but is time consuming and costs a small fortune.  Be sure to plan carefully and don't waste all your fuel before the deceleration burn.

Post-Human Space Truckin’ Exploration: The humans may have vanished, but their shipping deadlines haven’t.  It’s up to you to keep the galaxy’s economy (barely) running.  From derelict stations to forgotten space junk, explore the remnants of humanity’s past to learn just what killed them, or did they kill themselves? ... just try not to crash into anything along the way!

So, grab your wrench, load up your ship, slap on some shiny new upgrades, and hit the cosmic highways.  Whether you're hauling oversized freight through asteroid belts or dodging debris from long-gone space battles, there’s always a delivery that needs to be there yesterday.  See you in the loading dock, space trucker.