Fighter Brainbug?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Yeah. I guess it's hard to argue they were going to win when they were being constantly held back as per a greater plan and, uh, they got switched off one day by Anakin.

[Patrick Degan]

1) Droids did not prove to be overwhelmingly superior to humans or other organics during the Clone Wars.

Which Droids?

If you're talking about direct combat, Droidekas are grossly superior to all humans except the Jedi Knights. There's a possibility eight Droiekas could defeat the two Heroes of the Republic too. Droidekas are moving along the production line in AotC at a rate of not less than one per two seconds.

If you're talking about the ships, I honestly don't see how you can make that call.

Excuse me, but droids lost at Naboo and Geonosis and suffered a string of defeats in the Outer Rim territories. The battles in which the droids swept all before them were those led by Gen. Grievous —a cyborg with a talent for formulating unorthodox battle strategies. And even with droid forces, Grievous lost battles at Vildaav and Nadiem and began to be beaten back when the Republic went on the offensive. His fleet got driven back from Coruscant. And once Grievous and the Separatist leadership were killed on Mustafar, the CIS collapsed rather quickly on the battlefront. Indeed, the only reason the CIS got as far as they managed was due to the whole war being stage-managed by Palpatine.

2) Most droids and robots are going to be essentially utility units built and programmed to do a certain number of tasks very efficiently. But in any situation in which their programming has not been designed to cope with, they will fail.

This depends on how you define most droids. R2-D2, one of the canoical class of droids originally designed for starship repair, (In fact that starship-maintaince droid is arguably the most heroic character in the series, he consistantly saves the galaxy and the people around him in one way or another, without thought of reward or even basic respect and dignity, but no, obviously they're stupid because they're maintainance droids.) has been creative enough to the point where he's defied orders, pushed another droid around, because he doubted a Jedi Knight's and a Senator's ability to keep themselves safe. Are you suggesting that someone sat down and decided that what the R2 series really needed was programming in breaking into Geonosian factory-hives?

My my, one can almost hear the "fapping" sound from this distance.

No, I was not suggesting anything about R2D2. Nobody is disputing the utility of Artoo units or their intelligence. However, it is not necessary to build ordinary maintbots or assembly bots to that level of intelligence to get the jobs required of them done.

How much does this marvellously intelligent droid cost? Not enough to be considered unusual as a possession of 'refugees' from Coruscant, or to stand out in a parade of scrap droids on a backwater planet dirt farm.

The WotC RPG establishes their retail cost as 3,500 credits (and the B1s as 800 credits, though the CIS and its members doubtless have economies of scale, even without factoring in self-replication). This stupendously amazing droid intlligence costs just under twice what Luke got for his (very) used car of a model not in demand.

So, that means droids can simply be wasted in such great profligacy as you suggest? And how much of an average workingman's salary in credits is up to an Artoo unit's retail cost?

3) Star Wars AI has shown vulnerability to outside hacks and overrides, as Luke Skywalker and R2D2 did when they caused the World Devestators to first shut down, then to malfunction and attack one another at Mon Calamari (see Dark Empire).

Yes, with Luke Skywalker feeding them details of the World Devastators to D2 from Imperial High Command, they were reprogrammed. The New Republic didn't manage to do that on their own.

Which defeats the argument regarding their vulnerability to outside manipulation... how, exactly?

And NecronLord has still failed to produce anything other than surmise rather than evidence to demonstrate an underlying political reason to maintain large human crews on Imperial starships. Pointing to one line of dialogue from out of six movies as "proof" of widespread antidroid prejudice

Because of course, that's the sum of it. It's not like Dex claims they can't think, or treats their archiving capacities dismissively, nor that they're expended causally (Send a droid!), or that Jedi Knights happily butcher then when they're unarmed and running away, or that they're considered expendable.

And how does any of this drivel point to evidence that the maintenance of large human crews on starships as opposed to near-total droid crews a result of political or legal machinery at work? Where is the Order-in-Council to point to? What Imperial or Republic statute is there to indicate this? Which quote from any main character on either side mentions or infers such? Bothered by the fact that they treat their droids like tools? Guess what: droids ARE tools. Sorry if that doesn't suit you. As to what relevance it has on the overall argument, you have still not met the burden of proof. I'm not interested in what this or that character felt about his tools, I'm interested in what laws or regs there were in the Republic, Empire, or New Republic to support your contention.

In the RotS novellisation, the idea of legislation banishing droids from Coruscant is a rumour, though presumably not carried out once the immediate aftermath of Grievous' incursion is over. (RotS Novel, Hardback, P352) Are you seriously suggesting that a society where such an act is even conscienced is not predjudiced against and worried by droids?

You're seriously wondering why a society whose very existence is being immediately threatened by hordes of droid armies and on which droids might be reprogrammed into units of the Separatist forces might consider such legislation in a panic? And if the legislation was dropped, I must ask: when might such laws have been enacted afterward? Why do we never hear of them? What is the proof that this was extant policy during the time of the Empire? Which, as I must point out again, showed no squemishness in equipping ships with large droid contingents as standard hardware —up to an including SD-10 war-droids.

is not evidence —particularly as we have overwhelming evidence in the canon for large numbers of droids and robots as standard equipment aboard the Death Star and other Imperial or independent as well as Rebel Alliance and later New Republic facilities.

Large (though that's subjective. We see far more humans on the Death Star than droids Even mouse droids.) is not the same as maximal. It is clear that they could be more automated than they are.

So you say. The fact that there was not what you define as a "maximal" droid contingent does not defeat the essential observation.

[Ford Prefect]

And once Grievous and the Separatist leadership were killed on Mustafar, the CIS collapsed rather quickly on the battlefront.

I wonder if this might have had anything to do with the fact that Anakin turned them all off.

[NecronLord]

Excuse me, but droids lost at Naboo and Geonosis

Will of the Force and surprise respectively

and suffered a string of defeats in the Outer Rim territories.]

And they had victories too. We see more Republican victories because the stories follow the heroes. if it was actually as one sided as some sources seem to suggest, the Clone Wars would have been a total curb-stomp with helpless droids getting pounced from all sides by ninja jedi and their clone minions.

The battles in which the droids swept all before them were those led by Gen. Grievous —a cyborg with a talent for formulating unorthodox battle strategies.

I never said that it was safe to do away with sapient direction.

And even with droid forces, Grievous lost battles at Vildaav and Nadiem and began to be beaten back when the Republic went on the offensive. His fleet got driven back from Coruscant. And once Grievous and the Separatist leadership were killed on Mustafar, the CIS collapsed rather quickly on the battlefront. Indeed, the only reason the CIS got as far as they managed was due to the whole war being stage-managed by Palpatine.

On the flipside. The only reason the Republic even had an army with which to resist was because of Palpatine. Given that Palpatine and Dooku eventually planned the Republic to win, I think it's fair to say he's a hinderance to the CIS cause.

My my, one can almost hear the "fapping" sound from this distance.

No, I was not suggesting anything about R2D2. Nobody is disputing the utility of Artoo units or their intelligence. However, it is not necessary to build ordinary maintbots or assembly bots to that level of intelligence to get the jobs required of them done.

R2 D2 is an ordinary maint-bot. He's so cheap backwater farmers can afford one. There are large numbers of astromechs aboard Royal Starships, Coruscanti emissary ships, and presumably, other vessels. The function of the R2 series is copilot/navigator and starship repair. They are a common, mass produced 'droid designed for, you guessed it, starship maintainance.

So, that means droids can simply be wasted in such great profligacy as you suggest?

Compared to humans. Dumbass. It's not optimal to just space them, but it's cheaper than paying for humans.

And how much of an average workingman's salary in credits is up to an Artoo unit's retail cost?

Given that the cash strapped son of a dirt farmer can quickly liquidate 2000 credits, I'm willing to bet that a technician's salary is over four thousand P.A.

Of course, the Galactic Empire isn't above just enslaving people and making them work as spacedy-galley-slaves.

Which defeats the argument regarding their vulnerability to outside manipulation... how, exactly?

Because human-crewed vessels are also vulnerable to it.

And how does any of this drivel point to evidence that the maintenance of large human crews on starships as opposed to near-total droid crews a result of political or legal machinery at work? Where is the Order-in-Council to point to? What Imperial or Republic statute is there to indicate this? Which quote from any main character on either side mentions or infers such? Bothered by the fact that they treat their droids like tools? Guess what: droids ARE tools. Sorry if that doesn't suit you. As to what relevance it has on the overall argument, you have still not met the burden of proof. I'm not interested in what this or that character felt about his tools, I'm interested in what laws or regs there were in the Republic, Empire, or New Republic to support your contention.

You're moving the goalposts. I'm talking about social predjudice. You're talking about laws. There are obviously no laws against droid-crewed starships, or at least, if there were, they were ignored by the Emperor when he orded some built.

You're seriously wondering why a society whose very existence is being immediately threatened by hordes of droid armies and on which droids might be reprogrammed into units of the Separatist forces might consider such legislation in a panic?

No. I'm pointing it out to you to show why it may be politically beneficial for the Empire to use as few droids as possible.

And if the legislation was dropped, I must ask: when might such laws have been enacted afterward? Why do we never hear of them? What is the proof that this was extant policy during the time of the Empire? Which, as I must point out again, showed no squemishness in equipping ships with large droid contingents as standard hardware —up to an including SD-10 war-droids.

See above. While people may not like the idea of droid-crewed starships, the Empire has actually built a number of them. Which leaves us to speculate on why they preffer to have large numbers of warm, fragile, inferior bodies aboard their vessels.

Now. Can we kindly get back to your fucking point:

The opposite argument can also be made. All you need to support a crew for a capital ship is a control pod, and the rest can be ginormous engines, weapons and such. In comparison, the support for one human can take up a sizeable portion of the volume of a fighter. Look at how much of a Saturn Five rocket is inhabitable, compared to say, an F22.

Wrong analogy. A Saturn V is mostly fuel, which is why the only habitable portion of it is the capsule. A capship, on the other hand, actually needs to devote space to the accomodation of a large crew of engineers, repair techs, and other types of support personnel. It is also presumed that if such a vessel were feasible at all, a drive system based on entirely different principles than chemical reaction engines and employing a fuel with a far higher energy density per unit of mass than LOX would be in use.

Given that you have demonstrated that you are indeed talking about Star Wars, and I have shown that various capital starships have been automated to require a comparatively small crew (Lucrehulks, World Devastators, Providence, Recusants, Munificents and for that matter, the Silentium themselves), do you still claim that a Star Wars capital ship actually needs a large crew of organic life forms on board?

If may be desireable, for political reasons. It may even be desireable for technical reasons we don't know about. But it is not a requirement.

[Xon]

Indeed, the only reason the CIS got as far as they managed was due to the whole war being stage-managed by Palpatine.

Now this is bullshit. The CIS where only permitted to get as far as they did because the Clone wars where being staged by Palpatine.

The CIS needed to be a crediable threat, but they couldn't posible be allowed to threaten the Republic which Palpatine was leading in ways he wouldn't allow.

This means the CIS must have been hobbled, virtually from the ground up.

[NecronLord]

A specific example, is that the Techno Union developed cortosis-clad B2s, and Palpatine leaked the location of their factory on Metalorn so that they wouldn't have such a potentially war-winning front line soldier in mass production.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Any attempts to judge a droid army's strength by using the battles during the Clone Wars is useless because the SAME PERSON WAS LEADING BOTH SIDES. It's like watching someone play chess against himself and trying to determine if the black side is better than the white side.

Yeah, Grievous lost battles and won battles. As did the Republic. You know why? Because Palpatine set it up that way. It didn't matter what side was ultimately better. If one side had an advantage, but Palpatine didn't want them to win in that sector, he'd simply manipulate events until they lost.

[Patrick Degan]

Excuse me, but droids lost at Naboo and Geonosis

Will of the Force and surprise respectively

"Will of the Force"?! The Force isn't a deity. And as for surprise, it is you who is yammering on about how much superior droids are to humans and clones as soldiers. They had numbers on the ground but they still lost.

and suffered a string of defeats in the Outer Rim territories.

And they had victories too.

Which I never denied, actually.

We see more Republican victories because the stories follow the heroes. if it was actually as one sided as some sources seem to suggest, the Clone Wars would have been a total curb-stomp with helpless droids getting pounced from all sides by ninja jedi and their clone minions.

No, it was when the CIS lost their leadership and Palpatine withdrew his covert support that the droids got curbstomped. By clone and later human armies.

The battles in which the droids swept all before them were those led by Gen. Grievous —a cyborg with a talent for formulating unorthodox battle strategies.

I never said that it was safe to do away with sapient direction.

It is telling, however, that without talented generalship the droids proved no more effective on the battlefield than humans.

And even with droid forces, Grievous lost battles at Vildaav and Nadiem and began to be beaten back when the Republic went on the offensive. His fleet got driven back from Coruscant. And once Grievous and the Separatist leadership were killed on Mustafar, the CIS collapsed rather quickly on the battlefront. Indeed, the only reason the CIS got as far as they managed was due to the whole war being stage-managed by Palpatine.

On the flipside. The only reason the Republic even had an army with which to resist was because of Palpatine. Given that Palpatine and Dooku eventually planned the Republic to win, I think it's fair to say he's a hinderance to the CIS cause.

You mean the cause which proved not to have a fucking chance at all without them, as events demonstrate.

My my, one can almost hear the "fapping" sound from this distance.

No, I was not suggesting anything about R2D2. Nobody is disputing the utility of Artoo units or their intelligence. However, it is not necessary to build ordinary maintbots or assembly bots to that level of intelligence to get the jobs required of them done.

R2 D2 is an ordinary maint-bot.

An "ordinary" maintbot with AI, advanced codebreaking and navigation capabilities, hidden weapons, fightercraft interface, and jetpacks. You are, I trust, joking?

He's so cheap backwater farmers can afford one.

Backwater farmers can afford USED droids. I didn't see Owen Lars dropping by the nearest Industrial Automation dealership for a factory-fresh unit.

There are large numbers of astromechs aboard Royal Starships, Coruscanti emissary ships, and presumably, other vessels. The function of the R2 series is copilot/navigator and starship repair. They are a common, mass produced 'droid designed for, you guessed it, starship maintainance.

The astromech droids primarily designed for maintenance functions were somewhat more limited than the R2 series —which were also specifically designed to be able to fit into a standard Republic starfighter's astromech slot. Further, more advanced models were more specifically tailored as dedicated logistics and sensor units and were priced well outside the general consumer market's range —making the military the only customers for such units.

So, that means droids can simply be wasted in such great profligacy as you suggest?

Compared to humans. Dumbass. It's not optimal to just space them, but it's cheaper than paying for humans.

I know you think you're making a point, but you really aren't.

And how much of an average workingman's salary in credits is up to an Artoo unit's retail cost?

Given that the cash strapped son of a dirt farmer can quickly liquidate 2000 credits, I'm willing to bet that a technician's salary is over four thousand P.A.

Non-sequitur. Selling off a used speeder for below their version of bluebook value does not equal the ability to afford a brand new, high-priced consumer item like a showroom model astromech droid. As for what you are "willing to bet" is the salary for a technician, that falls into the realm of conjecture and is therefore meaningless. And I will remind you again that the dirt farmer's uncle was looking at used, not new, droids.

Of course, the Galactic Empire isn't above just enslaving people and making them work as spacedy-galley-slaves.

The Empire didn't simply enslave people wholesale even if they did legalise slavery. It was rather used as a threat and a convenient enforcement tool and mostly in the Outer Rim territories. There is no evidence however that they used slave crews aboard ships of the Imperial Navy or as troopers in the ground forces.

Which defeats the argument regarding their vulnerability to outside manipulation... how, exactly?

Because human-crewed vessels are also vulnerable to it.

Really? Why didn't the Empire use this capability against Rebellion or New Republic starships, then? And once again, how does this defeat the argument that fully automated World Devastators proved vulnerable to outside hacking? It should also be noted that the Eclipse, Palpatine's flagship, was one of the most extensively automated starships in service as opposed to standard stardestroyers and Executors. That is a clue to its similar vulnerability.

And how does any of this drivel point to evidence that the maintenance of large human crews on starships as opposed to near-total droid crews a result of political or legal machinery at work? Where is the Order-in-Council to point to? What Imperial or Republic statute is there to indicate this? Which quote from any main character on either side mentions or infers such? Bothered by the fact that they treat their droids like tools? Guess what: droids ARE tools. Sorry if that doesn't suit you. As to what relevance it has on the overall argument, you have still not met the burden of proof. I'm not interested in what this or that character felt about his tools, I'm interested in what laws or regs there were in the Republic, Empire, or New Republic to support your contention.

You're moving the goalposts.

In a word —bullshit. YOU are making directly the argument that the only reason why starships remain primarily crewed by humans is due to political policy but you have not produced one ounce of evidence to demonstrate that this is so.

Shall I quote back to you your own words:

Presumably the Galactic Empire/Republic's large crew sizes are political, possibly due to the Katana fleet disaster (which was only later found to not be due to the automation) and of course, fear of droids 'we don't like their kind here.'

Insisting that you actually demonstrate the bona-fides of this position is not moving the goalpoasts.

I'm talking about social predjudice. You're talking about laws.

Which, whether you wish to admit the concept or not, underlie things like actual military policy and regulations regarding the use of droids in service —or their prohibition. Further, I failed to see any officer on either side so squeamish over droids that they weren't willing to use them or have them as standard equipment on starships.

There are obviously no laws against droid-crewed starships, or at least, if there were, they were ignored by the Emperor when he orded some built.

Begging the Question Fallacy.

You're seriously wondering why a society whose very existence is being immediately threatened by hordes of droid armies and on which droids might be reprogrammed into units of the Separatist forces might consider such legislation in a panic?

No. I'm pointing it out to you to show why it may be politically beneficial for the Empire to use as few droids as possible.

"Could be", "if", "may be", "perhaps". I'm still not seeing anything like actual evidence to back your contention. Lots and lots of conjecture, but that really doesn't answer the question satisfactorily. Nor does it explain away the large contingents of droids on Imperial starships or the Death Star.

And if the legislation was dropped, I must ask: when might such laws have been enacted afterward? Why do we never hear of them? What is the proof that this was extant policy during the time of the Empire? Which, as I must point out again, showed no squemishness in equipping ships with large droid contingents as standard hardware —up to an including SD-10 war-droids.

See above.

I did. Now try actually answering the question.

While people may not like the idea of droid-crewed starships, the Empire has actually built a number of them. Which leaves us to speculate on why they preffer to have large numbers of warm, fragile, inferior bodies aboard their vessels.

We can speculate all we like. That, however, does not, as I must repeat, provide support for your contention.

Two possibilities:

1) Starships remain primarily human-crewed due to some unnamed, unreferenced, unmentioned Imperial (or New Republic) political policy or law for which we have no source in the canon or official literature, or...

2) Starships remain primarily human-crewed due to reasons of less-than-acceptable reliability of fully automated systems —as demonstrated by the example of the remote hacking and shutdown of the World Devastators at Mon Calamari.

Due to the lack of supporting evidence for 1, Occam's Razor favours 2.

Given that you have demonstrated that you are indeed talking about Star Wars, and I have shown that various capital starships have been automated to require a comparatively small crew (Lucrehulks, World Devastators, Providence, Recusants, Munificents and for that matter, the Silentium themselves), do you still claim that a Star Wars capital ship actually needs a large crew of organic life forms on board?

If may be desireable, for political reasons. It may even be desireable for technical reasons we don't know about. But it is not a requirement.

As you wish...

And as for this:

Any attempts to judge a droid army's strength by using the battles during the Clone Wars is useless because the SAME PERSON WAS LEADING BOTH SIDES. It's like watching someone play chess against himself and trying to determine if the black side is better than the white side.

Yeah, Grievous lost battles and won battles. As did the Republic. You know why? Because Palpatine set it up that way. It didn't matter what side was ultimately better. If one side had an advantage, but Palpatine didn't want them to win in that sector, he'd simply manipulate events until they lost.

As mentioned before, it is very telling that once Palpatine ceased his covert support for the CIS, and once their leadership were killed, their war effort collapsed.

[Connor MacLeod]

We've seen/heard of droids repairing other droids. R2D2 helped repair C3PO both in AOTC and in TESB (hell as I recall even 3P0 was helping.)

We've also had examples of "self repairing" droids:

1 - Dark Empire 2's SD-10 battle droids had "self healing" metals incorporated into them.

2 - The YVK droids from the NJO also were "self healing" IIRC from Star by Star.

3 - As a third eaxmple, though I'm not sure ow applicable it is - Vuffi Raa (from the Lando Calrissian adventures) could also self-repair himself. While we learn he's a droid made by the Silentum, its worth noting that in various sources he shows up in, his capabilities have been noted to match the performance of higher-end droids, and none of his abilities to my knowledge actually were those that were worth remarking on. (His hyperdrive calculation abilities over "less than light second" distances in Hutt Gambit for example.) It's useful as a supplementary sourcec if nothing else.

Moreover, onw of the YJK books had mention of animated metal sealant which seemed to be a very common object. Adapting that for "self healing/repairing" droids does not seem all that unreasonable.

[NecronLord]

Given that you have demonstrated that you are indeed talking about Star Wars, and I have shown that various capital starships have been automated to require a comparatively small crew (Lucrehulks, World Devastators, Providence, Recusants, Munificents and for that matter, the Silentium themselves), do you still claim that a Star Wars capital ship actually needs a large crew of organic life forms on board?

If may be desireable, for political reasons. It may even be desireable for technical reasons we don't know about. But it is not a requirement.

As you wish...

Good. We'll snip all the jibber jabber. Your concession is accepted; the amount of space allotted to organic crew space in a Star Wars capital ship is entirely a function of its design, and it can be extremely low, potentially lower, as a portion of overall volume, than in a human crewed fighter. There is no evidence to support your original assertion that there 'actually needs' to be a large crew of organics on such a ship.

[Connor MacLeod]

Large human crews in Imperial warships may simply be a sign of arrogance or a measure of "acceptable" redundancy: you could probably crew the buggers with droids, but that probably would make people nervous without a very good overriding reason. (IE massive and dangerous extragalactic alien invasion.)

It may also quite simply be arrogance or convenience. Its not exactly as if that's not been a factor in ship design before (*coughcough Bridge towersuperstructure*)

Organically crewed may seem inefficient, but to be blunt there's no real reason to go otherwise The Empire was the dominant power in the galaxy and noone, not even the Rebels represented any serious threat in a conventional sense.There's very littel reason for Palpy to pull the gloves off, ,so to speak (or for other people to let him - its not as if Palpy operated in a vaccuum even in the OT era - else what point the Death Star?)

[NecronLord]

Oh hell yes. I don't think it's a bad thing that Imperial ships have large crews. In fact, I like to imagine that Palpatine probably made as many jobs in the military as he could just to eat into unemployment figures.

[Illuminatus Primus]

And all that is fine as long as you ignore three little facts:

1) Droids did not prove to be overwhelmingly superior to humans or other organics during the Clone Wars.

Covered. But obviously the faction prefering droid forces was supposed to lose. Hard to argue the Balmorran SD-9s and SD-10s suffered from the same faults as the LOLZ ROGER ROGER joke battle droids of the poorly-named Clone War.

2) Most droids and robots are going to be essentially utility units built and programmed to do a certain number of tasks very efficiently. But in any situation in which their programming has not been designed to cope with, they will fail.

And if those tasks include specific war roles? Even with organics or specialized computers in command, no reason you can't have automatons who just know how to wade across a plain and kill everything.

3) Star Wars AI has shown vulnerability to outside hacks and overrides, as Luke Skywalker and R2D2 did when they caused the World Devestators to first shut down, then to malfunction and attack one another at Mon Calamari (see Dark Empire).

Except that has no bearing on general SW AI and autonomy because it was stated in the comic liner-notes and accompanying sourcebook that they were specifically designed from the ground-up so remote command could be assumed at any time and could not be overriden because of Palpatine's obsession with complete control and his paranoia of betrayal.

And NecronLord has still failed to produce anything other than surmise rather than evidence to demonstrate an underlying political reason to maintain large human crews on Imperial starships. Pointing to one line of dialogue from out of six movies as "proof" of widespread antidroid prejudice is not evidence —particularly as we have overwhelming evidence in the canon for large numbers of droids and robots as standard equipment aboard the Death Star and other Imperial or independent as well as Rebel Alliance and later New Republic facilities.

Clearly the Death Star proves that automation is basically arbitrarily scalable and fitting it to a problem of mass-production is one of will, rather than capability. Certainly the Death Star did not have the crew complement one might expect given its volume relative to small spacecraft.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Notice the harping on "hacking" while we know the World Devestator paramount function was to be politically reliable. Anyone with the correct command codes and access to the Master Control Signal was supposed to have access and absolute control at will, beyond any other concern the Devestators might have, including surviving. There was no "hack." General Skywalker pilfered the command codes and access to the Master Control Signal while serving as Supreme Commander of Armed Forces for the Empire, and had unlimited access, as was intended. There was no failure of automation; the system functioned exactly as it was supposed to, only the Supreme Commander of Armed Forces was not supposed to issue self-destruct commands or provide the codes and access to the Rebellion which could sabotage the Devestators function at will thereafter.

[Illuminatus Primus]

They aren't. The CIS had self-replicating factories and armaments. The Empire doesn't use those (Though it had the capacity, see World Devastators) for what are presumably political reasons.

One last nitpick: they do have access and make use of such techniques. The Death Stars were constructed using self-replicating construction droids.

[NecronLord]

One last nitpick: they do have access and make use of such techniques. The Death Stars were constructed using self-replicating construction droids.

Now that you mention it, that seems familiar (not to mention sensible). What's the source? Death Star the novel perhaps?

[Illuminatus Primus]

One last nitpick: they do have access and make use of such techniques. The Death Stars were constructed using self-replicating construction droids.

Now that you mention it, that seems familiar (not to mention sensible). What's the source? Death Star the novel perhaps?

Death Star and Inside the Worlds of the Star Wars Trilogy (regarding DS2, as well).

[Patrick Degan]

Given that you have demonstrated that you are indeed talking about Star Wars, and I have shown that various capital starships have been automated to require a comparatively small crew (Lucrehulks, World Devastators, Providence, Recusants, Munificents and for that matter, the Silentium themselves), do you still claim that a Star Wars capital ship actually needs a large crew of organic life forms on board?

If may be desireable, for political reasons. It may even be desireable for technical reasons we don't know about. But it is not a requirement.

As you wish...

Good. We'll snip all the jibber jabber. Your concession is accepted;

I see you fail to grasp the concept of "sarcasm". And you know where you can shove your little "concession accepted" pronouncement, don't you?

the amount of space allotted to organic crew space in a Star Wars capital ship is entirely a function of its design, and it can be extremely low, potentially lower, as a portion of overall volume, than in a human crewed fighter.

The sad thing is that you really imagine that's an adequate rebuttal to anything. Of course most of any warship's internal volume is going to be it's machinery given how large and complex the thing must be in order to function. That doesn't mean a ship won't have a large crew if it is large and complex enough to require one. Trying to compare the crewspace of a warship to that of a fightercraft —a far smaller and less complex vehicle— is especially ludicrous, for reasons which should be all too obvious.

There is no evidence to support your original assertion that there 'actually needs' to be a large crew of organics on such a ship.

Handwaving does not a rebuttal make, either. You're the one claiming that large crews are not necessary and only exist on Imperial starships for political reasons, but when pressed to actually demonstrate supports for this assertion, you just fall back on repetition. Whereas there exist incidents which demonstrate that a fully automated system may not be sufficiently reliable —as in the example of the World Devastators being hacked, which implies a reason why large crews of organics on starships might still be considered a necessity.

[Illuminatus Primus]

The sad thing is that you really imagine that's an adequate rebuttal to anything. Of course most of any warship's internal volume is going to be it's machinery given how large and complex the thing must be in order to function. That doesn't mean a ship won't have a large crew if it is large and complex enough to require one. Trying to compare the crewspace of a warship to that of a fightercraft —a far smaller and less complex vehicle— is especially ludicrous, for reasons which should be all too obvious.

And the Death Star? Which obviously is basically a very large warship yet only has on the order of millions of crew. Why don't CIS ships count? Do you have evidence that they pound-for-pound are inferior combatants compared to Republic starships? Simply stating they lost the war is not such evidence. In fact, ROTS ICS suggests equivalence pound-for-pound between CIS and Republic starships (it takes a flotilla of Venators to credibly challenge a Clone War-refit Lucrehulk-class freighter-cum-battleship).

Handwaving does not a rebuttal make, either. You're the one claiming that large crews are not necessary and only exist on Imperial starships for political reasons, but when pressed to actually demonstrate supports for this assertion, you just fall back on repetition.

And you just repeatedly ignore the Lucrehulk and Death Star examples...why? Simply stating they lost the war does not substantiate that they are inferior combatants all other things equal.

Whereas there exist incidents which demonstrate that a fully automated system may not be sufficiently reliable —as in the example of the World Devastators being hacked, which implies a reason why large crews of organics on starships might still be considered a necessity.

Except there WERE sizable crew aboard the World Devestators, and they were designed to respond to authorized remote command above all other concerns. They were not "hacked"; R2's access was authorized using codes acquired from General HQ by the Supreme Commander of Armed Forces. I don't buy a robot from Sony designed fundamentally so I can override its AI with a remote and then call them and complain their AI design blows because it can be overriden.

[NecronLord]

And the Death Star? Which obviously is basically a very large warship yet only has on the order of millions of crew. Why don't CIS ships count? Do you have evidence that they pound-for-pound are inferior combatants compared to Republic starships?

Frankly, I think this is a waste of time. Regardless of what can be derived from the actual examples, he's not going to give up his claims.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Yeah, he gets like this in most threads where he's done his cursory Google-fu.

[Patrick Degan]

And the Death Star? Which obviously is basically a very large warship yet only has on the order of millions of crew. Why don't CIS ships count? Do you have evidence that they pound-for-pound are inferior combatants compared to Republic starships? Simply stating they lost the war is not such evidence. In fact, ROTS ICS suggests equivalence pound-for-pound between CIS and Republic starships (it takes a flotilla of Venators to credibly challenge a Clone War-refit Lucrehulk-class freighter-cum-battleship).

The fact that they lost the fucking war says lots about whether or not all-droid forces proved any more effective on the battlefronts than organic forces. The only real measure by which a judgment can be rendered is results. The final result says they didn't.

Handwaving does not a rebuttal make, either. You're the one claiming that large crews are not necessary and only exist on Imperial starships for political reasons, but when pressed to actually demonstrate supports for this assertion, you just fall back on repetition.

And you just repeatedly ignore the Lucrehulk and Death Star examples...why? Simply stating they lost the war does not substantiate that they are inferior combatants all other things equal.

Results. The only real measure that counts. CIS fleets with Lucrehulks were beaten back by human-crewed Venators. They did not prove to be any more effective or more efficient in battle than stardestroyers.

Oh, and remember what happened when the Lucrehulk droid control ship was destroyed over Naboo? What happened to the droid troopers who were functioning via central control from that ship?

Whereas there exist incidents which demonstrate that a fully automated system may not be sufficiently reliable —as in the example of the World Devastators being hacked, which implies a reason why large crews of organics on starships might still be considered a necessity.

Except there WERE sizable crew aboard the World Devestators, and they were designed to respond to authorized remote command above all other concerns. They were not "hacked"; R2's access was authorized using codes acquired from General HQ by the Supreme Commander of Armed Forces. I don't buy a robot from Sony designed fundamentally so I can override its AI with a remote and then call them and complain their AI design blows because it can be overriden.

Droids which didn't double-check the command code. Droids which reacted as they were programmed to. Central droid brains which subsequently got infiltrated with a virus programme which scrambled their function. Which left those expensive toys useless and with nobody on board to cut off access or reboot the central control system from a protected archival store to prevent that occurrence.

Yeah, he gets like this in most threads where he's done his cursory Google-fu.

Style-over-Substance Fallacy.

[Ford Prefect]

The fact that they lost the fucking war says lots about whether or not all-droid forces proved any more effective on the battlefronts than organic forces. The only real measure by which a judgment can be rendered is results. The final result says they didn't.

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.

[Illuminatus Primus]

The fact that they lost the fucking war says lots about whether or not all-droid forces proved any more effective on the battlefronts than organic forces. The only real measure by which a judgment can be rendered is results. The final result says they didn't.

In other words, take the outcome from the very complex interaction with many variables (including the fact that they would have lost regardless of the quality of their materiel) and do my homework for me.

Again, how come there appears to be pound-for-pound parity between the CIS warships and Republican ones, if droid forces are intrinsically inferior?

Results. The only real measure that counts. CIS fleets with Lucrehulks were beaten back by human-crewed Venators. They did not prove to be any more effective or more efficient in battle than stardestroyers.

Right, and that could not possibly be because they were outnumbered? Quality of forces can be isolated as the deciding factor only if you CONTROL over variables. This is, y'know, science. Your analysis is pseudoscience (I'm not going to control any variables then declare my variable causally linked to the outcome!).

Oh, and remember what happened when the Lucrehulk droid control ship was destroyed over Naboo? What happened to the droid troopers who were functioning via central control from that ship?

Except they recieved autonomous programming thereafter. Bzzt. Do I even need to begin to list the number of Clone War battles where droid forces functioned without a DCS?

And the Death Star? It functioned uniquely poorly due to its moderation, did it? Now you could slaughter the 25,000 ISD Imperial Navy with the tens of millions of droid-ISD-equivalents you could build in place of the Death Star. Arguing now that 100s of droid ships are worth only 1 human one?

Droids which didn't double-check the command code. Droids which reacted as they were programmed to. Central droid brains which subsequently got infiltrated with a virus programme which scrambled their function. Which left those expensive toys useless and with nobody on board to cut off access or reboot the central control system from a protected archival store to prevent that occurrence.

Except they the code was valid, and if Palpatine wanted to destroy his own Devestators using the MCS, he was supposed to be able. IF IT CAN BE LOCKED OUT AT WILL, WHAT GOOD IS IT AS A FAIL-SAFE?

[Illuminatus Primus]

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.