(ROTS) Was the Droid Army 'massacred'?

[18-Till-I-Die]

I have my doubts about Gonk.

Why? Torturing a gonk as punishment seems a little silly if it can't appreciate its pain.

You know that's a very good point...i never thought of that but yeah, why would you torture something if it cant understand or feel pain.

[Anguirus]

In fact, it is said you can't do a partial wipe because the droid's mind is too interconnected for this to not create problems down the line.

When was this said? It's prety obvious that they never do a *complete* wipe, because then a droid would be useless. 3PO's skills and personality change remarkably little after his memory wipe, showing that droids have a very sharp delineation between pre-programmed stuff and new experiences.

Hell, 3PO's personality was pretty much there upon his activation. Almost 50 years of EU after that with one intervening memory wipe, his personality is much the same. It's pre-programmed. We can't know if the same would be true for R2 or for a B1, but that's the way it is with one of the most complex and human-like droids that we are introduced to.

So? There are stupid humans too, but no one questions their sentience.

Yes, but no humans exist that were engineered from the ground up to be good only at a) shooting and b) following Seperatist orders. Even the Star Wars clone troopers have human brains and despite some "programming" are meant to be effective, sentient, human soldiers.

Battle droids have not been shown capable of any serious thought, just as Lama Su said back on Kamino.

With B1s, there is hardly a debate. They are capable only, so far as we know, of assessing their own status (My legs aren't moving, I must need maintenance), yelling battle cries (Die Jedi dogs!), verbal acknowledgement (Roger, Roger), and warning (Uh, oh). They are also smart enough to take cover...sometimes. In their original use, on Naboo, they were all under the direct control of a central computer...they were given extremely limited autonomy after that.

OOMs are a different and more perplexing story. They are more independent, and they are capable of sarcasm (You're welcome) and able to give and recieve complex commands. Some even cry out as they are destroyed. It is, however, unlikely that the Trade Federation or the Techno Union programmed them to be capable of betraying them, no matter how many memory wipes were given or withheld. It is morally troubling to think of them all destroyed or shut down, but what else can be done with them? They aren't as bad off as the B1s, but they are still savants, with a brain only physically capable of doing a few things. It would be a massive project, if perhaps technically feasible, to perform a vast memory-dump program of all the quirky personalities of all the surviving OOMs from their extremely limited minds into droid brains with no restrictions on them and even then, it's debatable whether or not it would be the same droid. Moreover, it's difficult to imagine the Republic doing this, let alone the Empire.

B2s...not a lot of data on them. They do converse amongst themselves, similarly to the battle droids. They do express frustration with R2, but even the B1s can yell insults and the like. What limited data we have suggests that they are more comparable to the OOMs than the B1s. (You can even play one in the SW RPG.) Still, the only thing we see them do that's not shooting or capturing individuals is investigating the fighters in the hangar bay...but they don't seem to do anything other than note the existence of the fighters and then examine them, no doubt for later downloading to the ship's computer.

Droidekas...pish. They don't even talk. I'm no more disturbed by their destruction as I am of the other armored vehicles and ships.

Vulture fighters seem to express feelings of curiosity, and can "verbally" spit data back and forth. That doesn't prove very much, though. They are so specialized and hard-wired loyal that it's hard to imagine doing anything with them other than having the Xi Char give surviving units a total overhaul. At which point, it's possible to argue, of course, that it's not the same droid. Once smart war droids EXIST, moral issues are hard to avoid. Naturally, it was wrong of the Seperatists to build an army and mobilize in the first place, to BDZ Humbarine, etc.

Tri-fighters are brilliant "pilots" but don't seem to know how to do anything else They remind me of the Dark Empire TIE/Ds. Again, nothing to do with them but pick them up, deactivated, on a massive scale and reprogram them into Imperial craft.

Ain't that odd. A B2 knows enough to disable a Jedi Fighter, and definately considers itself to have superior intelligence to an astromech. Similarly, they can afford freaking vulture droids and tri-fighters in great numbers, but you think they can't afford 'smart droids?'

See my discussion above. I didn't see any "disabling" going on. Besides which, a bull elephant could "disable" that fighter just fine.

It puzzles me that you equate infantry units to high-performance fighter craft. Which of those two categories do you think the Seperatists needed MORE of?

Anyway, we know for a fact that they had "quintillions" of infantry droids. Even if we give the Seperatists an insane number of capital ships (a billion) and give them a ridiculously high average number of fighters each (a thousand) we have...a trillion high-performance fighters. Compared with quintillions of infantry units. Why on earth are you comparing these? To get an obscenely high number of infantry droids, make 'em dumb and cheap. To get high performance fighters that can take on human pilots, make them smart, which costs more, but that's okay, since you don't need nearly as many.

That's because Grievous summerily excecutes anyone who defies him, including the organic crew (RotS novel). You'd do it too if General Grievous told you to. If you have an iota of common sense anyway.

While I loved Grievous smashing heads in the book, let's consider here. By the time the Jedi are wreaking havoc on the bridge, the Neimoidians are OUT OF THERE. The ship's crashing, the Jedi are waving swords around, and Grievous is a little BUSY at the moment! There is also a total lack of blood spatters or bodies indicating that any Neimoidians were killed in their flight.

If you're a Neimoidian on the bridge and Grievous is yelling at you to "stay at your post," when all this is going on, you'd be thinking, "I have better odds running to an escape pod! The Jedi are going to be all over Grievous and we're plunging into the atmosphere anyway!" You wait until the General's back is turned and skedaddle.

If you're an OOM on the bridge and Grievous yells that, you think, "I'm staying here." You have no capability to defy him. Lapsing into Asimov-speak, your Third Law was overridden by your Second Law. And shortly, you die. Only the OOMs that weren't ordered by Grievous to stay ran.

To answer your point directly, common sense directs one to get the hell out of there. Grievous is in no position to back up his threats, and getting killed by him isn't much worse than burning up in the atmosphere anyway. Your only chance of survival is to escape. The OOMs don't have common sense. They have hard-wired loyalty and, subordinately, self-preservation.

[Noble Ire]

I have my doubts about Gonk.

Why? Torturing a gonk as punishment seems a little silly if it can't appreciate its pain.

IIRC, EVE-9D9 modified the droids sent to "her" for decommisioning so that they could feel pain on a rudametary level. Due to a bug in her programming, she had a need to make other droids suffer, by any means.

[NecronLord]

IIRC, EVE-9D9 modified the droids sent to "her" for decommisioning so that they could feel pain on a rudametary level. Due to a bug in her programming, she had a need to make other droids suffer, by any means.

That same KJA story gives them all the intellect to take revenge on EVE-9D9 you know. And yes, EVE was a fuckup on the factory floor, she received an Imperial Torture Droid's 'motivator' by mistake.

[Noble Ire]

IIRC, EVE-9D9 modified the droids sent to "her" for decommisioning so that they could feel pain on a rudametary level. Due to a bug in her programming, she had a need to make other droids suffer, by any means.

That same KJA story gives them all the intellect to take revenge on EVE-9D9 you know. And yes, EVE was a fuckup on the factory floor, she received an Imperial Torture Droid's 'motivator' by mistake.

The revenge might have been the activation of a long-impeded self-defense program. Even non-sentient droids can do more than a single action or program.

[NecronLord]

With B1s, there is hardly a debate

Don't lie.

OOMs are a different and more perplexing story. They are more independent, and they are capable of sarcasm (You're welcome) and able to give and recieve complex commands. Some even cry out as they are destroyed.

Were you watching the same film as me? Just about every B1 does that. And FYI, there is only one OOM droid in RotS, the pilot droids are B1s with different paint and initial programming, not OOMs.

It is, however, unlikely that the Trade Federation or the Techno Union programmed them to be capable of betraying them, no matter how many memory wipes were given or withheld.

They don't program all the reactions of droids. Droids can learn. Hell, Vulture Droids are looped into combat sims when they are shelved.

It is morally troubling to think of them all destroyed or shut down, but what else can be done with them? They aren't as bad off as the B1s, but they are still savants, with a brain only physically capable of doing a few things.

How do you know? I know for a fact that one seperatist war droid became a bounty hunter (IG-88's old background is now retconned. IG means InterGalactic banking clan droid. He's a clone wars battle droid)

See my discussion above. I didn't see any "disabling" going on. Besides which, a bull elephant could "disable" that fighter just fine.

By picking components out of it? What they were doing looked rather intelligent and thought out to me.

It puzzles me that you equate infantry units to high-performance fighter craft. Which of those two categories do you think the Seperatists needed MORE of?

You said they could not afford an army of intelligent droids. You were wrong. Concession accepted. You said nothing about how big the army had to be.

To answer your point directly, common sense directs one to get the hell out of there. Grievous is in no position to back up his threats, and getting killed by him isn't much worse than burning up in the atmosphere anyway. Your only chance of survival is to escape. The OOMs don't have common sense. They have hard-wired loyalty and, subordinately, self-preservation.

Perhaps you've missed that various pilot droids did run away from their stations after Grievous' troops started loosing, Obi-Wan hacked a few down as they tried to make a break for the escape pods. Despite Grievous' orders to the contrary. He was standing right next to the one he ordered back to its station.

If your choice is to get back to your station or have the monster Grievous crush your head, when he is right the hell next to you, would you really run?

[NecronLord]

The revenge might have been the activation of a long-impeded self-defense program. Even non-sentient droids can do more than a single action or program.

Goddamnit. You're making me go back and re-read KJA. "You DIE for this Lister."

[Noble Ire]

How do you know? I know for a fact that one seperatist war droid became a bounty hunter (IG-88's old background is now retconned. IG means InterGalactic banking clan droid. He's a clone wars battle droid)

Five, actually. Although I wouldn't go so far as to say that their intellegence was shared by CW models, they were of a new design (and untested, as they killed the entire research team that built them moments after activation.) Still, I could see Magnaguards as possibly bearing intellegence, especially considering their cost and usage (although not the Lancer class, which were manufactured like B1s.)

Goddamnit. You're making me go back and re-read KJA. "You DIE for this Lister."

At least were not talking about Darksaber.

[NecronLord]

Five, actually. Although I wouldn't go so far as to say that their intellegence was shared by CW models, they were of a new design (and untested, as they killed the entire research team that built them moments after activation.) Still, I could see Magnaguards as possibly bearing intellegence, especially considering their cost and usage (although not the Lancer class, which were manufactured like B1s.)

IG-88 is now a pre-Lancer IG wardroid. The old stuff about being an imperial experiment is retconned by other IG droids, some, like the lancers, very similar of later numbers being in the clone wars.

Fortunately, it wasn't written by KJA, just edited by him. Anyway, a traffic controller droid pursued 9D9 across the galaxy, and, with her torture-victims, put an end to her while Luke was out on the Dune Sea doing his last-of-the-Jedi thing. It states its motive as revenge. The traffic control droid is stated to be pretty smart, but the others, many of whom have been thoughly mangled and tortured by 9D9 are off-the-shelf worker droids, and they take revenge as soon as Wuntoo shows up, without instruction from him.

Interestingly, Lando and Lobot found 9D9's mutilatory activities on cloud city to be disturbing when they were there.

[Noble Ire]

IG-88 is now a pre-Lancer IG wardroid. The old stuff about being an imperial experiment is retconned by other IG droids, some, like the lancers, very similar of later numbers being in the clone wars.

Really? What source did that come from? Seems a bit odd, considering such a retecon doesn't really seem necissary. Is the IG story now non-canonical?

[NecronLord]

Really? What source did that come from? Seems a bit odd, considering such a retecon doesn't really seem necissary. Is the IG story now non-canonical?

The RotS novel Which gives the IG series definition being exclusively an InterGalactic banking clan thing.

[Noble Ire]

Really? What source did that come from? Seems a bit odd, considering such a retecon doesn't really seem necissary. Is the IG story now non-canonical?

The RotS novel Which gives the IG series definition being exclusively an InterGalactic banking clan thing.

But how does that make IG-88 pre-Lancer? As far as I know, the IGB wasn't dissolved at the end of the Clone Wars, just absorbed. Heck, Muunilist is still a major financial center well into the Remnant period. If they had decent droid labs, there's no reason why the Empire wouldn't use them.

[The Original Nex]

Really? What source did that come from? Seems a bit odd, considering such a retecon doesn't really seem necissary. Is the IG story now non-canonical?

The RotS novel Which gives the IG series definition being exclusively an InterGalactic banking clan thing.

That hardly suggests that the IG-72 and IG-88 units were "pre-Lancer" designs from the Clone Wars. Like Ire said, the IBC was imperialized during the Great Resynchronization, why is it more likely for the IG-88 to be a Clone Wars model than to stay with the established canon and say that the Empire re-opened the IG droid program some time after the CW?

There was no official retconn, contrary to what you seem to think. All war droids that came out of the IBC were IG units. The Magnaguard IG-100s, the Hailfire-class IG-227, the Lancer droids (with an unkown IG number). There's nothing to suggest that the passage you refer to is made to retcon the origins of IG-88. IIRC it was in reference to the origin of the Magnaguards.

[NecronLord]

Humm, that should be pre-Magnaguards. Magnaguards are the IG 100 series, with their character names being IG-101, 102, and so on.

[The Original Nex]

Humm, that should be pre-Magnaguards. Magnaguards are the IG 100 series, with their character names being IG-101, 102, and so on.

And Hailfires are IG-227s. The IBC may not go in numerical order for their naming conventions, for whatever reason.

[NecronLord]

Like Ire said, the IBC was imperialized during the Great Resynchronization,

The what? Oh of all the absurdity. Now they have to have Palpatine rip off Cambodia's insanity too? Grr. I suppose that's possible, if some lunatic has introduced a 'great resynchronisation.'

[The Original Nex]

The what? Oh of all the absurdity. Now they have to have Palpatine rip off Cambodia's insanity too? Grr. I suppose that's possible, if some lunatic has introduced a 'great resynchronisation.'

That term has been around for a while IIRC. Apparently it was the practical part of the statement "The Republic will be reorganized. . ."

Why they didn't call it the "Great Reorganization" instead is beyond me. It sure sounds better.

[Noble Ire]

The what? Oh of all the absurdity. Now they have to have Palpatine rip off Cambodia's insanity too? Grr. I suppose that's possible, if some lunatic has introduced a 'great resynchronisation.'

That term has been around for a while IIRC. Apparently it was the practical part of the statement "The Republic will be reorganized. . ."

Why they didn't call it the "Great Reorganization" instead is beyond me. It sure sounds better.

I'm pretty sure your confusing terms. The Great Resync took place some time before TPM, as an effort to consolidate galactic time for economic purposes (and, non-canonically, to fix some dating errors from post ROTJ EU.)

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

When was this said?

OK, I'd admit it. I read it once on one of those Parrot WEG sites. I honestly thought it would have come from Cynabar...droids, but on a recheck of the source could not find it, so I'd concede that. It is, however, written that a wipe cleans out everything but the hardwires, thus answering your next sentence.

It's prety obvious that they never do a *complete* wipe, because then a droid would be useless.

Read above. The soft stuff is all gone.

3PO's skills and personality change remarkably little after his memory wipe, showing that droids have a very sharp delineation between pre-programmed stuff and new experiences.

Yet the whole idea of the memory wipe (the "positive" part) was ostensibly to prevent character growth, thus saying it does occur. We only see a very superficial part of C3PO's behavior. Even so, we know from HTTE that R2D2 managed to bond with the X-Wing's computer. Wipe R2 and that little bond goes.

Yes, but no humans exist that were engineered from the ground up to be good only at a) shooting and b) following Seperatist orders. Even the Star Wars clone troopers have human brains and despite some "programming" are meant to be effective, sentient, human soldiers.

Why is it when something is "engineered", people think it can't be sentient.

[Publius]

A moment of clarification: The Great ReSynchronization is an event that took place three years prior to the Naboo Crisis seen in The Phantom Menace, which was mentioned in a discussion of calendar reform by the Republic Measures & Standards Bureau in "RM&S Debates Calendar Reform" (HoloNet News Vol. 531, No. 45, 13:2:28), and included alongside other calendars in Mr. Wallace's unofficial weblog entry "Star Wars Calendars." The zero-point calendar using the Great ReSynchronization as its basis continued throughout the Imperial era, presumably alongside the official "Pre-Empire Date/Empire Date" system mentioned in Dark Force Rising.

As regards the InterGalactic Banking Clan, it does not appear to have been Imperialized after the end of the Clone War, unlike the Trade Federation. In fact, according to Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds, Muunilinst III served as the Empire's central bank and guarantor of the Imperial credit, although "Imperial decrees did hurt the Muuns' lending business and other operations, helping Human-controlled Core Worlds such as Brentaal and Sestria." Notably, the Empire did not install Loyalists on the board of directors (à la Incom Corporation), contenting itself merely with "the presence of monitors fearful that they might throw their financial muscle behind the Rebel Alliance." Muunilinst – often called by the more vulgar nickname "Moneylend" – would remain in Imperialist hands as late as the Bastion Accords of 44 GR, as seen in Mr. Zahn's 'Hand of Thrawn' books.

PUBLIUS

[The Original Nex]

Ah, my mistake then. Apologies.

[NecronLord]

That's rather better. I'll also note that IG infantry and vehicle droid names don't have to match. That's like assuming the M1 tank predates the M16 rifle because of the name. It's also possible that only special droids like IG-88 or the magnaguards (101 onwards) get 'names' that are unique to them, and that other IG droids have numbers that are more generic - and that by the time of the magnaguards, there were only around a hundred such droids.

[nightmare]

Any time you allow a personality to grow, there is a certain chance it won't grow the way you want it to. You also forgotten the rest of the reasons, as listed in Cynabar's Fantastic Technology: Droids.

A *much* higher chance that it will go wrong than good apparently. Or what's the use of near-ubiquitous mind wipes otherwise?

It is just a slavery measure, nothing more. You just try any of these justifications with an organic. Try deciding you want to mind wipe a teenager as a preventive measure against his possible deliquency and violent tendencies. Or a new employee so he won't carry "internal baggage" from his previous employer, or just to make him "easier to control".

As you know, there are lots of organic slaves, and there's nothing that justifies treating droids better than organics. All this also assumes that they are truly sentient to being with.

As I understand it, you are supposed to do the Mental Therapy when something goes wrong, and even then you are supposed to use the least invasive method, not wipe out everything as part of "preventive maintenance".

How about if there's such a high probablity that something goes wrong over time that it's next to a certainty? Would you rather wait and see if your droid tries to kill you before you press the reset button? Since you want to use the "least invasive method", I'm assuming that you consider reprogramming less invasive than a memory reset. Generally, when it comes to real life computers, we consider a reset a much less invasive solution than reprogamming. But you equate a mind wipe with formatting rather than losing RAM, obviously. I'm not so sure that analogy works. A mind wiped droid is perfectly functionable, while a formatted computer is a piece of junk.

Do you realize that humans start out non-sentient, and don't achieve sentience until about age 3 IIRC? If I kept mindwiping a six month old baby to kick it back to 0, you would nothing to say about it?

You've got the age 3 wrong in my experience... but it depends on the individual, of course. In any case, you are assuming that a six month old droid equates to the sentience level of a six month old human. There's no evidence for this whatsoever.

You brought up the amnesia, not me.

Yeah, but I didn't expect you to write a novel about it. Still, thanks for sharing.

We know that in the Star Wars universe, organic sentient beings can also be treated like shit and we all agree it is not great, but that's not the topic of discussion here. In the OP we are supposed to assume the droids are sentient so we can have the morality debate. By saying that you don't understand why anybody should care about the droids, you imply droids (even sentient, as mandated in the OP) are worth less. When this is pointed out, in your next argument, you wrote:

I said that "Live and definitely sentient beings are often treated at least as poorly", in other words giving droids the same regard as sentient beings, assuming all SW droids are sentient, which we still haven't established yet. I have my doubts about Gonk.

So now you are equating them, a clear change from your earlier plot

I presented you with the same sentence. I just switched the pieces around so you could more clearly see that you interpreted me wrong in the first place.

If we assume by default (yes, it's in the OP) that droids are sentient, there's no debate in the first place; it's an obvious crime to treat sentient beings like objects (although the Romans and many other ancient cultures wouldn't agree with it). Hence, I'm not going to assume they are sentient in the first place without evidence. I've stated this several times already, so we shouldn't have a misunderstanding on it:

Live and definitely sentient beings[...]

If it's sentient by default[...]

[...]assuming all SW droids are sentient, which we still haven't established yet.[...]

[...]either you consider droids sentient by default,[...]Or - you consider droids nonsentient by default[...]

[Anguirus]

With B1s, there is hardly a debate

Don't lie.

Roger, Roger.

Were you watching the same film as me? Just about every B1 does that. And FYI, there is only one OOM droid in RotS, the pilot droids are B1s with different paint and initial programming, not OOMs.

Not true. Only the infantry units are B1s, to my understanding. Security and pilot droids are all OOMs, or so I was told. This is the source of our misunderstanding, not a lie or afailure to watch the film carefully.

It is, however, unlikely that the Trade Federation or the Techno Union programmed them to be capable of betraying them, no matter how many memory wipes were given or withheld.

They don't program all the reactions of droids. Droids can learn. Hell, Vulture Droids are looped into combat sims when they are shelved.

I included my original quote so I could show you how little your response had to do with it. You do not address the fact that their loyalty is absolute. I know that their droids learn. However, there's a big gap between getting better at combat and approaching sentience, much less open rebellion.

How do you know? I know for a fact that one seperatist war droid became a bounty hunter (IG-88's old background is now retconned. IG means InterGalactic banking clan droid. He's a clone wars battle droid)

I'm talking about OOMs. You bring up a totally different model of droid, an expensive one that was produced in limited numbers. I will not speculate on your motives forchanging the subject of discussion so drastically, because I KNOW you can tell the difference between the dirt-cheap spindlies and an IG-88.

By picking components out of it? What they were doing looked rather intelligent and thought out to me.

I only remember them opening the canopy and looking around, but I can't make a firm statement on this till I rewatch it.

It puzzles me that you equate infantry units to high-performance fighter craft. Which of those two categories do you think the Seperatists needed MORE of?

You said they could not afford an army of intelligent droids. You were wrong. Concession accepted. You said nothing about how big the army had to be.

Spare me this pathetic bilge. You're smart enough to know that an army on a GALACTIC scale is the subject under discussion.

You can build quintillions of B1s that are just bright enough to walk around, shoot, and hold territory, or you can build a smaller number of smarter droids. The SMART thing to do, what the CIS DOES, is build vast numbers of idiot savants and support them with more intelligent droid fire support, armor, and aircraft.

Perhaps you've missed that various pilot droids did run away from their stations after Grievous' troops started loosing, Obi-Wan hacked a few down as they tried to make a break for the escape pods. Despite Grievous' orders to the contrary. He was standing right next to the one he ordered back to its station.

How can I miss it when I specifically pointed it out?

Only the OOMs that weren't ordered by Grievous to stay ran.

If your choice is to get back to your station or have the monster Grievous crush your head, when he is right the hell next to you, would you really run?

Of course I would! What's he going to do, chase me? He's got bigger fish to fry. I'm gone when he turns his back, assuming I'm not an extreme CIS patriot, insane, or hard-wired to be loyal.

On to Kazuaki:

Why is it when something is "engineered", people think it can't be sentient.

Are you a selective reader, or what? I've been talking about 3PO and R2 in the context of engineered, sentient beings!

Battle droids, in contrast, are engineered for a far more specific purpose. The B1s are not sentient. The OOMs may be sentient but lack the autonomy of R2 and 3PO.

You need to delberately build a droid to be capable of sentience before it can achieve it. The Star Wars universe possesses a very thorough understanding of droid technology.

[Darth Wong]

The what? Oh of all the absurdity. Now they have to have Palpatine rip off Cambodia's insanity too? Grr. I suppose that's possible, if some lunatic has introduced a 'great resynchronisation.'

That term has been around for a while IIRC. Apparently it was the practical part of the statement "The Republic will be reorganized. . ."

Why they didn't call it the "Great Reorganization" instead is beyond me. It sure sounds better.

No, the best term would have been "The Great Reconciliation."