Fighter Brainbug?

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Yeah, but the final results show that the Clones didn't actually win either. If you'd actually watched Revenge of the Sith, you'd know that the only winner was Palpatine, and everyone else lost. Given that both sides were being controlled by the same man, and given that the entire war was nothing more than a facade engineered by Palpatine so he could take over the galaxy, saying that clones defeated the droids is patently bullshit.

Meh, he handwaved that away the last time I pointed it out to him too. Apparently one person running the entire goddamn war doesn't make one side more likely to win regardless of intrinsic effectiveness of the units and tactics they use.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Even better, by this clown's tard logic, the Japanese won the Battle of Tsushima Straits because they had a stronger battleline. Oops; the Russians actually outnumbered them.

Claiming the only reasonably conclusion is quality of units is absurd, because by definition one is claiming other variables, such as political factors, strategic leadership, numbers, and industrial base do not matter at all.

[Patrick Degan]

No, Primus, by your tard logic and that of your two playmates, it doesn't matter that there's one little inconvenient difference between a droid army and an army of organics:

The latter can't be deactivated by pushing a button in a control bunker somewhere (Star Wars Ep. 3: Revenge Of The Sith).

Nevermind the examples in which the droids proved to have no greater qualitative advantage over organic military forces, which can be pointed out again, and again, and again, and again.

And you know just where you can shove your little strawmen, don't you?

Oh, and as for this:

I like his imaginary "virus". Anyone who can pilfer that imaginary bit from DE can let me know, but I' won't be holding my breath.

That was exactly how R2D2 defeated the World Devastators at Mon Calamari, as per the Dark Jedi comic book series.



But you can argue that particular point with Tom Veitch, if you like.

[Ford Prefect]

The latter can't be deactivated by pushing a button in a control bunker somewhere (Star Wars Ep. 3: Revenge Of The Sith).

Actually, given that clones could be programmed to eliminate their commanders and close friends without a second thought (Order 66), they could concievably be equally programmed to kill themselves on voice command. Knowing Palpatine, he's probably got such an 'Order 67' buried inside the clones, just in case.

Also, has it occured to you that you're dodging the point I was addressing here? You claim that the droids demonstratably lost the war ... when they actually didn't. Funny that.

[Darth Smiley]

The latter can't be deactivated by pushing a button in a control bunker somewhere (Star Wars Ep. 3: Revenge Of The Sith).

That's stupidity on the part of the CIS, not an weakness for robotic forces. By that logic, we should be using horses for transport, because mechanized transport ( like tanks, APCs, and gunships) can "be deactivated by pushing a button in a control bunker" - if some idiot builds a remotely activated off switch into it. But if no one is stupid enough to do that, tanks and gunships are far superior.

Nevermind the examples in which the droids proved to have no greater qualitative advantage over organic military forces, which can be pointed out again, and again, and again, and again.

First of all, we really don't NEED a qualitative advantage...not when we have a quantitative advantage. 10 years, to produce a mature clone. For a conventionally recruited force, it takes a few weeks at best, and turns out products that are of poor quality, especially conscripts. A drone might take a few weeks at most, and be of excellent quality.

Second, drones do have qualitative advantages, depending on the tech level. Today, obviously, we don't have the technology to make drones that can compete with humans. However, the more advanced you get, the less and less you really need those humans. Get strong enough motors, and drones can carry more firepower and armor than equivalent human force. Get advanced enough AI and sensors, and drones have an intelligence advantage. Some of the tech can be uses to make more effective human troops, but at some point there is really no reason to even have humans in harm's way.

[Anguirus]

That was exactly how R2D2 defeated the World Devastators at Mon Calamari, as per the Dark Jedi comic book series.

No it wasn't. Skywalker simply put the master control codes into Artoo, and Artoo used them.

You seem to be having extreme difficulty with this. The WDs being shut down by their master control codes was a deliberate design decision, and has nothing to do with some kind of inherent droid inferiority.

[Ford Prefect]

That's stupidity on the part of the CIS

Or it may have been a suggestion by Palpatine, much as Order 66 was a suggestion by Palpatine.

[NecronLord]

I've just gone out and bought Dark Empire today (leaving me with a strong desire to read Test of the Wills for a better, longer treatment of the story. Anyway. Luke explictly loads up Artoo with command codes before he leaves Byss, to the point that C-3P0 asks "Princess Leia. Tell Master Luke to be careful! He's putting far too much data in Artoo's memory! He's only a simple astromech droid, you know."

Silencer-7, a crewed World Devastator, is still rendered immobile by the initial shutdown, and later destroyed by Artoo. Its override systems are explicitly locked out. Similarly, in DE2, Artoo takes over the Emperor's personal and fully crewed flagship, and rams the Galaxy Gun with it, causing the destruction of Eclipse II, the Galaxy Gun, and the Imperial Capital World of Byss. I don't think you can read the DE series and honestly conclude that having CHON in the command chain is really that helpful

[Rye]

It seems to me that if you built a car that could drive on its own to survive impacts with DRDs from Farscape inside, you could do more with the same resources than you could if you had to protect a human in the same object. If there's some reason this wouldn't apply to spaceships, I'm not seeing it, especially since unmanned space probes are used a fuckload more than manned stuff, even at our current technology level.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I've just gone out and bought Dark Empire today (leaving me with a strong desire to read Test of the Wills for a better, longer treatment of the story. Anyway. Luke explictly loads up Artoo with command codes before he leaves Byss, to the point that C-3P0 asks "Princess Leia. Tell Master Luke to be careful! He's putting far too much data in Artoo's memory! He's only a simple astromech droid, you know."

Silencer-7, a crewed World Devastator, is still rendered immobile by the initial shutdown, and later destroyed by Artoo. Its override systems are explicitly locked out. Similarly, in DE2, Artoo takes over the Emperor's personal and fully crewed flagship, and rams the Galaxy Gun with it, causing the destruction of Eclipse II, the Galaxy Gun, and the Imperial Capital World of Byss. I don't think you can read the DE series and honestly conclude that having CHON in the command chain is really that helpful

Right. Your state security is not fundamentally incompetent if it depends on fifth-column action from within the CinC's office! Usually if your CinC doesn't want to win, you're screwed, so complaining its a point of failure is quite beside the point. It was more worth it for Palpatine to permit Skywalker to screw his Devestators, because if he successfully made him into a new Sith Lord, who cares?

[Patrick Degan]

The latter can't be deactivated by pushing a button in a control bunker somewhere (Star Wars Ep. 3: Revenge Of The Sith).

That's stupidity on the part of the CIS, not an weakness for robotic forces. By that logic, we should be using horses for transport, because mechanized transport ( like tanks, APCs, and gunships) can "be deactivated by pushing a button in a control bunker" - if some idiot builds a remotely activated off switch into it. But if no one is stupid enough to do that, tanks and gunships are far superior.

False Analogy —there is certainly worlds of difference between mechanised forces and cybernetic drone forces.

Nevermind the examples in which the droids proved to have no greater qualitative advantage over organic military forces, which can be pointed out again, and again, and again, and again.

First of all, we really don't NEED a qualitative advantage...not when we have a quantitative advantage. 10 years, to produce a mature clone. For a conventionally recruited force, it takes a few weeks at best, and turns out products that are of poor quality, especially conscripts. A drone might take a few weeks at most, and be of excellent quality.

Except the CIS possessed neither qualitative nor quantitative advantage over the forces of the Republic. Furthermore, the more sophisticated drones built for the CIS were produced in decreasing numbers depending upon their complexity, and production of those models proved a greater expense for the Trade Federation and the Techno Union.

Second, drones do have qualitative advantages, depending on the tech level. Today, obviously, we don't have the technology to make drones that can compete with humans. However, the more advanced you get, the less and less you really need those humans. Get strong enough motors, and drones can carry more firepower and armor than equivalent human force. Get advanced enough AI and sensors, and drones have an intelligence advantage. Some of the tech can be uses to make more effective human troops, but at some point there is really no reason to even have humans in harm's way.

Except qualitative advantage is not in evidence for the overwhelming majority of the droids fielded by the CIS during the Clone Wars.

[Ford Prefect]

Except the CIS possessed neither qualitative nor quantitative advantage over the forces of the Republic.

Are you honestly suggesting that the CIS did not have more soldiers than the clones, despite the fact that it takes years for a clone to be combat ready, where the CIS can build a fully functioning battle droid in two seconds? Are you honestly saying despite seeing the CIS churn out these things the way I turn out photocopies at work, despite knowing as fact that the CIS had large numbers of these automated production lines spread throughout their tens of thousands of star systems, that they somehow didn't have a quantative advantage?

Do you honestly think a biological force can actually somehow match this? I don't just mean in Star Wars, I mean in general. Which do you think is faster to make? A mechanical soldier, or a human one?

[Illuminatus Primus]

They CAN HEAL MAN. YOUR DROIDS WILL RUST. MEAT FOR TEH WIN.

I wish I was joking.

[Ford Prefect]

Yeah, that's something I just don't get: how can they honestly say our ability to heal is all that useful. I can't just break my arm and wait a little while and it's good to go - it needs to be set in place, and kept in place for months. I'm sure this has been pointed out already.

Does this count as biotech wanking? I think it should.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Over the years, at many places I've worked, I've seen numerous jobs, growing ever more complicated, taken up by machines rather than people. I guess in all these cases, according to Degan's non-logic, the companies are taking a hit in profits and productivity by replacing people with machines.

It's funny when today's reality, with technology and AI far inferior than what SW can produce, already shows that replacing people with machines in many areas is cheaper and more efficient.

[Connor MacLeod]

In a broad sense, the Clones did have a qualitative advantage of a sort. They had superior warships. They had better vehciles (mostly) and better combined arms hardware.

However, the separatists actually had some rather nasty droid designs. The Droidekas and (later) droid gunships demonstrated that. Hell, even SBDs were pretty good for the role they intended. The problem isn't so much they had no good designs as they never approached the war with "military efficiency" foremost in mind: they wanted to fight a war on the cheap (a factor I'm sure Sidious made sure would be present.)

Basically, the Clone "advantage" exists because the Separatist leadership ultimately proved to be pennypinching morons. Had their military leaders been actually given free reign without oversight (something the Separatist leadership never evidently did.) I'm sure the Clone Wars would have gone much differently.

Hell, you wouldn't even need to build super-droids to gain parity with the Clones - using their own equipment (or the nearest analogues) would have sufficed. I'm sure a B1 battle droid in (appropriately modified) clone armour wielding a DC-15 would have been more fearsome than a clone (They don't feel pain, for one thing.) And those same B1s could be operating vehicles similar to what the Clones used.

[Connor MacLeod]

Yeah, that's something I just don't get: how can they honestly say our ability to heal is all that useful. I can't just break my arm and wait a little while and it's good to go - it needs to be set in place, and kept in place for months. I'm sure this has been pointed out already.

Does this count as biotech wanking? I think it should.

As I pointed out before, should it be wished, there are more than ample ways "self healing droids" can be implemented.

[Ford Prefect]

As I pointed out before, should it be wished, there are more than ample ways "self healing droids" can be implemented.

Indeed. Robots don't 'heal' now, but will the same be true in three hundred years? Making predictions one way or the other is likely to be folly, but it's not that inconcievable.

[Patrick Degan]

Over the years, at many places I've worked, I've seen numerous jobs, growing ever more complicated, taken up by machines rather than people. I guess in all these cases, according to Degan's non-logic, the companies are taking a hit in profits and productivity by replacing people with machines.

It's funny when today's reality, with technology and AI far inferior than what SW can produce, already shows that replacing people with machines in many areas is cheaper and more efficient.

Non-logic? In that case, the canon material itself is also "non-logical".

Your Red Herring does not make the case, either. We're not talking about widespread factory automation, which is not something I've attempted to argue against at any point in this thread. The subject at hand, rather, is whether or not the droids fielded by the Separatists gave the CIS the clear qualitative advantage over the human/clone armies of the Republic. Clearly, they did not, and indeed their vulnerabilities were in several cases disasterous in terms of single-point failure.

[Sarevok]

It was acts of writters that made droids inferior to clones obviously.

But how we explain this in universe ? Why are not mechanical soldiers superior to organic jelly encased in armor ?

My speculation is that Trade Fed droids were so cheaply made that many assumptions about a robot's inhuman speed, precision and accuracy don't apply to them. Maybe they had a $ 10 webcam for optics, a $ 2 microphone for audio sensors and used a 486 DX CPU.

[Connor MacLeod]

actually IIRC the AOTC novel correctly, the clones were roughly a bit better ((or equal) to the regular Battle droids, and the Super Battle Droids were vastly superior. So in terms of an individual, qualitative advantage.... yeah. The clones did well because they had better combined arms tactics and generally better-lead

I'll see if I can hunt down and dig out the quote.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Over the years, at many places I've worked, I've seen numerous jobs, growing ever more complicated, taken up by machines rather than people. I guess in all these cases, according to Degan's non-logic, the companies are taking a hit in profits and productivity by replacing people with machines.

It's funny when today's reality, with technology and AI far inferior than what SW can produce, already shows that replacing people with machines in many areas is cheaper and more efficient.

Non-logic? In that case, the canon material itself is also "non-logical".

Your Red Herring does not make the case, either. We're not talking about widespread factory automation, which is not something I've attempted to argue against at any point in this thread. The subject at hand, rather, is whether or not the droids fielded by the Separatists gave the CIS the clear qualitative advantage over the human/clone armies of the Republic. Clearly, they did not, and indeed their vulnerabilities were in several cases disasterous in terms of single-point failure.

Which does not establish that droid forces in general cannot be more efficient and more capable than straight-up humans-on-the-ground or humans-in-the-ship-in-large-numbers in SW. You consistently reject the Death Star, the clarification on your fabrications regarding the WDs, and the SD battle droid et al examples.

[Darth Wong]

Are we talking about SW in particular, or droids of any arbitrary level of wanktastic self-sufficiency?

Certainly, SW droids do not appear to have reached truly wanktastic levels yet. They require maintenance, and while they are intelligent enough to perform self-maintenance, they still require supplies and parts. The logistical train of a modern heavily mechanized force is far larger than that of an all-infantry force would be. An over-mechanized force may be unusually vulnerable to the effect of supply line disruption, especially if the wear and tear is such that battle droids routinely break down without proper maintenance (you know, like many kinds of real vehicles).

It would have been interesting to explore the maintenance issue. Perhaps the separatists built droids at a spectacular rate in part because they didn't bother doing maintenance or maintaining the necessary logistical support, so they simply treated their battle droids as disposable units. Use them till they break down, and then discard them. Wouldn't it be funny if there are "battledroid graveyards" all over the Outer Rim worlds.

[Jadeite]

Even better, by this clown's tard logic, the Japanese won the Battle of Tsushima Straits because they had a stronger battleline. Oops; the Russians actually outnumbered them.

Just a nitpick, the Japanese not only had better ships (and crews), but the number of Japanese battleships and cruisers combined outnumbered the Russians, not to mention destroyers and torpedo boats.

[NecronLord]

Certainly, SW droids do not appear to have reached truly wanktastic levels yet. They require maintenance, and while they are intelligent enough to perform self-maintenance, they still require supplies and parts.

I would make a comment about dirt farmers, but it occurs that the 'power converters' Luke wanted to pick up as a typical mundane chore might well be droid parts. And the Lars' have an oil bath, among other things, for maintaining their droids. So droid maintainance may well be one of the larger costs (or even the main cost) of their vapour farm.

The logistical train of a modern heavily mechanized force is far larger than that of an all-infantry force would be. An over-mechanized force may be unusually vulnerable to the effect of supply line disruption, especially if the wear and tear is such that battle droids routinely break down without proper maintenance (you know, like many kinds of real vehicles).

Wouldn't the clone army, with its AT-TEs, juggernauts, and other things, qualify as a heavily over-mechanised force too? Especially as the Republic's army seems quite keen on using legs, compared to repulsors (which may or may not break down more often) as in AAT tanks, or wheels (hailfire droids). I expect both sides would have massive logistical requirements.

It would have been interesting to explore the maintenance issue. Perhaps the separatists built droids at a spectacular rate in part because they didn't bother doing maintenance or maintaining the necessary logistical support, so they simply treated their battle droids as disposable units. Use them till they break down, and then discard them. Wouldn't it be funny if there are "battledroid graveyards" all over the Outer Rim worlds.

I expect it's quite likely for the B1 battle droids, at least. Their supreme military commander seems to have regarded them as more disposable than bullets in a modern army. Similarly, they had huge numbers of B2 battle droids in the clone wars cartoon, that may have also been considered expendable...

I think this is probably quite likely. Dark Empire, among other things, shows that a decent living can be made scavenging battlefields. Perhaps ten years later, B1s were popular work droids on the outer rim.