More practical droids?

[biostem]

After watching some videos regarding various droids in Star Wars, I am forced to conclude that many droid designers, (at least when it comes to battledroids), simply cannot grasp what is or is not a good design. I realize that most of these designs were created out-of-universe to be distinct and interesting, but in-universe, they just seem needlessly complex and quite inefficient. With the notable exceptions of the B1s, B2s, and Droidekas, which I think could use some tweaks, but are otherwise serviceable, how would you design some droids to fulfill various battlefield roles?

[biostem]

Just as an example, below is a Homing Spider Droid:



It has a huge silhouette, its own legs seem to block the firing arcs, and, (at least going by the brief shots it appears in), it's target acquisition and firing speeds don't seem that impressive...

[Batman]

I would first ask what those battlefield roles actually are.

[biostem]

I would first ask what those battlefield roles actually are.

Well, look at the Battle of Geonosis, or any of the large scale engagements in the Clone Wars series... fire support, anti-air, troop support, anti-material, anti-personnel, and so on.

[JI_Joe84]

Perhaps we should look at modern day military drone/Robot/remote controlled vehicles. They are based in reality and a lot of them use wheels or tracks like little tank's.

[Elheru Aran]

Part of the deal is that a.) a full scale, galaxy-wide war has not been fought in centuries if not millennia, so it's possible that with the long period of (relative) peace war designs haven't changed much. Then b.) Star Wars technology is powerful enough that it can cover a *lot* of sins. Take repulsorlifts for example-- they rarely go out without being outright damaged, and can be scaled down -very- small. This means that you aren't limited to more 'practical' designs-- because repulsorlifts -are- 'practical' in universe to a large degree. This also explains why you see a lot of walking droids and such, their technology is just that good enough that it's no big deal to make them.

The biggest thing that the droids lacked was close air support, at least at the start of the conflict, but we start seeing that kind of thing at Kashyyyk. The clones have LAAT's and fighters to back them up.

[Shroom Man 777]

Ironic the TPM droid designs weren't THAT impractical. At least the droid tank was tank-shaped. Droidekas are understandable as installation/indoors defense units, mobile when rolling around, popping on their legs when on-location and turning into sentry guns to block off entire corridors. Especially when considering Nemoidians' experience with combat, and the Droideka's primary specialization, probably focused on installations, space habitats and ships.

[Elheru Aran]

Yup, TPM honestly wasn't that bad as far as that went. AOTC and ROTS were where they started getting wonky.

Overall though there weren't a lot of terrible designs. The spider-droid isn't great-- it's totally going to shoot off its own legs one day, actually I think they did that a time or two in the Clone Wars series-- but most of the flaws in the droids were because they were cheaply programmed and couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.

[Lord Revan]

The Trade Fed tank wasn't a droid though it was crewed by droids but wasn't a droid itself. Also we got remember that the Trade Federation, The Intergalactic Banking Clan, the Techno Union and similar powers made up bulk of the CIS forces and none of them were goverments or military organizations but corporations that probably before the Clone Wars didn't fight anything more dangerous then workers armed with weapons free avaible on the civilian market and little to no combat training, so things like the homing spider droid were good enough for the job, also is the useble silhouette of the homing spider droid that big really the legs are long sure but also quite narrow.

Again these are semi-legal enforcers for corporations during a time when the state has had for all intents and purposes a millenia worth of peace, so while there's definetly room for improvements we shouldn't judge them too harshly either, the thing I keep saying with Star Trek applies here as well "don't assume that everyone in the universe is retarded as your first choice, look at other options first as our picture is rarely if ever 100% complete".

[Rhadamantus]

For the spider droid, i'd say elevate the "head".

[Crossroads Inc.]

So ironically, of the Trade federation designed, one of the ones that is often "made fun of" is the most practical:
The Dwarf Spider Droid


Single heavy cannon located up front and won't exactly worry about shooting itself.
Legs, while maybe not most well protected, all reasonably mobile and logical.
As a front line "grunt" I would imagine this would work out quite well.

As others mentioned, the original TPM Battle droids are not HORRIBLE and fairly versatile, they just were "wrote" to become stupid later.
In terms of "Roles" that are needed, knowing what we know of the SW universe, a few things come to mind...

As other mentioned, some decent and more versatile air support would be nice.
Since most battles seem to still relay upon infantry with only occasion support from "tanks" I imagine a "light" anti infantry air unite. Something maybe the size of, well, R2. Fitted with a simple repulser and maybe two light blasters, you make it fast and nimble, designed for support of troops. For 'heavy' air support, the LAAT seemed to fill that well enough, shame it just wasn't around earlier.

Another needed unit is a dedicated Artillery piece.
While there is the "Repulser Tank" from the first movie...tis effectiveness was, questionable. Especially as it seemed LOS and not a true Artillery.
The Republic of course had the 6 legged walkers, (though that was another "blaster and only LOS". In truth, despite all the fancy SW tech? A proper "Tank" might be just the best pick for something like this.

One other thing I am thinking of, and others may debate this.
But what are the thoughts of the Robot Equivalent of a MASH unit? One has to imagine situations with Robots that get "slightly" damaged but still moderately serviceable. Sure from a cost point they don't seem to be worried about replacing them. But on a Battlefield where every "Man" counts, better to patch up a Droid and send it out again, then have to wait for a replacement.

[Elheru Aran]

A 'casualty unit' for a robot army wouldn't be a bad idea, for recycling afterwards if nothing else.

One could explore this to some degree. Program your battle droids to continue fighting if the damage is not structural or vital; say your B-1 gets an arm shot off, can it still fire its blaster with the other hand? It gets its leg shot off, can it be emplaced by other droids to act as a static firing point to cover an advance?

You could have a repulsor vehicle, armoured on the front, painted white with red crossed wrenches on the side a few of those running around the battlefield, specialized repair-droids scuttling about with a little pack full of spare parts, returning to the repair vehicle for extra parts... perhaps make them big enough that they can pick up a couple of droids and carry them back to the 'ambulance'.

Then have perhaps droids with a large repulsor unit, possibly piloting a small flatbed of some sort, with arms underneath which can grab onto busted up droids and throw them on top, run them back to base for recycling and repair. This would be more of a post-battle thing, though.

[Simon_Jester]

It occurs to me that while the humanoid form of the B1/B2 series may not be 'optimal' for a random killbot, it DOES have a major advantage in that it can do nearly anything a human can do, physically. It can, for example, drive a tank that could also in theory be operated by mercenaries or the Neimoidians themselves or whatever. It can fire whatever blaster rifles happen to be available, without requiring an expensive blaster integrated into the chassis that might not even be useful depending on what you have that specific droid doing.

The B1s can substitute for a humanoid crew aboard a ship, and most Star Wars ships ARE designed around the assumption of a humanoid crew. And they can do that in a way that an equal number of 'more efficient' dedicated killbots that hover around like someone took the training remote from A New Hope and gave it an AK-47 could never do.

This doesn't make a lot of difference when you're mobilizing for a huge war, because in that situation it makes sense to build specialized categories of droid just to fight the war. But it could make economic sense working on a small scale, and the B1s evolved in that context.

Yup, TPM honestly wasn't that bad as far as that went. AOTC and ROTS were where they started getting wonky.

Overall though there weren't a lot of terrible designs. The spider-droid isn't great-- it's totally going to shoot off its own legs one day, actually I think they did that a time or two in the Clone Wars series-- but most of the flaws in the droids were because they were cheaply programmed and couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.

My working theory is that while the Trade Federation is accustomed to muscling in on planets that have a defense force and fight back at least a little, some of the other factions they brought in to form the CIS have, like, NO actual combat experience.

So the Intergalactic Banking Clan is like "okay, we've just decided to rebel against the Republic, how are we going to actually fight their armies, fuck I dunno, we're securities traders not generals, just buy about a million badass-looking droids." The Commerce Guild? Likewise. Techno Union? Same thing. All those other random groups, and I assume they exist? Same thing. The Trade Federation, despite the sniveling behavior of the Neimoidians, may actually have been the closest thing the CIS had to a battle-hardened elite with enough military experience to design optimized fighting units.

And they didn't do that bad of a job, all things considered.

[bilateralrope]

It occurs to me that while the humanoid form of the B1/B2 series may not be 'optimal' for a random killbot, it DOES have a major advantage in that it can do nearly anything a human can do, physically. It can, for example, drive a tank that could also in theory be operated by mercenaries or the Neimoidians themselves or whatever. It can fire whatever blaster rifles happen to be available, without requiring an expensive blaster integrated into the chassis that might not even be useful depending on what you have that specific droid doing.

Are we sure that they were designed as combat droids ?

Or were they general purpose droids that were adapted to combat roles by just changing software and giving them a gun ?

No need to retool existing droid production lines.

[Lord Revan]

Something you missed Simon is the psycological effect too, IIRC in the legendaries the B1 droids were modeled after mummified nemodians which would probably be unnerving to other nemodians if they had to face them in combat and possibly other races within the GFFA as well. The possible effect of scaring the enemy so badly that they're unable to fight isn't a minor thing and yes on an instinctive level fighting the "living dead" would be more scary then "random machine".

[Lord Revan]

It occurs to me that while the humanoid form of the B1/B2 series may not be 'optimal' for a random killbot, it DOES have a major advantage in that it can do nearly anything a human can do, physically. It can, for example, drive a tank that could also in theory be operated by mercenaries or the Neimoidians themselves or whatever. It can fire whatever blaster rifles happen to be available, without requiring an expensive blaster integrated into the chassis that might not even be useful depending on what you have that specific droid doing.

Are we sure that they were designed as combat droids ?

Or were they general purpose droids that were adapted to combat roles by just changing software and giving them a gun ?

No need to retool existing droid production lines.

If they were GP droids we would be seeing them in non-combat roles but really we don't really see them in any truly non-combat roles as far as I can tell, there's no servant or factory worker B1s just warship crew/pilot (blue ones), military command (yellow) and trooper (plain)

[Simon_Jester]

Something you missed Simon is the psycological effect too, IIRC in the legendaries the B1 droids were modeled after mummified nemodians which would probably be unnerving to other nemodians if they had to face them in combat and possibly other races within the GFFA as well. The possible effect of scaring the enemy so badly that they're unable to fight isn't a minor thing and yes on an instinctive level fighting the "living dead" would be more scary then "random machine".

You're talking about detail design and I'm talking about things like the basic body plan of the droids.

This is me talking to all those people who say "the humanoid body is inefficient for combat, why would you design your killbots to be shaped like humans?" The B1s may be shaped specifically like skeletal mummified aliens of a particular species or something, but their basic body plan is 'humanoid' in the sense that C3PO is humanoid, as opposed to being a nonhumanoid robot like R2D2.

We could equally well take a nonhuman robot and shape it like a terrifying predator squid-monster, or take a flying blaster-drone and make it look like a skull, or something.

[biostem]

Again, taking the "cool factor" out of the equation, I'm surprised we don't see what amounts to a blaster with a basic sensor suite and droid brain, propelled by a repulsorlift. There does seem to be some discrepancy between the minimum size necessary to get the kind of firepower capable to taking down a vehicle, but we do see very small blaster pistols which can kill even armored personnel. How difficult would it be to mount a repeating blaster, similar to what we find on a B2, onto a very small repulsorlift or 4-legged spider chassis?

I suppose, as others have pointed out, many designs were adapted from pre-war security/enforcement droids, and cost was a big factor in what ended up being fielded...

[Simon_Jester]

Hm. Possible limitations on the idea of spamming swarms of small flying antitank-blaster droids:

1) Trouble with target recognition. This one seems unlikely. C3PO can keep track of six million languages, and plainly keeps much if not most of his brains in his head. A droid brain the size of C3PO's head should easily be able to tell friendly tanks from enemy tanks. It was the first thing I thought of but it's not believable.

2) Trouble with power generation. What is the minimum-sized weapon capable of taking down an armored vehicle quickly and capable of sustained fire? Handheld blasters generally don't seem to scale to that level; even the ones that can take down armored soldiers and blow large craters in masonry walls still fail to penetrate tougher obstacles like the bulkheads of starships. It might be practical to put antipersonnel weapons on such a small flying platform, while requiring a larger flying platform to power the repulsorlift AND the antitank blaster.

3) Trouble with enemy AA weapons. If the enemy's targeting is good, repulsorlift droids flying at low altitude and speed (such that they can engage with their antitank blasters) are effectively skeet. Furthermore, flying targets are moving around against an 'empty' backdrop- the sky. In many ways they are actually easier targets for automatically-aimed weapons than things on the ground are. This could be a factor.

4) Trouble with small-'caliber' ground fire. This ties into (3). A small flying gun-droid is almost by definition vulnerable to antipersonnel weapons. It wouldn't be hard to counter that with dedicated AA weapons that fire massed barrages of antipersonnel blaster fire. Making the gun-droid resistant to antipersonnel blasters requires adding armor or shields, which increases weight penalty and power consumption, driving a vicious spiral that culminates in flying war-droids the size of tanks, which are already a thing.

5) Trouble with counter-repulsor weapons. This is purely speculative, but it may well be that when your opponent has military-grade equipment, there are things they can do that would interfere with the operation of repulsors. Shielding against such effect may require bulky equipment, explaining why battlefield equipment that contains repulsorlifts tends to be larger than a human being, even though the technology to build levitating drones the size of a soccer ball exists. Again, this last is purely speculative.

[Lord Revan]

There's also the matter of relibility to consider as well.

In the real world military hardware tends to be bigger and bulkier then similar things on the civilian market as that's generally needed to make more relible in the field either thru just the size or because to build things to be relible they have to of a certain size or bigger, something like the training might so small because if it breaks you can just send it to repair shop to be fixed and if the components fail it's generally not a big deal.

While with combat droids you'd want them to break as rarely as possible and when they would break preferbly break in a way that's easy to fix in the field with limited supplies.

In the novelization (dunno if it's canon anymore though) it was said the C-3PO had limbs that would snap of at the joint in a way that made them simple to re-attach if subjected to stress that could break the joint. I could see battledroids with limbs having the same functionality with the added benefit that with standardization it might be so that a limb from droid "a" could be attached to the body of droid "b" if needed even in the field.

[Adam Reynolds]

I suspect the real reason for this inefficiency in general is mistrust of droids. Preventing droids from interacting in ways humanoids cannot prevents them from becoming too powerful. Notice that the only sentient droids are ones like R2 and 3PO, who lack serious weapons abilities of any kind. Battle droids by contrast seem programed to become less intelligent with experience.

Though on that specific issue, there likely is a problem with military grade small scale repulsorlifts. Why else would R2 and Jango Fett use thrusters and a jetpack respectively instead of repulsorlifts?

Another problem is that the only real purpose of offensive ground armies in SW is surgical strikes, many of which are against theater shields that would be impossible if all the the attacking units used repulsorlifts.

[Rhadamantus]

One thing that is a terrible idea is the automated tanks crewed by droids. If you want to make a droid tank, you don't take a normal tank and replace the humans with droids that look like people. You fill the tank with armor and make an Ogre. Now, in TPM it was probably because they hadn't been fighting for long. But as far as I recall, they were still in use in the clone wars, when they had no reason to be deployed.

[Lord Revan]

One thing that is a terrible idea is the automated tanks crewed by droids. If you want to make a droid tank, you don't take a normal tank and replace the humans with droids that look like people. You fill the tank with armor and make an Ogre. Now, in TPM it was probably because they hadn't been fighting for long. But as far as I recall, they were still in use in the clone wars, when they had no reason to be deployed.

You assume it's viable to make tanks that are 90% armor and practically indestructble, maybe just maybe something like that isn't done because everyone in GFFA are total retards but rather because it's not worth the cost. remember that the Galactic Republic/Empire or the Confederacy of Independent System (aka the separtists) don't have infinite resources.

[Batman]

What if you already have a normal tank designed for humans, but not the human crew (because the tank was meant for sale, not use)? Armouring up the tank and automating it costs time and money and resources. Dropping a handful B1s in means just a little reprogramming so they know how to operate the vehicle.

[Rhadamantus]

What if you already have a normal tank designed for humans, but not the human crew (because the tank was meant for sale, not use)? Armouring up the tank and automating it costs time and money and resources. Dropping a handful B1s in means just a little reprogramming so they know how to operate the vehicle.

That is sensible in TPM. If you've been fighting a war for years and have made plenty of new tanks and still making them like that, it's either stupid or there's some weird reason.