CIS Battle Droid AI

[Boombaye]

Righto, first thread I've posted. Decided to leave something simple.

What bugs me most about Battledroid AI's is their inability to shoot straight.

I don't care about 'cheap, low tech', an aimbot in Modern Warfare 2 can get better hits. It's more or less a combat platform purposely designed for shooty.

So why the sucktastic AI? They're smart enough to converse with one another, issue orders and panic, so why can't they combine an aimbot with their usual target recognition software?

Logically, a computerised platform would be better than a Clone, as a computer knows where it's bits are at all times, shouldn't suffer from morale, vertigo and be less affected by disorientation.

This whole thing might come down to the fact that they're the universe's answer for cannon fodder/comic relief, but I wanna hear your thoughts.

[Covenant]

Other people have gone into this before, so if you search you can find more in-depth and comprehensive explanations. But assuming I can't easily convince you that aiming for a droid is a lot more complicated than a CoD bot, you should look at the platform in play. You must remember that proper aiming software does not assume proper aiming hardware. Apparently lightweight Battledroids using small limbs to aim weapons designed for people with soft form-fitting bodyparts that get good grip may not be the best combination for accuracy, and precise motors to aim quickly AND finely, on top of the apparent desire for them to be given extremely little pre-battle training (to let the AI mature/calibrate like a seed AI would) and just shoved out as fodder...

Yes, they're meant to be comic relief mooks to be chopped to pieces, but there are ways to explain this without resorting to hand-waving just yet.

[jollyreaper]

Yes, they're meant to be comic relief mooks to be chopped to pieces, but there are ways to explain this without resorting to hand-waving just yet.

There really isn't. Stormtroopers were badass in A New Hope. They wiped the floor with the soldiers on the consulate ship. They massacred the Jawas. The only reason why the ridiculous escape on the Death Star worked was because they were told to let them go. Good showing first movie. They killed a lot of extras on Hoth. Sure, the heroes made it away -- it would be hard to tell a good story if you lose your heroes in the first act. But all the dead extras showed you these guys meant business. Bespin, eh, they had a bad go of it. I really don't think stormtroopers are the surrendering type. This is only the first strike against them. Then in Jedi it all went to hell. The Emperor's finest legions vanquished by teddy bears. Total casualties inflicted were limited to two Ewoks. The Polish Army in WWII gave a better showing than the Imperials and they were attacking panzers on horseback.

When the main enemy in a serious drama is meant to be comic relief mooks, you know you screwed up. "Derr, the main enemy is teh Sith!" Yeah, but who's supposed to have the Republic shaking in their moonboots and willing to hand over power to Palpatine? Oh, right. The CIS. The CIS with their comic relief mook army. "Derr, you're right." Thanks.

The thing that kills me here is a droid army should be awesome and terrifying. Terminators and Skynet, effectively a droid army. Terrifying in all ways. Bumbling jar-jar droids? Really? That's supposed to scare the Republic into allowing dictatorship? You could make these things so goddamn terrifying that hippie pacifists would be screaming for dark side help. "Enslave us so long as you keep us from being chopped up by these things!"

The most scary part of a droid army is that there's nobody to say no. In a human army, the general orders an atrocity and that has to be carried out all the way down the chain of command to the solider pulling the trigger. At any point they could say no, this is wrong. The scariest moment for the commander is when he gives an order he isn't sure his troops will obey. Classic example is putting down a civil insurrection. Will they side with the loyalists or the rebels? Droid army, there's no doubt. There's nobody to talk later about atrocities, nobody to have second thoughts. The technicians maintaining the droids have no idea what was done with them. This is precisely the thing that makes our current day combat drones so frightening. Reach out and kill someone anywhere on the globe and the number of people in the decision loop is very, very small.

How could Lucas have taken something so terrifying and neutered it to comic relief? Well, I guess the same way he changed the wookies to ewoks for ROTJ. Could you imagine that fight if he'd stuck with the wookies as planned? I could accept the Imperials losing in a fight like that.

[DatBurnTho11]

I may be REALLY going off on a limb here, but it might be possible that the droid armies were in some sense prevented from being too effective by Darth Sidious himself?

When you consider Palpatine's overall goal to establish himself as emperor, having CIS forces that would wipe the floor with the Republic troops would not exactly inspire public confidence in Palpatine's effectiveness as leader. From the little I know about Palpatine's rise to power, it was pretty evident that he was effectively in control of both parties involved in the Republic-CIS conflict. He needed to engineer this conflict to pose a significant risk to the Republic in order to justify granting the Supreme Chancellor (Palpatine) emergency powers. However, he also needed the conflict to demonstrate that giving these powers to the Supreme Chancellor was an effective means of addressing this significant risk and achieving the "safe and secure society". In other words, he needed his clone troopers to just manage to beat the CIS under his coordination/rule.

Now, in my opinion at least, any war between a clone army and a droid army that would need to be on equal footing would require a substantial disparity in combat efficacy to make up for the staggering numerical disadvantage that the clone's would face. In the SW Clone Wars TV Series episode "Ambush", Dooku mentions a 100:1 ratio of droids to clones, but I personally feel that the extreme time and resources required to clone and train an army compared to the ease of an assembly-line production of droids would lead to numerical odds even more in favor of the droid army. I never really bought the Kaminoan argument that the clones are "vastly superior to droids" because they can "think creatively" as it seems like through supercomputers and coordination software droids could possibly function more effective tactically (though I don't really have any experience/knowledge in this matter). Also, can someone back me up on any EU statements that depicted other combat-effective droids that might also be effectively mass produced from different SW time periods?

If this is all true though, then it is possible that Palpatine might have had some influence to ensure that CIS AI software was limited just enough that the droids would not overwhelm the clones because of their numerical advantage? Though it was obviously capitalized on for laughs in the prequel series (and especially in the TV series), it is possible that the limitations on the CIS AI had some role in the overall story.

[Uncluttered]

I may be REALLY going off on a limb here, but it might be possible that the droid armies were in some sense prevented from being too effective by Darth Sidious himself?

I agree.
The droid army was shutdown, whereas he kept the clones.
Sidious never intended to keep the droid army. The droid forces were lowest-bidder tech. In another "life", those droids would be tending bar, or working the farms. Much of their strategic victories is due to Sidious's sabotauge of the grand army.

He needed to get rid of one of the armies quickly, so he could end the war and become emporer. You can't easily shutdown a clone army that way.

I doubt Sidious would have trusted a droid army for the empire. He can't read droid minds, and he can't really use droids as an occupation force either.

[Boombaye]

I doubt Sidi woulda done that much damage to it. Thing is, I don't know why nobody piped up. Armies should iron out issues like their soldiers not being able to shoot straight.

It bugs me that nobody complains and these droids have silly conversations in the middle of a battlefield. That might mostly be The Inferior Clone Wars, though.

[Uncluttered]

I doubt Sidi woulda done that much damage to it. Thing is, I don't know why nobody piped up. Armies should iron out issues like their soldiers not being able to shoot straight.

It bugs me that nobody complains and these droids have silly conversations in the middle of a battlefield. That might mostly be The Inferior Clone Wars, though.

If you consider that the droids were not designed for battle, but deliberately adapted at minimal cost, you can explain a lot. Wasn't Grevious often complaining about their stupidity?
1. Bad aim: These droids were designed to haul garbage, or plant trees or whatever. They didn't need fast optics, precise servos etc. But hey, you can make-em cheap.
2. Silly conversations: This is a user interface, the Droid has a chatterbot installed to make it more personable to the user (meatbag).
3. AI controlled from one ship in TPM: Typically these droids all worked in the same snew factory, making snew all day, every day. They brain upgrade was not needed.
4. They piped up: That's when you get the expensive commando droids, IG-88s etc. I'm sure Sidious made sure that the majority of procurement was for the garbage droids.
5. You can even explain away the short little guns by saying that they skimped on radiation sheilding, and accurate magnetic barrels.

[Boombaye]

1. Bad aim: These droids were designed to haul garbage, or plant trees or whatever. They didn't need fast optics, precise servos etc. But hey, you can make-em cheap.

Wookiepedia states the OOM series droids, which provided a base for the later, cheaper , were seen across the galaxy as security and crew for the Trade Defense Force. They weren't hauling garbage. They were designed with combat in mind, even having a head shaped like a Neimoidian skull to intimidate enemies.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/OOM-series_battle_droid
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/B1_battle_droid

2. Silly conversations: This is a user interface, the Droid has a chatterbot installed to make it more personable to the user (meatbag).

It's a user interface most people dislike. I doubt a general would object to losing a bit of a droid's user friendly features for some extra combat effectiveness.

3. AI controlled from one ship in TPM: Typically these droids all worked in the same snew factory, making snew all day, every day. They brain upgrade was not needed.

See the links above. They were originally designed for fighting, crewing the Trade Defense Force.

You know when a hummer is adapted from the Humvee? It loses it's armour. So if the civvie version were to go military, it'd gain armour. These are obvious, needed changes. Adding a few hundred megs of shoot straighting data isn't gonna hurt the overall war effort in a war you're already fighting across an entire galaxy.

4. They piped up: That's when you get the expensive commando droids, IG-88s etc. I'm sure Sidious made sure that the majority of procurement was for the garbage droids.

Useless conversations during battle are just that. Useless. There's no need to talk when away from a superior. Logically, a droid would be able to communicate through the network at the speed of light.

5. You can even explain away the short little guns by saying that they skimped on radiation sheilding, and accurate magnetic barrels.

The Pedia states the most Battle Droids use is a light, inaccurate weapon. They did skimp on heat absorption, but it is mentioned that the Baktoid Armour Workshop "had no complaints" as a droid wouldn't react as badly to heat from a weapon.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/E-5_blaster_rifle

Another troubling thing is their tendency to panic and even run. These droids have little to no value to their commanders already, turning your back only makes you a better target. I've always found an unyielding enemy to be more frightening.

They shouldn't be built with any self-preservation in mind.

[jollyreaper]

Palpy making the droids suck? I hate this kind of retconning.

The only good idea in the nutrilogy is the hidden badguy creating a crisis to trick people into going along with his plan. This is real world politics and seen all the time in history.

You could argue that the advantage he saw in creating a droid army is that he really can shut it down when it is no longer useful. History is full of blowbacks along the lady who swallowed the fly and swallowed a spider and then a bird and then a cat all to take care of the original problem. Look at the CIA helping to create the mujahedeen in Afghanistan only to have them eventually grow into the Taliban. Look at the Germans sending Lenin back to Russia in WWI hoping to start a revolution and knock them out of the war. It was a hail mary pass but it worked only they ended up in a war with communist Russia a generation later. Whoops.

So you could argue that the advantage of a droid army as follows:
1. The useful idiots he's tricking into rebelling are industrialists and have more access to manufacturing than warm bodies
2. A droid army can be built and deployed far more quickly than a fleshling army could be put together, especially seeing as they'd never deployed giant armies before, had no history of it.
3. Even if they did create an army, now you've got the issue of trained military men and aliens who might not like being demobilized after the war. See human history for the known problem of having military-trained men who are out of work and feeling desperate. You can deactivate and scrap a droid army, no problem.
4. Zero worries about the droids disobeying orders.

Makes a lot of sense. But the same can't be said for the clone army.
1. Stormtroopers are clones? Goes against what's established in preexisting canon. "Short for a stormtrooper?" He would have stuck out like the Sheriff in Klan robes in Blazing Saddles. Stormies are most explicitly not clones in the OT.
2. So you start with a clone army, then get rid of them and replace them with natural-borns? How does that work? That's like giving up gunpowder weapons to go back to sword and bow. Yeah, the Japanese were able to that but only because of how isolated their islands were. Any enemy who embraces modern weapons can kick their asses, see Commodore Perry. Palpatine is not a traditionalist, he's a pragmatist. He'd stick with clones if they're effective and that breaks continuity and should not have been introduced.
3. Bobba Fett's a clone and his badass dad was the template for the army? God, that's got fanwank stains all over it. Fanwank likes to put all sorts of golly gee neato connections where they simply don't fit or try to work ideas into existing canon that are not substantiated by what we see on-screen or simply makes the story more convoluted and complicated to fit everything in.
4. Elaboration on 2, mass-cloning like that would be a society-changing thing. Overlooking the implications is like inventing the transporter and saying it's just going to be used to move people and completely overlooking the implications of how it could cure diseases, provide eternal youth, and also be used directly in combat like beaming pieces out of an enemy ship. I always wanted to see the Enterprise go up against baddies who don't know who they're dealing with. Captain orders the transporter room to target the enemy's warp core and beam it out of the ship and rematerialize it five klicks away. "Are you ready to negotiate like civilized beings? We promise to put it back when we're done."

Now you might ask why the droid thing could work and clones not when neither are seen in the OT. Simple. Droids are freakin' scary and used by the baddies. You could easily see a cultural taboo form around ever using such weapons again, it would be a war crime. Note that poison gas was used all over in WWI. In WWII both sides had it but Hitler made a special point not to use his stocks since he feared the Allies had far more than he and his troops would be in an even worse situation because of it. The US used nukes in WWII but since we were the victors we didn't bother feeling bad about it and continued to build our stockpiles. And yes, both the US and USSR had germ and chemical weapons through the cold war but eventually gave them up. Horrific weapons but without the usefulness to justify them like nukes. More horrible but more useful.

So with the droid army used by the rebels and thus being crushed by the republic, you could easily see a public bias against the use of combat droids where it becomes a cultural taboo. Clones, being the weapons of victory, would not have any such injunction against them. But I could easily see cloning becoming a horrifying taboo if it were the rebels using them to manufacture an army. Because really, clones and droids are both about cranking out armies far faster than you could grow them with natural-born citizens.

The clones bug me so much because they're so painfully late additions to the story. There's nothing to support the idea in the earlier material, in fact there are direct contradictions, and yet they get crammed into the story without a concern for continuity and logic. It's like comic book logic where whole arcs of the story play out completely straight and then it's revealed all to be part of some baddie's ultimate plan. No, it wasn't. You just made that part up. The new Battlestar Galactica was one of the worst offenders with this crap. Yeah, I know when you write a story you get ideas later on that you might not have had at the beginning. But if your new idea can't work within the existing structure of the story, you either modify or scrap it. The Cylons have a plan? No, they don't. They're making it up as they go. Same with Lucas.

[jollyreaper]

Another troubling thing is their tendency to panic and even run. These droids have little to no value to their commanders already, turning your back only makes you a better target. I've always found an unyielding enemy to be more frightening.

They shouldn't be built with any self-preservation in mind.

If anything, "dumb" battledroids should feel more like a zombie horde. Even if each unit is relatively stupid, the sheer numbers and ceaseless pressure should become a thing of horror. Soldiers coming off the line would be suffering from d-shock. Even if the droids do not show any signs of tactical brilliance or go through their motions in an uninspired, routine fashion, freakin' targeting systems should be spot on. Look at the Phalanx system used on modern warships. Even if it were the case that blasters are like muskets, inaccurate when fired individually and only of use when fired in volleys, a droid army armed with these things should feel overwhelming.

[aieeegrunt]

The CIS, being a union of rich industrialists, is probably riddled with higher levels of corruption than the Pentagon and Goldman Sachs combined. I imagine these droids are built as bargain basement cheaply as possible; the servos, actuators, motors, the things that the droid uses to move will be just good enough to allow it to walk and shoot.

I mean if you can shave a thousandth of a credit off the cost of a droid by using cheap parts and you are building them by the billions that's a lot of money! Who cares if it cuts the droids accuracy in half because the motors and sensors in it's arms are too crappy to let it line up a shot, I Got Mine and I'm chilling in my floating hedonism palace snorting death sticks from between the air bags of green tentacle head hooker chicks so what do I care?

I'm not paying a license fee to Space Bill Gates to rewrite the AI or ditch useless subroutines like chatterbot Vista, that will only cut into my precious profits. I already paid a fee for the AI for the droids. As long as they can walk and shoot I could care less, that's Grievous's problem now. I just want my life back so I can take my son air yachting in the Bespin system.

There is a simple explanation not requiring Palpatine Chess Bullshit.

[evillejedi]

The aimbot comparison is completely non-applicable. In most games, bots follow predetermined path nodes to get to power ups and combat areas, they also have access to the array of other player/bot positions so they know at all times exactly where to shoot, the only processing is telling them to not shoot walls and to miss occasionally. Most games have absolutely no physics to their bullets and the hit detection algorithm is processed essentially instantaneously during a update tick using a polygon picking method that uses the centroid of the entity being targetted. For slower moving projectiles there may be some algorithm based on projected trajectory of the target at the time of firing. (per tick xyz delta, projectile velocity and distance are all that are normally used), but in most cases aimbots.

so quite simply, aimbots with hit scan weapons (anything besides grenades and rockets in most games) have to be tweaked to miss their target because they have perfect information of the targets current position and the perfect trajectory to hit them. The area effect of rockets and grenades and the stupid humans that run in straight lines covers the rest of the weapons.

A real battledroid would have to be able to identify the target (really really damn hard from a programming perspective) using thermal, optical, rf emissions, etc. It would also have to know that the target is worth shooting (it isn't behind a barrier that makes it unattackable or a waste of ammo) then coordinate all of its other movements to properly aim (accuracy of the mechanics of the droids was discussed in a previous post) We take a lot of things for granted as humans, persistence of vision(the elements from the last analysis snapshot are the same in the next one), persistence of objects(if it went behind a barrier it is the same thing on the other side), optical recognition of shapes in varying light conditions and at varying orientations. Detection of defined motion of a single object in the presence of other objects. ECM may screw up any IFF designations so alternate identifications need to be used to avoid shooting other battle droids. This isn't even trying to tackle the problem of navigating difficult terrain in a formation while receiving supervisory orders to perform multiple tasks. (why battle droids run into each other isn't a mystery, it's just why they do it when there is nothing else to run into under non-combat situations)

[Boombaye]

The aimbot comparison is completely non-applicable. In most games, bots follow predetermined path nodes to get to power ups and combat areas, they also have access to the array of other player/bot positions so they know at all times exactly where to shoot, the only processing is telling them to not shoot walls and to miss occasionally. Most games have absolutely no physics to their bullets and the hit detection algorithm is processed essentially instantaneously during a update tick using a polygon picking method that uses the centroid of the entity being targetted. For slower moving projectiles there may be some algorithm based on projected trajectory of the target at the time of firing. (per tick xyz delta, projectile velocity and distance are all that are normally used), but in most cases aimbots.

Nay, I was thinking of more of the thing wherein you snap as quickly as your limbs can move to a target as soon as you've IDed it and know you can shoot it. Something that should work as fast as a signal can transfer from sensors to limbs.

so quite simply, aimbots with hit scan weapons (anything besides grenades and rockets in most games) have to be tweaked to miss their target because they have perfect information of the targets current position and the perfect trajectory to hit them. The area effect of rockets and grenades and the stupid humans that run in straight lines covers the rest of the weapons.

The droid should be able to send a laser from a sensor to gauge distance and make calculations borderline instantly. These are things a calculator can do.

A real battledroid would have to be able to identify the target (really really damn hard from a programming perspective) using thermal, optical, rf emissions, etc. It would also have to know that the target is worth shooting (it isn't behind a barrier that makes it unattackable or a waste of ammo) then coordinate all of its other movements to properly aim (accuracy of the mechanics of the droids was discussed in a previous post) We take a lot of things for granted as humans, persistence of vision(the elements from the last analysis snapshot are the same in the next one), persistence of objects(if it went behind a barrier it is the same thing on the other side), optical recognition of shapes in varying light conditions and at varying orientations. Detection of defined motion of a single object in the presence of other objects. ECM may screw up any IFF designations so alternate identifications need to be used to avoid shooting other battle droids. This isn't even trying to tackle the problem of navigating difficult terrain in a formation while receiving supervisory orders to perform multiple tasks. (why battle droids run into each other isn't a mystery, it's just why they do it when there is nothing else to run into under non-combat situations)

Star Wars battle droids don't seem to have much trouble identifying targets at all. They're always pointed in the right direction. These are the sortsa things that are hard for us to come up with, but apparently not so for them.

The point is to address the incompetence of military droids in a universe wherein they can easily be fixed and start winning.

[evillejedi]

I think you miss the point that with an aim bot the target never needs to be identified. The calculation is always correct it has to be purposely degraded. The droid still needs to identify the threat, track it and then hopefully have the mechanics to actually move and steady the weapon to the calculated position. Super battle droids, droidekas do not seem to have anywhere near the problem as much as the cheap ones and they have integrated weapons (as noted above instead of holding a gun)

While I certainly cannot explain why they routinely miss a single stationary target 10 feet away they do seem to be brutally effective in large numbers. I will put forth the following theory that the larger the size of the droid force, the more sensors and processors are available. Individual droids can focus on single targets and eliminate a lot of noise because there are other droids covering other angles and tasks. The awareness of the droid force as a whole increases because of the differing physical positions of the droids on the battlefield. This will lead to better delegation of droids to threats, but also limit the individual awareness of each droid. This would account for both idiot droids in low numbers, and blindsided droids in large battles.

In the end we don't see the CIS outright replacing the standard droids in most theaters with SBD's droidekas and commando droids so they truly must be 'good enough' to accomplish the military goals and must be cheaper for the CIS to create and maintain than a numerically smaller and more capable droid army.

[Boombaye]

Perhaps, battle droids have a Geth thing going, in which they operate better as they trade targeting data in a network, but they hardly take use of even really simple tactics.

They only ever take cover half the time. The rest, they march in a column which allows only the first few ranks to fire. There's a reason musket formations used lines of 3. The first would fire, go prone. Second fires, kneels and third fires. They stand and reload.

I'd like to see someone justify it saying they can't stand back up.

[Rossum]

Here's an idea: Maybe the battle droids AI is based off Asimov's Three Laws Compliant technology? They are actually averse to killing anyone because their AI is based a great deal on a standard droid brain setup which has safeguards to keep them from killing people. Removing those safeguards would be hard, risky, and time consuming so the designers slapped on some patches to make them at least somewhat capable soldiers.


1. Instead of aiming directly at a human they want to kill, they are programmed to aim at a point 'near' the human in the hopes that their innacuracy would result in an indirect hit. Yeah, thats a pretty stupid idea for a harded soldier to do, but the Battle Droids were origionally security guards or something. Blasters can murder people easily and so they programmed their droids to basically fire warning shots... which I 'think' would make it really hard for them to his a stationary target they were trying to miss but slightly easier to hit moving targets with erratic movements. The security robots would always fire warning shots but occasionally 'miss' and kill someone which makes them at least somewhat dangerous. They probably tweaked the algorithm on the battle droids to make them slighly more effective in combat.

2. Their visual recognition system can be tricked into perceiving humans as droids. If they can't harm humans than they just de-humanize the enemy so that they can fight. Clone Troopers are easier to do this to, so the battle droids might have been more effective against the Clones in off-screen battles. Jedis running around without helmets on can be ID'd as human and thus kick in the subconscious 'Do not kill humans' programming.

3. They do have self-preservation instincts because the Third Law is "Robots must protect their own existance unless it conflicts with the first or second laws". Since they are combat droids, running away from a battle would likely protect both human lives and their own existence. Their designers cranked up the weight of the Second Law high enough to get them into battlefields and fire at humans (or humanoid things that they might think are other droids) but constant battle and the droids ability to think eventually result in them 'rethinking their priorities' and it results in them fleeing the battle.


Basically... the B1 battle droids might be designed as soldiers, and were based on designs for security guards, but deep down their AI is designed keep them from harming humans. Their engineers didn't want to build a new AI from the ground up so they tweaked them enough to 'do their job' or at least make the product release date. From an engineering standpoint, a droid programmed to look menacing, hold a gun without flinching, and fire at the enemy could have suited their purpose for the Naboo invasion better than a remorseless killing machine who would gun people down without flinching. They wanted the Naboo invasion to work with as few casualties as possible, then when the Clone Wars started they decided to crank out billions of them and get their team to make the actual combat capable droids to fight along with them.

So, the reason that the B1 battle droids are such wimps is that they aren't mindless robots, they are self-aware droids who have their own psychology and thought processes. Their designers based those thought processes on existing robust AI software that was designed to be human friendly, they just tweaked it enough to get them onto the battlefield but didn't tweak it enough to turn them all into stone cold killers.

Granted, the droidakas from The Phantom Menace seemed to be pretty no-nonsense in their desire to kill people... but they were built in a way pretty different than the B1s. Its likely that the Trade Federation couldn't have replaced the B1 'wussy' brains with Droidaka 'badass' brains due to compatibility issues and it wasn't until Attack of the Clones that they had the super battle droids to work with. I guess the B1 brains and bodies are compatible with interpreter droids like C-3P0 but not the other combat droids.


Anyway, probably a fanwank suggestion, but I'm thinking that the problem with the B1s is that their AI is self-aware and doesn't like shooting people. Designing new droid brain is expensive enough that nobody wants to build a new one from the ground up, particularly if the goal is to make a droid that kills people. So the designers were tasked with the job of making a droid with the mind of a soldier but failed miserably at it.

[Professor Dire]

My take on why B1's suck at hitting a target, especially in 'TPM' is due to their
primary processing power being outsourced to a ship in orbit. According to ICS: EP I,
A B1 has very minimal onboard processing power and relies on the command ships
to transmit to the B1 body what it's "mind" is telling it to do. It's akin to a human
whose brain in orbit having neural signals sent to the brainstem via telepresence.

That would equal some nasty lag, even with Star Wars level technology.

Now it appears that by 'AOTC' that the baseline battledroids are somewhat brighter
and more effective than the previous model. And the Improved Battle Droid is much,
much better and handling battlefield situations. Which is no surprise since they are
in a fashion a cross between the B1 and the Droideca concepts. Even then as I
understand it, an IBD has to receive a periodic "activation" signal or they shut down.

During the 'Clone Wars' movie and show the CIS's automated soldiers behave like they are
more independant and to some degree not as "focused" on assigned tasks. It appears due
to lack of command ships in many of the situations we see B1s operating in that they may
be operating with an on board processor which is mentioned here:
http://#starwars.wikia.com/#wiki/#Central_Control_Computer (Just remove the #s)

Lastly, Jedi show a great deal of precognitive talent in their usual fighting methods.
Especially when inanimate items are in play. Consider Jedi are hard to shoot or hit for the
living, who are far and above less predictable in combat than an inteligent machine. So it
seems pretty logical to me that Jedi's mow through droids rather easily, especially regarding
the dimmer models.

[LopEaredGaloot]

The entire idea of 'The Clone Wars' is ruined by the simple notion that you would:

A. One would never use rare, costly, gene engineered, humans as line troops to fight physically superior machines. Not when there are quintillions of droids spreading through 50 million worlds and at least quadrillions of ordinary citizens who could themselves pick up a rifle and at least mount home-guard ops in contrast to a mere '3 million genie shocktroops'.

Either way of course we would be talking Armageddon. One poster mentioned panzers vs. hussars. It'd be more like bacterial infection vs. white blood cell. The resulting bloodbath would be enormous and stopped only by the dictates of 'victory ship' logistics and hyperlane interdiction of invasion forces before they could set down on any given world they only had to raze flat to deny to the enemy.

The ONLY equalizer for the meatbags here is The Force and thus the ONLY thing you should be Cloning would be Jedi. Which sets up the Jedi Clones to be the ones with subliminal secret orders which cause them to start doing Sith like things which makes the common folk start to wonder who are the bad guys. Obviously, if the Cloning program is a -secret- so that it looks like the Jedi are everywhere at once, then JQ Public may not know to recognize the original from the flawed photocopy.

For everything else, any logical commander would evacuate the likely drop zones and nuke whatever group chose to mass their asses in front of a gunsight. Either with buried SADM charges, artillery or more likely orbital NGS from space.

Yes, it's gonna hurt your infrastructure but no more than a rattenkrieg between humans and killer robots (Terminators in Stalingrad...) would in reducing your cities to rubble anyway. Numbers become pointless at that level. Bring it. Tibanna gas is cheap and there is no cover from a vertical defilade.

B. What's Dooku's take on this? I still can't figure out this bastard. He can't be so delusional as to actually -believe- that Palpatine will 'pardon him' after this mess if over, can he? The public would riot if Sidious tried. And then there's the Jedi would want a word about that Sith-in-Senate thing. And so Dooku is essentially -paying- to create an army which is incapable of winning so that he can lose and 'have an accident' rather than be interrogated, tried and hung for treason.
No. Such idiocy implies that Sidious is Satan and his mindcontrol is so powerful people can't even fight for their lives. It also puts Dooku on the ace-holder end of a dealt hand where, if it looks like he's gonna lose (and there is no way he would, with quintillions of troops, sole manufacturing, banking and transport dominance and _only the need to wait_ while the rest of society crumbled without essential services), he can simply dial up 1-800-JEDI and turn Sidious in.
The entire story here falls down, IMO.

C. The Germans averaged between 10 and 15:1 Russians killed for every one of their own losses, throughout the war. Recent admissions from the Russians have been that their own losses may have been up to twice those stated in history books. Raising the totals from 50 towards 70 million. Yet by the end, it was the Germans who feared the implacable Russians, not the other way around. What kept the Germans in the fight for so long was the abysmal ability of the Russians to exploit any breakouts until way late in the campaign when they created specific exploitation forces (what would later become OMGs). German combat records are littered with "And we had nothing left but they moved up 10km through the breach and just sat then and we were able to muster a scratch force and reset the lines back a couple days later." Now the German fame for unrelenting counterattack and deep flanking maneuver is well deserved and should not be discounted but the problem is that, with the battle droids that don't eat and don't have to make CIE morale or leadership checks in continuing the fight, it should be possible to simply march through, out of and -beyond the reach- of any conventional, shouldered-unit line of defense. Using their own formation ranks as form of shielding you then have a problem containing them as any breach will simply be flooded out until there are enough forces to expand laterally behind the frontal units or go for rear area attacks. In this, if you are going to fight like Roman or Greeks, you should at least exploit the technique to the fullest.

D. The entire B1 droid is poorly designed. The desire for extreme compactness doesn't make sense with the expectations of rapid debussing from a combat exposed APC. While the biometric similarities to 'dead Nemodians' results in compromises like small limbs whose exposed actuators have limited throw and articulation freedom. If you look closely at the Wiki or Wookiee pages, it's hard to see how things like the shoulder and head are even (ball and socket) able to provide the articulation shown in the artworks with heads tilted and arms rotating to bring weapons to bear. The backpack mounted power and comms are outside the primary armor envelope and while this could theoretically support modular repair replacement and upgrade of a sacrificial secondary armor pacakage covering thinner back plate (allowing for thicker frontal glacis for instance) the fact that this is a direct, incapacitating systems vulnerability point means you are relegating any combat loss to instant salvage recovery. The huge, hinged and poorly mounted skull creates CofG balance and total target area presentation issues.
The use of discrete, mountable, weapons is actually a good thing, IMO, as it justifies separate arms able accomodate various length, sighting radius and balance weapons in a fashion that the caliber and weight limited that SBDs cannot match (and have no reason to, as fire support platforms). Obviously it also provides residual environment utility interaction (open doors, push off of objects from a prone position, carry items and engage in hand to hand combat) too, not available to say a Droideka. But the fact that they -don't- use large and/or internally powered small arms largely invalidates this.
Overall, I woud expect heavier and detachable armor appliques and skirts which could both act as fire soaks and be readily repaired/replaced without exposing working articulation hardware. Much like bolt on composite and/or reactive panels on tanks today. I would also remove the head to lower the CG and allow for a thicker equivalency in the thorax volumes. Replacing it with a periscoping stereoscopic sensor that could retract into the main body during combat and supplementing everythign with individual striplines or bugeye apertures around the perimeter of the main chassis would provide much better overall global vision support while reducing target area and thickening slope (no cutout for the giant neck 'hinge' to fold into).

E. Sighting systems are probably going to be flow based fractals driven. If you have a large video memory, you can simply stack several frame elements together to build bump map topologies. If not, then use milliwave to 'ping' the high points and navigate between vertices. if networking is dense an bandpipe will support it, then feeding the trailing droids in a large formation the same datapoint solutions will effectively speed their responses before they see the same terrain folds. Target ID is probably going to be spectographic based on a 'life range' signature output in both thermal and MMW bandwidth notches. Not all that hard. Though certainly the size of the eye apertures is ridiculous.

F. Stabilization is a real issue. Given we see these droids firing on the run, the temptation is to assume that they have full up gyro comp on every axis and joint but I imagine they do the same thing a trained soldier does: tense their upper spine, arm joints and guts to a given 'muscle memory' tension lockout point that rises and falls the same amount with every stride. And then use a pace counter accurate within a few milliseconds of footfall to effectively determine where a trigger impulse should be given at a particular muzzle depression angle to achieve X downrange impact at Y elevation effect.
This will solve for most platform pitch/super-e index issues and while traverse will remain a problem, it's probable that there is at least one vertical axis of main gyrostabilization in the pelvis, accompanied by heavy shock absorption in the upper legs which would allow for a rigid-body twist to 20-30` off axis, each side.
The rest of a given field of regard being handled by accompanying droids whose ranked fire overlaps can handle any target azimuth issues.
What most people fail to understand (including most filmmakers) is that it's not the accuracy of single shots but the grouping of VOLUME fire which, as a function of the breadth of skirmish line gives you the instantaneous splash grid by which you _suppress_ enemy fires while moving up.
Indeed, continual fire into negative or defiladed terrain space while quickly maneuvering to overrun or roll up the flanks of a given defensive positions fire sources is standard doctrine in solving most tactical problem's fire disparity issues:

.....................THREAT.............
................................Bounder2
.........Bounder1
Base.................Of...............Fire

Or:
...........>...........THREAT.............<.........
/\..................................................../\
Maneuver...............Pin......................Maneuver.

Basically, Patton's old 'hold'em by the nose and kick'em in the ass' ideal with the exception that a droid who can see the flashing BCIS (IR beacon) on his buddy's backpack strobe and is firing himself from fine-motor tuned rather than lockout grip _and a stable stance_, is going to be able to cut the grazing line of his BOF supporting fires pretty damn fine. Which means the bounding forces which are lifeless and hardened (and thus should be brave) may also not use actual static leapfrogs (go prone, get up, run, drop etc.) as much as staggered walking fires of their own.
This means that essentially any element of your troopline can start to walk downrange, depending on what the 'officer class', big brained, droid can make out of a higher density fractal map's best routes through obstacles.

G. I don't believe the remote control brain nonsense. It's such an obvious tactical vulnerability to both soft and hard kill means that it simply doesn't make sense. NONE of our current netcentric/CEC type systems work this way. They are all either fraternally exclusive networks among individual combat formations. Or client based server nets with a main node but no command prompt perse.
If nothing else, this suffers a severe smell test penalty when you look at the essentially cannon-shell repulsing and earth coupling plasma of the Gungan energy shields somehow failing to stop the droids dead in their tracks as they step inside the bubble.
I also don't see how it can be cheaper since, if you have all your processing for signal and data and housekeeping on things like sensors and systems onboard, you are already highly vested in the platform with multiple RISC processors. While the bandwidth issues for sending even preprocessed (position, status, target tracks) data up to a separate strategic tasker is going to magnify the latter's processor bottlenecking and comms network coordination issues an equal if not greater amount as a function of backside $$$.
IMO, this is just one of those cheap scifi memes that Lucas pulled from his big book of tropes. Pull the plug on one cog in the machine network and they all, immediately, lose function or purpose. 'While a human can understand a greater purpose in life'. Even if he doesn't have a clue about what was going on before the system crash because he's not plugged in. Yeah. Right.

H. Though I would be the first to admit that 'chatterboxing' in an auditory language is apt to be rather slow and cumbersome compared to ultrasonic modem squirrel noises or glottal clicks or anything else which could be more readily translated to 1's and 0's; the obvious reason for vocomms is jamming immunity.

While a stoic droid may be more impressive in refusing to say 'Ow!', the droid that can yell like a DI with a loudhailer is ultimately going to be both the most unusual and effective of all systems because it can have a bellowing bass voice which carries rather than a Nerdy, high pitched, twang: "Rahjur, Rahjur!".

Here too, Lucas is looking, not to create a new form of myth but rather to pass on the old, outdated, 1930s interpretation of same. Which, as usual, is non-sensical because every kid everywhere knows how loud and deeply resonant a human voice can sound on an IPod with earphones.

CONCLUSION:
The premise is screwed up. Clones, even Mandalorians, would be worthless against robots from even of our own age. Thus it should be Jedi who are being fought against with the resultant (Force Push = 100 shattered droids like Sauron in the opening battle of FOTR) ramp-up in robotic carnage.
Furthermore, the details of design and tactics by which the droids function and operate tactically are also wrong. Making the droids act as victims to ordinary humans (even human with autofire weapons) they should be totally superior to instead of dominating all but the superhuman abilities of Force born Adepts.
Lucas makes humans fight robots because he has a thing against showing the Jedi as being competent at anything.

LEG

[Jim Raynor]

The entire idea of 'The Clone Wars' is ruined by the simple notion that you would:

A. One would never use rare, costly, gene engineered, humans as line troops to fight physically superior machines. Not when there are quintillions of droids spreading through 50 million worlds and at least quadrillions of ordinary citizens who could themselves pick up a rifle and at least mount home-guard ops in contrast to a mere '3 million genie shocktroops'.

You acknowledge alternate sources of troops, such as ordinary citizens, yet you state that someone would "never" use clones. The Republic was such a dysfunctional piece of crap that debated whether it should even form a federal army. Palpatine had the clones ordered in secret to get things started.

The ONLY equalizer for the meatbags here is The Force and thus the ONLY thing you should be Cloning would be Jedi.

And the Force is not a genetic attribute.

B. What's Dooku's take on this? I still can't figure out this bastard. He can't be so delusional as to actually -believe- that Palpatine will 'pardon him' after this mess if over, can he? The public would riot if Sidious tried. And then there's the Jedi would want a word about that Sith-in-Senate thing. And so Dooku is essentially -paying- to create an army which is incapable of winning so that he can lose and 'have an accident' rather than be interrogated, tried and hung for treason.
No. Such idiocy implies that Sidious is Satan and his mindcontrol is so powerful people can't even fight for their lives. It also puts Dooku on the ace-holder end of a dealt hand where, if it looks like he's gonna lose (and there is no way he would, with quintillions of troops, sole manufacturing, banking and transport dominance and _only the need to wait_ while the rest of society crumbled without essential services), he can simply dial up 1-800-JEDI and turn Sidious in.
The entire story here falls down, IMO.

Who says Dooku is guaranteed to lose? The Confederacy could conceivable win or stalemate, since the Sith controlled both sides of the conflict. Furthermore, the Sith can switch identities or work through proxies regardless of which side they eventually chose to prevail.

CONCLUSION:
The premise is screwed up. Clones, even Mandalorians, would be worthless against robots from even of our own age.

...I didn't realize we had robot troops in the real world. A real world where regular human soldiers aren't "worthless."

[Metahive]

Interestingly, it's only the B1s from the recent CG series that seem to suffer from somewhat sub-optimal programming that let's them act like goofy, retarded little children. In the movies or the Tartakovsky cartoon series, they were somewhat simple-minded but otherwise acted competently enough in their role as front line cannon-fodder ("Aim at hostile, pull trigger"). Heck, in the Muunilinst episodes they even managed to lay a semi-competent ambush on the ARC troopers.
It's also just the B1s, neither the Super Battledroids, the Droideka, the Magnaguards or any other droids display that sort of behaviour.

[Darth Ruinus]

Makes a lot of sense. But the same can't be said for the clone army.
1. Stormtroopers are clones? Goes against what's established in preexisting canon. "Short for a stormtrooper?" He would have stuck out like the Sheriff in Klan robes in Blazing Saddles. Stormies are most explicitly not clones in the OT.

Even if it did, it doesn't matter now. The clonetroopers were simply changed into stormtroopers. It's only after the Battle of Kamino that different batches of clones are used to fill out the stormtroopers, along with recruits from the civilian population. Aboard the Death Star either no one noticed Luke being shorter than a regular stormtrooper because they simply weren't paying attention to him or because they were paying attention to the giant Wookie right next to him.

2. So you start with a clone army, then get rid of them and replace them with natural-borns? How does that work? That's like giving up gunpowder weapons to go back to sword and bow. Yeah, the Japanese were able to that but only because of how isolated their islands were. Any enemy who embraces modern weapons can kick their asses, see Commodore Perry. Palpatine is not a traditionalist, he's a pragmatist. He'd stick with clones if they're effective and that breaks continuity and should not have been introduced.

He kept the clones, introduces new clone templates later on, and then opens up the stormtroopers for recruitment from civilian populations. How does this break continuity?

3. Bobba Fett's a clone and his badass dad was the template for the army? God, that's got fanwank stains all over it. Fanwank likes to put all sorts of golly gee neato connections where they simply don't fit or try to work ideas into existing canon that are not substantiated by what we see on-screen or simply makes the story more convoluted and complicated to fit everything in.

Note sure how George Lucas putting Jango Fett as the clone template is fanwank... but whatever. How is Jango Fett being the clone template make the story more convulted and complicated to fit everything in? Is your only problem the fact that it's Jango?

4. Elaboration on 2, mass-cloning like that would be a society-changing thing. Overlooking the implications

Why would it change society? What are it's implications? You mean like having societies dependant on cloning or using it to large extents, like the Khommites, the Columi or the Verpine? Besides the reason we don't see large scale cloning after the Clone Wars is because of Decree E49D139.41, which banned it.

There's nothing to support the idea in the earlier material, in fact there are direct contradictions, and yet they get crammed into the story without a concern for continuity and logic.

Point out these contradictions then.

[LopEaredGaloot]

Jim Raynor,

Jim Raynor,

You acknowledge alternate sources of troops, such as ordinary citizens, yet you state that someone would "never" use clones. The Republic was such a dysfunctional piece of crap that debated whether it should even form a federal army. Palpatine had the clones ordered in secret to get things started.

If you're against slavery AND against a military (with associated industrial complex) vamping your tax base for essentially forever while creating the means for unwarranted and dangerous 'adventurism'; the clones represent a double whammy of dumb and dangerousness.

The people you clone are the ones you cannot afford to do without. The ones who are going to change society because they are more useful in a long term sense and/or have higher payout during the limited years for which _genius_ performance (seldom productive after 30) can occur.

Growing and paying for the raising of cloned infantry is essentially an indulgence in a crap shoot of random combat conditions which can get a person killed at the very lowest end of the social performance spectrum. It is the reason AOTC and series like 'Above and Beyond' (the 'Tanks') make no sense whatsoever.

Now there may be some conditions of desultory/insurgent driven or sudden, high intensity, conventional warfare where you have no choice but to make due with a high performance individual warrior.

But the clones still don't represent that because their individual performance vis a vis a compareable droid (running speed, endurance, repair cannibalization, manufacturing/training time) are still not in a compareable league, even accounting for unbelievable deficits in things like armor rating and accuracy.

Which leaves you with an entirely viable alternative in the conscription of natural borns whose raising is done (and paid for, by the parents) or cloning Jedi.

Who do have that 'specialness' advantage which is apparently inherent to even their cloned replicants (i.e. genetic, not mystical basis of talent) as a 1 man, 1,000 robots kill ratio.

Even as elite conventional infantry 3 million clones with a new division every six months or so (Spaarti cylinders) doesn't begin to compare to the TRILLIONS of ready made adults whom you could slam dunk through a hurry up BIT process.

'One man gets the rifle, one man gets the bullets, when the man with the rifle gets killed, the man with the bullets picks up the rifle'.

It's a crying shame of national treason when you are so unprepared that it comes down to that. But it sometimes happens. And that kind of fighting needs numbers more than anything because you are essentially occupying ground as a speedbump to force the enemy to root you out or leave behind dangerous partisan forces able to attack unprotected logistics (see Fedayin).

The more moguls, the slower the going over a wider area.

And the Force is not a genetic attribute.

It is until you can prove the midichlorians which represent Force aptitude are not generated by or attracted to specific cellular processes based on individual genetic alleles or recombinant/mutative variations of same.

If The Force runs strong in given families, it's a heritable condition.

Who says Dooku is guaranteed to lose? The Confederacy could conceivable win or stalemate, since the Sith controlled both sides of the conflict. Furthermore, the Sith can switch identities or work through proxies regardless of which side they eventually chose to prevail.

The fact that Dooku is supposed to be a Sith yet doesn't rat his master out while obviously playing a hand rigged against him is highly suggestive of a flawed plot concept in a group that respect only strength and yet are so afraid of it that they would handicap themselves of useful allies by insisting that there be but a single potential apprentice/assassin/competitor.

If Dooku knows about the problems with the droids, then he can easily fix them. And then Sidious has the inferior standing force and limited means to catch up without making the war itself seem ruinous by going to that 'reserve population' and forced conscription. i.e. It makes Sidious look dumb for playing things out this way too.

Further, if Dooku somehow believes that the process of rule has become entropically decayed to the point where only a total revision of the institution can solve the problem, it does his endgame philosophy no good to further fragment the existing system by essentially isolating the industrial, banking and commercial sectors from their market base. i.e. He cannot play 'to a draw' and hope to improve the situation.

Nor, even if he is willing to take the ultimate fall himself, can he risk such an extreme punitive reparational outcome that his side is economically crippled by outright defeat as 1920s Germany was with triple digit inflation and absolutely nothing to back their currency with as either produceable goods (coal was extracted and delivered under French and British military authority) or a national precious metal reserve (also gone as war reparations).

...I didn't realize we had robot troops in the real world. A real world where regular human soldiers aren't "worthless."

A squad of Talon SWORDS with a mix of M240s and the 40mm grenade launcher mounted would utterly destroy a similar number of clones on level terrain and would not take half as long or cost half as much to train operators for.

The XM1219 MULE autonomous combat vehicle could up these numbers (3-4:1) due to higher caliber and/or guided weapons systems offering massive standoff leveraging and considerably more armor and mobility to sustain a maneuver battle with as well.

The reason we don't have robots in active field testing (SWORDS went to Iraq fully vetted but was vetoed by the General Petraeus as I recall) is the very reason that proves they are the right solution: they work. Better than any human.

And that fact becomes a terrible vulnerability to be suppressed at all costs by not producing reports that detail it's truth. The military having finally learned that Infosec is only as good as you have nothing and no one to blab with.

And the reason for all this is that it is likely that robots, on automatic patrol as well as in roll-off direct soldier support from a squad vehicle, would do so well that they would result in an instant, negative, drawdown effect on the particularly wasteful, high man-rating dense, ground combat MOS'.

'Since nobody wants to see our heroes hurt'. And killers get killed doing their job.

Generals keep billets manned because, thanks to their -separate- chain of command from the government which only nominally orders their deployment, it takes an officer to make a soldier do anything. Literally, they will not take orders directly from a civilian.

A private with about 2 weeks of training can make a robot do things a General with a human platoon at his command could not match. And if the robot go boom, it can be rebuilt.

If a private can do it without direct oversight, you are one step away from having a civilian authority take direct battlefield command of mercenary PMCs whose asset survival in on a contractual expenditure basis and whose national loyalty 'doesn't matter' and thus can be used aggressively to win rather than lose low intensity conflicts being fought to an attrition standstill, by inches.

And it can be done inexpensively. Which is utter anathema to the U.S. military and military industrial complex.

Which is why the current policy of building oversized radio control tanks to 'save lives' only in EOD is a fixed, limited, role accomodation on a "Pay them something to shut the hell up." basis.

Unfortunately, this fixation on an unromantic, 'dull, dirty, dangerous' aspect of combat warfare is holding back the progress of military robotics specifically and making the U.S. the farce of the worlds industrial R&D community in general thanks to it's stagnated and highly selective development.

Which has succeeded in driving yet another generation of top flight U.S.' engineers overseas. Just as with genetics.

Welcome to a brave new world where progress is too dangerous to the profit margin and career security of the status quo to be allowed to succeed.

[Darth Ruinus]

I know you're not talking to me, but I'm curious, where are you getting any of that information? Sources would be helpful.

[Imperial528]

And the Force is not a genetic attribute.

It is until you can prove the midichlorians which represent Force aptitude are not generated by or attracted to specific cellular processes based on individual genetic alleles or recombinant/mutative variations of same.

If The Force runs strong in given families, it's a heritable condition.

Well, since someone mentioned the Khommites, I decided to do some reading on them. Turns out, force sensitivity is considered a flaw in their culture and they reject anyone who shows signs of it. One Khommite, named Dorsk 81, is the 81st clone of an individual named Dorsk. The 80 clones before him, and the original Dorsk, were not force sensitive. Dorsk 81 is. Thus, force sensitivity is NOT capable of being produced via genetics alone, and to me it would make sense as a heritable thing since if a force sensitive were pregnant, the child would be affected by the force in a stronger manor, especially if the mother is a trained force user.

[Joe Momma]

The ONLY equalizer for the meatbags here is The Force and thus the ONLY thing you should be Cloning would be Jedi.

And the Force is not a genetic attribute.

Nevertheless, it's possible to clone jedi as was demonstrated twice in the Thrawn trilogy. However, that was only performed with Spaarti cylinders and also required the presence of ysalamiri to achieve the best results. Without further details, it's possible that the Kaminoans cloning technology might not have successfully cloned force-users.