Robot Commander

The Dalmer make use of robotic commanders in warfare when their own commanders aren't available. These commanders fill various roles to accomplish their objectives, from warfare to civil services to logistics.
== Warfare Automated Commander ==
WACs are robotic military commanders in charge of limited military engagements in inter Dalmer conflicts. Wacs are only permitted to operate robotic units, and their unit production buildings are standardized. 
=== Limitations ===
Certain technologies can hamper or even sabotage WACs.
==== Fog of War ====
Satellite jamming technology, only allows commanders to see their units from a line of sight perspective. everything else is obscured from view.
Some can bypass this and see where construction and land features have been modified (such as enemy bases).
==== Robot commanders ====
Dalmer robot commanders will often waste time moving units back and forth, send wave after wave of their own infantry to certain death by interception fire, will almost always fail to make proper use of cover, and are completely unable to coordinate their units in a meaningful way. On top of this, most units will stop right where they stand if they get fired at. Useful for wasting command points.
== Automated Civil Service Officer ==
In charge of administering logistical aspects of society.
ACSO have certain rules and perks:
Nothing ever gets done unless the ACSO specifically orders it. The buildings, once finished are state property despite their use. For example, stables and smithies in order to produce knights, or ordering a resource extraction operation rather than have an autonomous agent do it in response to increased demand. 
Production costs of units and buildings vary within certain boundaries: usually from 1 to 50 specific units of currency/resources. The reason for it is if the gap is too wide, the equivalent cost of simpler units is just much more effective, but at the cost of ill developed infrastructure. The difference in cost is repaid in upkeep on resources.
All buildings are built in 1 to 2 minutes once the construction is ordered, paid for, and the location is specified. 
Units are trained at their respective building for a short time, then are ready for action, appearing out of said building after traveling from the nearest FARM. Some troops are actually pre-trained or pre-manufactured elsewhere and are only delivered on call directly to the building.
Access to certain technologies is restricted to having access to certain prerequisites on the tech tree, which follows the logic of needing specific infrastructure to build more advanced buildings/units/items. Some buildings have tier systems where the building can be upgraded to the next level by building an extension of the structure that will unlock next generation options, or by upgrading an existing one with the same result.
Resources or cash are obtained from the field in a variety of ways, but most of the time by sending harvesting units into specified resource nodes, immediately usable once delivered to a resource depot building. Usually only one or two resources are required to finance ACSO operations such as gold. ACSO can opt to source their own raw materials (in case of subpar warp coverage for example) like food, wood, cloth, stone, minerals or fuel. 
The maximum size of the workforce and base is limited by some factors like food, control bandwidth or energy, which is not usually produced/accumulated but maintained.
Once purchased, the unit does not require supplies/ammo to be delivered to frontlines.
All resources are universally available; i.e. sent to a processing center somewhere in the empire and exchanged for ready to use materials in the common stores. This so that harvesting them on an opposite edge of the map does not prevent from immediately using them to produce units elsewhere.
Similarly, upgrading units in some way, will result in all of these units, no matter how far, to immediately gain the benefit (some limitations still apply, such as for repairing gear). This is because researching an upgrade factors in production time.
To facilitate operations, creating an Automated Civil Service Artificial Intelligence (ACSAI) to maintain supply lines for ammunition, provisions, reinforcements and other issues is custom, especially when those supply lines must be defended from the enemy.
== Automated Civil Service Artificial Intelligence (ACSAI) ==
To repair and build houses, build shops, barracks, mines, brothels and other civil buildings. ACSAI can occasionally fund the building of almost every shop in a city.
Must find skilled laborers to bring to undeveloped hamlets to build their own home. Can instruct them in what products they have to make, secure their resources and charter ships to make deliveries. 
Can declare their nation to be operating under free market economics. 
One can set an  ACSAI to operate, and define things it can and can not do, allowing the ACSAI to run each mission according to the priorities set while allowing others to intervene when necessary.
ACSAI will tithe several of everything its jurisdiction produces: gold, production, food, etc. This reflects everyday doings in its jurisdiction.
ACSAI can automate workers to build improvements by themselves, allowing the leadership to focus on national issues. 
When conquering an ACSAI, it can be annexed but suffer from massive programming errors. Invaders can't affect its management in any way, it'll never build units, messes up the local economy by building structures with a high maintenance costs or structures that use up limited resources. 
ACSAI are usually established for governing overseas colonies of the empire in a purely mercantilist mindset. They are expected to manage colonies that produce raw materials for the empire's industries.
ACSAI also work this way for vehicle design, and are responsible for designing every single ship type and ordering the construction of every new ship, while all the infrastructure is built automatically.
ACSAI managed colonies will automatically build mining stations, design and construct prototypes and build defensive fleets when their economy is robust enough to permit it. But have to order research and supplies. 
ACSAI automate building production based on "pressure" from imported goods; raw materials like metal will spur the creation of factories, luxuries builds up markets, et cetera. 
If left to its own devices, ACSAI will continue to focus research along a classical tech tree, until it reaches an endpoint; excess research capacity from the current technology are automatically applied to the next one along the path. This can lead to incredibly rapid technology advances; but auto-research is not very contextually aware.  
ACSAI are designed to avert imperial overreach; The empire can only control a certain amount of governance systems directly without suffering penalties due to inefficient logistics. If there are more settled systems than the administration can supervise, ACSAI can establish semi-autonomous sectors and outsource surplus systems to them. The sector ACSAI will then run these systems according to the guidelines set for them, and transfer up to 75% of their resource production to the empire. It comes with a major problem. Unhappy populations in these sectors can go rogue, instigate a rebellion and potentially take the entire sector they're in with them if they manage to secede. Needless to say this is usually suppressed immediately by the empire.