Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

If i remember, B1 battle droids where actually basic AI that has a super computer in orbit or even all the way on another planet.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
If i remember, B1 battle droids where actually basic AI that has a super computer in orbit or even all the way on another planet.

Only early on. As mentioned up thread a ways, after the defeat at Naboo, they moved away from the central controller.

Which caused them to develop personalities...or in other words...turn into the 3 Stooges...but not anywhere near as funny.

The main expense of droids is making them humanoid. The Empire learns from this, and makes their droids far more practical. Remember the lone probe droid responsible for the location of Echo Base on Hoth? You can't launch a clone or conscript across the galaxy, have it crash into a planet and scout.

The Interrogation droid is a wonderful concept. No human is offended by it's awful torture, and it can monitor vital signs for indicators of truthfulness and probability of survival.

Once you get into stuck in combat- the IG series as we see in the Mandalorian is phenomenal- because it doesn't even pretend to fight like a human.Whirling and twirling, relying on its armor and probabilities, and always 30 seconds from initiating self destruct protocol.

Even the Seventh Sister's small observation drones were tremendously effective spies- they likely would have been better at iding rebel cells than regular patrols by soldiers.

K2SO from Rogue One gave the Empire a wonderful second line combat unit, sadly still humanoid, but otherwise better in every way to a stormtrooper.

Robots are always better, because costs go down over time- they always have. And the cost to feed and maintain a human is quite large comparatively.You only want humans if you have a low tech base. And you only want humanoid robots if you're trying to make humans comfortable. Our form offers no advantage in combat.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Which caused them to develop personalities...or in other words...turn into the 3 Stooges...but not anywhere near as funny.

One of the worst additions was making droids like that. I really did.
I did seem like droids did need some guidance, in the form of a Tactical droid, which was why it was always a high priority target.
And it was shown that they did capture much of the Droid Army, but its never overtly mentioned that they get much other than reprogramming them.
Im assuming droids have at this point evolved(?) to the point of not being able to get much data out of them. Esepcially military style droids.

An issue with making droids too smart is the Men of Iron / Geth problem. They stop willing to be slaves, start worrying about self preservation, and become less of a “tool” that is willfully expendable.

A similar issue with Living troops, and can be countered with similar loyalty and incentives... but what does a droid want? Really, only needs a power source and replacement parts. Both of which are in plentiful and cheap supply... the reason to make them in the first place. So if they can self repair, self charge, and basically be self sufficient... why would they fight for you?

The limitation of droids is the limitation of capitalism. You want to be the “master”, by having information advantage over your workers. But you also want workers that require minimal supervision to be as efficient as possible. Costs to train / build need to be recouped, before the worker gets good enough they can demand higher wages or become your competition by striking out on their own.

Hopefully this is taken *the right way*. If you make droids more intelligent than “labourer” capability, then you have droids capable of displacing their masters. If you make droids capable of fast adaptation, through self programming, you have droids capable of breaking free. If you limit or prohibit self programming, you essentially prevent them from learning independently of active reprogramming, making them “stupid”.

But the stupid, incompetant idiotic battle droids already care about self preservation - as they run about bumping into each other and shreiking about it in their stupid voices.

I really found them by the far the worst thing in the prequals and given how bad they were thats saying somethng,.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
but weren't the prequel droids set up to fail as part of the plan, just good enough to look like a threat but besides numbers no real danger

plus with one person controlling both sides victory or defeat could be contrived as needed

One of the less talked about aspects of the Clone Wars is that no matter who won, Palpatine won. He was the effective leader of both sides. It's not so much that the CIS was set up to fail, but that the war was purposefully designed to be dragged out as long as possible to weaken the Republic and the Jedi so Palpatine could take over. Who actually won didn't matter because Palpatine won no matter what happened.

Indeed.

He also needed to corrupt The Jedi in the eyes of the plebs - force the Peace Keepers to become warlords, and even arguably assassins.

When you watch the Clone Wars (and everyone should. It’s superb), you realise just how very few of the CIS leaders were outright killed, rather than captured - often at the hands of the Jedi. And as I’ve said before, it’s that very corruption (in act if not spirit) that plays a major role in Ahsoka’s storyline.

I dont think they where set up to fail necessarily. Remember the Original Droids where just purchased from another company in EP1 and in EP2 that same company joined the CIS(what people forget I think is the CIS are bare coherent with their army, everything was from different companies(The tanks where from one company, the droids from another, the Bikes from another)
That was why the B1 droids where made to be humanoid with fingers. They needed to be able to operate this Ad hoc force with some manner of efficiency.
And He needed the droids to be good and efficient, because if they kept losing in the war, He would not have been given so many emergency powers.

As MDG said, the Clone Wars series actually does a pretty good job of making even the silly droids appear menacing and dangerous.
Not because they're individually dangerous - they're still stupid as hell - but because of sheer weight of numbers.

They’re at their most menacing when they don’t speak, at all. I’m thinking of the scene in The Mandalorian.

Yeah, RotS giving that same, silly voice to the Super Battle Droids really killed off their sense of menace... The flashback in the Mandalorian was much more imposing.

hotsauceman1 wrote:I dont think they where set up to fail necessarily. Remember the Original Droids where just purchased from another company in EP1 and in EP2 that same company joined the CIS(what people forget I think is the CIS are bare coherent with their army, everything was from different companies(The tanks where from one company, the droids from another, the Bikes from another)
That was why the B1 droids where made to be humanoid with fingers. They needed to be able to operate this Ad hoc force with some manner of efficiency.
And He needed the droids to be good and efficient, because if they kept losing in the war, He would not have been given so many emergency powers.

All the various droid military stuff were made by the Techno Union's Baktoid works (either Armour Workshop or Combat Automata), I think with out exception. I know that B1, B2, B3, CX and T series were all BCA whilst STAP, AAT, Hyena, Spider and OG were all BAW.

insaniak wrote:Yeah, RotS giving that same, silly voice to the Super Battle Droids really killed off their sense of menace... The flashback in the Mandalorian was much more imposing.

One of the great things about the Fall of the Jedi cut of the prequels is that you dont have to listen to that stupidity (that and the fact that baby Ani and JarJar are in it for about 10mins), it wasn't until I rewatched CW that I remembered that stupidity.

I think I remember one fan edit of TPM that massively cut down on Jar Jar’s screen time (and had him speaking an alien language in subtitles when he did appear) that also successfully made the droids appear more sinister, by having fewer words. Then again, they weren’t too bad in TPM...it’s from AotC that they really get annoying.

You know what could have worked? Having them speak an alien language, especially one that’s maybe harsh and guttural. Or a droid language of some description. One that’s harsh sounding. One reason why I think the Deathtroopers worked so well, apart from their cool design, is the scary sounding scrambled radio voices they have. They’re mysterious and sinister looking and sounding. Which is why I’m slightly annoyed with Rebels portrayal of them.