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So why is it that no race has mastered the idea of vehicles that are remote controlled save lives?
Surely the eldar and tau would make use of this technology?
I can understand that imperium but why no one else?

What are Tau drones then?

The Tau do, with their drones, but i agree that their tanks should be UAVs too, or at least some form of drone fighter (i think FW had a big drone that's along those lines, but could be wrong on that..)

Orks...yeah...no. Nearest i get is that one of my Kanz units is squig-controlled (as that was once an option for them, and i converted them to represent it).

Necrons- beats me. The Monolith is an UAV i think, or at least it used to be in the old codex..

Eldar - Unless you count wraithguard/wraithlords (piloted by the dead) i'm surprised they haven't.

DE don't really go in for computer-controlled stuff.

Nids: no vehicles, and no wish to save lives anyway...


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ninjad

Ascalam wrote:

Necrons- beats me. The Monolith is an UAV i think, or at least it used to be in the old codex..




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ninjad

Canoptek Spyders, wraiths and scarabs would like a word with you.
Though they aren't really vehicles...then again, neither are tau drones.

Chaos has unmanned units of sorts in Daemon Engines, but most of them relish combat far too much to just rely completely on them for fighting.

For 'crons you have to remember that all your base troops are mindless, souless husks of machinery, so effectively they are drones. Tomb Blades would be a perfect example.
Orks - I think for a race so blood thirsty and daring they would WANT to be on the planes. Reading the fluff on the new ork flyers rules in the latest white dwarf was quite funny.
Tau - they have drones. They're called ... drones(!)

snorri788 wrote:For 'crons you have to remember that all your base troops are mindless, souless husks of machinery, so effectively they are drones. Tomb Blades would be a perfect example.
Orks - I think for a race so blood thirsty and daring they would WANT to be on the planes. Reading the fluff on the new ork flyers rules in the latest white dwarf was quite funny.
Tau - they have drones. They're called ... drones(!)

Yh i would agree with the ork bit, why would any good ork want to miss out on a good scrap?

well the tau do as people said. here is a list

gun drones
shield drones
turret drones
sniper drones
heavy gun drones
FW: fighter drone unsure if its the right name)

also i believe IG had drones but they went along with levitating tanks and mutants, how ever no models was made to represent that as they was outlawed in the fluff ages ago.

Lar'shi wrote:well the tau do as people said. here is a list

gun drones
shield drones
turret drones
sniper drones
heavy gun drones
FW: fighter drone unsure if its the right name)

also i believe IG had drones but they went along with levitating tanks and mutants, how ever no models was made to represent that as they was outlawed in the fluff ages ago.

UAV's don't sell minis/make money?

Her'es your modeling opportunity. Make one. use an existing codex and tweak up a force.
Troopers-mini armed ROVs
Mobile artillery - spotters for off board fire.
Elite units - more advanced or assault ROVs.

its all there, waiting for you.

You are the UAV

I think the simple answer is that when the 40k universe was created by GW they borrowed heavily (and outright stole) sci-fi ideas from Frank Herbert's Dune. The whole, "thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of a mind" thing carried over as well which is part of what gives the AdMech its character as all their machines have some sort of human component; servitors and servo skulls are the perfect examples.

So outside of the Tau, any imperial unit is likely to be suspicious if not outright banned of a machine that is not partially human.

Well What about remote controlled? Then its still part human.

hotsauceman1 wrote:Well What about remote controlled? Then its still part human.

You dare not die for the emperor? That's heresy!

Kain wrote:

hotsauceman1 wrote:Well What about remote controlled? Then its still part human.

You dare not die for the emperor? That's heresy!

I think that mentality would be pretty close to the truth of it

Well, I got to thinking about this, and let's break this down army by army and figure out who might have/use UAVs, and why or why not.

Imperium (gonna lump everything into this one for the sake of ease) - They have very limited unmanned things, the only things I can think of are Servo Skulls and, to a lesser degree, Machine Spirit. The issue making them into regularly deployed combat things is that it is far cheaper and more logistically sound to deploy men rather than risk expensive and nigh-impossible-to-replace technology. Remember that the Imperium is technologically stagnant at best, innovating full scale UAVs just isn't going to happen anytime soon. The stuff they do have is valuable, and the men ain't valuable. There's no point to risk high value things on missions that can be accomplished with low value resources.

Eldar - In a sense, they do have 'unmanned' vehicles in the form of Wraith constructs. But that is a pretty weak sense of the word, as there are just spirits doing the piloting and even they usually need a nearby warlock or other psychic guide to keep them moving forward. In addition, these are not the disposable, easily-replaced UAVs I believe the OP is talking about, as the loss of Wraith constructs is a pretty big deal to Eldar, and even the choice to use them is a sign of desperation usually for the Eldar.

Dark Eldar - They have the resources and the technology to make something like UAVs happen. However, a UAV does not fit with the Dark Eldar psyche. As creatures that feed solely on pain and who are invigorated at dealing pain to others, putting themselves away from the fight and doing the pain-inflicting through a drone just doesn't make sense. They would not be drawn to this.

Chaos (again, counting CSMs and Daemons as one here) - Tech-wise, they are a very offshoot branch, with most of their tech being upgraded through demons or other warp influences. So it is probably possible that there could be some kind of demon-driven something or other, but we run into conflicts of personality. No agent of Chaos is going to impress their god with their amazing UAV skills. Doesn't fit on that sense.

Orks - Tech wise, with the way Mekboyz work, they probably could make something that is semi-automated. It would look like crap and function just as well, but it is well within the realm of possibility for them. Buuuuuuuut, as with some others, what self-respecting Ork would WANT to send some robot out to do all the fightin and krumpin?

Necrons - Depending on how you define UAV, most of the Necrons (at least the rank and file and things like Wraiths/Spyders) are already UAVs. They have no particular value, no personality and are certainly an expendable resource given their self-repair and teleportation abilities. They fit a lot of qualifiers, so in a way, there are UAVs in 40k.

Tau - They have em. Gun drones, shield drones, marker drones, drone fighters, drone area denial nodes and all the rest. They are exactly used as you said, they take up jobs that otherwise would be filled by soldiers, with the intent to save lives.

Tyranids - No tech. Could consider things like the symbiotic weapons to be unmanned to a degree, but that is grasping at straws. In addition, there's no reason for the Hive Mind to develop such a thing, as everythign is food anyway in the end.

Wow, this got long.

DOn't forget in RT era there were combat robots, including dreadnought sized robots. Humans, eldar, and orks had them (no such thing as Nids, DE, and crons then).

The only remote controled thing i can imagine for the Imperium that is NOT attached to a servo skull is the Cyclops Demolition Vehicale, which is a tiny RC tank loaded with enough explosives to make a full sized tank disintigrate.

They are either airdroped behind enemy lines or by chimera or any transport that can carry them then a solider would drive them by RC to their destination then detonate them.
Supposedly they are rare and assigned on a first come first serve basis but the troops love them as its less running into fortified positions for them, and as far as im aware there are no problem from commisars or any of them for using the cyclops.

The cyclops is inspired by the German Goliath RC demolition vehicale of WW2




the front space is where the explosives go

With regards to the Tau.
They have the Remora Drone fighter.
Which is essentially a drone fighter capable of high speed and high maneuverability. They are carried and deployed by the pair by a variant of the Tiger Shark bomber variant and a Manta variant. They generally need a control ship to co-ordinate effectively.

The Imperium is grimdark sci-fi as envisioned in the 80s. If they'd start to incorporate modern world technological breakthroughs into the setting every time something gets innovated, the IoM's appearance would change drastically every 5 years even though it'd make no sense from an in-universe point of view. That said, fortunately it is not too hard to make excuses for this.

Also, manned scouts just have more style. Oldschool warfare ftw!

For the Imperium, advanced ai are expensive, people are not. Plus, their technology hasn't gotten so far that second hand intel beats human senses by a huge margin yet.

LumenPraebeo wrote:For the Imperium, advanced ai are expensive, people are not. Plus, their technology hasn't gotten so far that second hand intel beats human senses by a huge margin yet.

And also the Imperium hates AI and kills it on sight.

The Eldar's spaceships basically is what you are babbling about with the whole thingy about soulstones and all that. For everyone else, life is cheap, though the Crons and Tau likely have some means of effectively use the things, but that's mainly in space.

Wasn't there some reference to unmanned robots in the Thousand Sons book?

Beaviz81 wrote:The Eldar's spaceships basically is what you are babbling about with the whole thingy about soulstones and all that. For everyone else, life is cheap, though the Crons and Tau likely have some means of effectively use the things, but that's mainly in space.

Again, I'd concur that the entire Necron force is one big mass of UAV's.

hotsauceman1 wrote:So why is it that no race has mastered the idea of vehicles that are remote controlled save lives?
Surely the eldar and tau would make use of this technology?
I can understand that imperium but why no one else?

Why is it that nobody actually thinks to do research before making posts on these kinds of topics?

Servo-Skulls serve the same "role" as UAVs do for us now, in the form of surveillance and gathering intelligence. There are also things like Psyber-Eagles which allow for a psyker to focus their energies through the creature and observe through it.
Servitors are another example of this "role". You might consider it as "wasting a life", but Servitors are those who would be dead anyways. At least now they are being useful to the Imperium they betrayed.

In the idea of a more "traditional" unmanned vehicle, the Cyclops Remote Demolition Vehicle would like a word.

As mentioned however, the Tau are the biggest "drone" faction.

Kanluwen wrote:

hotsauceman1 wrote:So why is it that no race has mastered the idea of vehicles that are remote controlled save lives?
Surely the eldar and tau would make use of this technology?
I can understand that imperium but why no one else?

Why is it that nobody actually thinks to do research before making posts on these kinds of topics?

Servo-Skulls serve the same "role" as UAVs do for us now, in the form of surveillance and gathering intelligence. There are also things like Psyber-Eagles which allow for a psyker to focus their energies through the creature and observe through it.
Servitors are another example of this "role". You might consider it as "wasting a life", but Servitors are those who would be dead anyways. At least now they are being useful to the Imperium they betrayed.

In the idea of a more "traditional" unmanned vehicle, the Cyclops Remote Demolition Vehicle would like a word.

As mentioned however, the Tau are the biggest "drone" faction.

Of course, there is a certain faction where "drone" is literal and everything short of a Hive tyrant is a...drone.

There are a few Imperium made unmanned pieces of warfare equipment. You have tarantula turrets and that little explosive rover thingy (posted above). I'm sure there are a few others, but not in any significant numbers outside of their respective home world.

hotsauceman1 wrote:So why is it that no race has mastered the idea of vehicles that are remote controlled save lives?
Surely the eldar and tau would make use of this technology?
I can understand that imperium but why no one else?

Tau have drones, and Eldar rely on spirit stones for everything.

In the Imperium, life is cheap and technology isn't.

If I was ruling an Empire of a million worlds I wouldn't bother developing unmanned vehicles when putting a human in would be cheaper.

I'd make UAV's out of the skull and brains of a dead soldier if I was a leader of millions. I'd put weapons on it too. Too bad servo skulls as so limited....