Lethal Company Voice Commands Mod: Talk to an AI Ship Computer

Lethal Company is already a game about talking: shouting for help over the walkie, reading codes off the terminal, arguing about whether the scrap is worth one more trip. A Lethal Company voice commands mod lets the crew talk to the ship itself: open the door, scan, switch the monitor, all by voice, offline and instantly. Add a Neocortex AI ship computer that answers questions about quota and moons, and a scrap-value quiz for the ride back to orbit, and the ship becomes the sixth crew member.

Screenshot: Lethal Company © Zeekerss

What you could build with Neocortex in Lethal Company

On-device voice commands for the ship and terminal

The person on the terminal is always busy. Voice commands let anyone in the ship say "open the door", "scan", "switch to monitor" or "lights off" and have it happen. In the Neocortex dashboard you design a command set as actors, actions and objects: actor "ship", actions "open", "close", "scan" and "switch", objects "door", "lights" and "monitor". Players speak naturally, so "get the door" and "open up" can trigger the same action, and one sentence can carry several commands: "close the door and switch to monitor". It works with push-to-talk or always-listening, in multiple languages, and runs on the player's machine with no cloud round trip, which matters when something is chasing you up the ramp. Voice Commands is a licensed SDK: contact us for a Voice Commands license.

An AI ship computer that answers the crew

Create an original ship computer, MERIDIAN, a tired corporate system that has seen many crews come and go and keeps a running tally of their mistakes. Your plugin sends each question along with ship state: quota, days left, scrap value on board, the current moon and its weather, which crew members are alive. Ask "how far are we from quota?" or "is it worth landing in this weather?" and MERIDIAN answers in voice, with an emotion tag on every line that you can map to its tone or a colour on the ship's screen. It can also return actions, such as { "name": "OPEN_DOOR", "targetId": "ship_door" }, that the plugin runs through the same code the ship's buttons use. A Conversation Flow can give MERIDIAN a story across a whole quota cycle, with checkpoint keywords your plugin uses to trigger new lines or events.

A scrap-value quiz between runs

Between landings, MERIDIAN runs a quick quiz: which of two items sells for more, roughly what a full haul is worth, which hazards are worth the risk. Build the question set in the Neocortex dashboard. The quiz engine (Team plan) asks the questions, keeps score and runs a leaderboard, and your plugin shows the results on the ship's screen.

How Lethal Company modding works

Lethal Company is a Unity game, and its mods are C# plugins.

• BepInEx is the plugin loader. The Lethal Company community uses BepInEx 5 through the BepInExPack on Thunderstore. Plugins get a config file system, logging and a lifecycle. See the BepInEx docs.
• Harmony patches game methods at runtime, so your code runs when the door opens, the terminal parses a command or the ship lands. BepInEx ships with HarmonyX, a fork of Harmony aimed at game modding.
• Thunderstore is where mods are published and installed, usually through a mod manager. The community Lethal Company Modding Wiki covers setup and plugin development.

A plugin can call web APIs with HttpClient, show text on the HUD or terminal screen through Unity UI, and play audio through Unity's audio sources. Voice-command mods already exist on Thunderstore, such as Voice Ship Control. Lethal Company is still updated, and the v80 update in spring 2026 changed a lot of game code, so expect to update your patches after big releases.

Screenshot: Lethal Company © Zeekerss

How Neocortex fits in

• Dialogue. The plugin reads ship state and sends it with the player's message to a Neocortex character through /v3/chat. It shows the reply as subtitles, plays the voice from /v3/audio/generate or /v3/audio/stream, and runs the actions the character returns.
• Conversation Flows. They steer story beats and return checkpoint keywords (flowState) the plugin reacts to.
• Quizzes. The quiz engine runs question-and-answer games through /v3/quiz.
• Voice commands. On-device voice commands turn spoken phrases into ship and terminal actions without a cloud round trip. The plugin uses the Neocortex Voice Commands library on the player's machine.

A chat call from a BepInEx plugin looks like this:

[Serializable] class ChatRequest { public string[] characterIds; public string message, playerId, sessionId; }
static readonly HttpClient Http = new HttpClient();

static async Task<string> AskShipComputer(string apiKey, string question, string sessionId)
{
    var payload = new ChatRequest {
        characterIds = new[] { "CHARACTER_ID" },
        message = question,
        playerId = "crew-1",
        sessionId = sessionId ?? ""
    };
    var request = new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Post, "https://api.neocortex.link/v3/chat");
    request.Headers.Add("x-api-key", apiKey);
    request.Content = new StringContent(JsonUtility.ToJson(payload), Encoding.UTF8, "application/json");
    var response = await Http.SendAsync(request);
    return await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync(); // sessionId, lines, emotions, actions
}

Read the API key from a BepInEx config entry that the player fills in, never from a constant in the code.

Getting started with your Lethal Company voice commands mod

1. Set up BepInEx with the BepInExPack and a mod manager, then create an empty plugin project.
2. Design MERIDIAN in the Neocortex dashboard, plus a scrap-value quiz and a command set for the ship and terminal.
3. Patch the ship and terminal with Harmony so voice commands and character actions call the same code the buttons use.
4. Keep the API key in the plugin's config file, never hard-coded in a mod you upload to Thunderstore.
5. Test solo first, then in a private lobby with friends who run the same mod list.

Mod policy and fair play

Lethal Company has no formal published mod policy, so follow Thunderstore's rules and the expectations of the community. Play modded only in private or clearly marked modded lobbies where everyone has opted in, and have each player use their own Neocortex API key.

To see how the voice side works in more detail, read on-device voice commands for game mods, and browse our other game guides in the AI NPC and voice command mods index.

Tool versions and links checked October 2026. Modding tools change often; check each project's page for the latest release.

Frequently Asked Questions