Sordid

Eh, Starsector is a very different kind of game. And I don’t just mean the fact that it’s top-down 2D, it’s much more of a management game. Freelancer is very aptly named - you’re just one guy in one space fighter doing your thing. It’s a space shooter first and foremost. If you try to play Starsector that way, you’re going to hit an impenetrable wall very quickly. You need a fleet, and the larger your fleet, the less significant your own personal contributions in battle. But the game also limits your ability to command your fleet pretty severely, so the further you progress, the more your agency shrinks to just moving around on the map between combat encounters that mostly play themselves. I can’t recommend Starsector to… well, anyone, to be honest.

No information regarding the machine’s accuracy is provided, but the fact that you are asked to make a choice implies that it is not perfect. The question explicitly specifies that the prediction has already been made and the contents of box B have already been set. You can’t retroactively change the past and make the money appear or disappear by making a decision, so if your choice must match the prediction, then it’s not your choice at all. You lack free will, and the decision has already been made for you by the machine. In that case the entire question is meaningless.

Both! Critically, the contents of box B depend on the machine’s prediction, not on whether it was correct or not (i.e. not on your subsequent choice). So it’s effectively a 50/50 coin toss and irrelevant to the decision-making process. Let’s break down the possibilities:

Machine predicts I take B only, box B contains $1B:

• I take B only - I get $1B.
• I take both - I get $1.001B

Machine predicts I take both, box B is empty:

• I take B only - I get nothing.
• I take both - I get $1M.

Regardless of what the machine predicts, taking both boxes produces a better result than taking only B. The question can be restated as “Do you take $1M plus a chance to win $1B or would you prefer $0 plus the same chance to win $1B?”, in which case the answer becomes intuitively obvious.