[quote=@Pepperm1nts]
It'd be cool if some of the first models were faulty and cause severe headaches. Just to add a bit of color to the world.

EDIT: Also, can you explain how the semi-sentience works? I know you said you wanted to leave it up to us, but I'd like to know what you meant by them being "animalistic".
[/quote]

Well, the Empire and then the Kingdom have been using the neurouplink things for millenia- but there's no reason the augmentics cant have downsides, at least in some cases (some people might suffer migranes, it may affect sanity over time, etc), so that might be an interesting character trait/quirk for some.

As for the semisentience, theres room for differences between different ships that can always be explained by differences in AI aging, the different mental impressions left by officers over the centuries, etc. For some, the semisentience may behave as a typical ship computer system, but my idea was that over the ages each AI has been molded by the minds that have touched it and been given their own quirks and developed their intelligences in different ways. If you want your AI to be like Cortana and have a well developed personality and basically make your ship a full fledged character, that's permitted absolutely. IF you'd rather it not have that level of personality, that's fine too. 

The animalistic thing- i just thought the idea of these ships as being huge beasts of prey, having at once highly developed computational skills and a nonhuman type of rational intelligence would be cool. Perhaps your ship's intelligence is a bit like a dog or a shark- not quite rational and communicative, but having certain aims, habits, quirks, preferences, etc. in addition to all of the computery things it can do.

Make sense? Also, please note that I really am happy for people to do what they want with the semi-sentience idea. As i said, there's plenty of space for variation.