What happened to the droids after the clone wars.

[Korgeta]

We know the clone troopers were effective in aim, more versatile and very self intelligent, however they did lack some advantages such as the Droideka droids, fast and quick to mobilise, shielding and quick firepower meaning they can stand without cover and have maximumn accuracy. For this reason i suspect this question will be more suited to the EU of star wars but given the advantage of some droids why were they never included with the storm trooper forces long after the clone war? Arrogance by palpatine? Cost? Any reason given or likely theories?

[Bakustra]

We know the clone troopers were effective in aim, more versatile and very self intelligent, however they did lack some advantages such as the Droideka droids, fast and quick to mobilise, shielding and quick firepower meaning they can stand without cover and have maximumn accuracy. For this reason i suspect this question will be more suited to the EU of star wars but given the advantage of some droids why were they never included with the storm trooper forces long after the clone war? Arrogance by palpatine? Cost? Any reason given or likely theories?

Well, for one, the droids would be associated with the Separatists, and especially with Grievous., making the Empire significantly less popular in Loyalist areas, which happen to include a lot of the post-Clone Wars industry. Secondly, the Trade Federation, Techno Union, etc. were all broken up by the Empire after the Clone Wars, and the majority of their leadership and wealth were destroyed shortly prior, so the Empire would have to maintain these highly-unpopular droids entirely by themselves, without any designer support. It's like asking why the US Army doesn't use Studebakers for staff cars. Thirdly, there remained a number of minor Separatist areas, some of which are detailed in the EU, and using Separatist hardware for occupation and invasion forces of these areas would send rather the wrong message. Fourthly, major Loyalist corporations such as KDY, Balmorra, Rendili, Sienar, SoroSuub, etc. would throw a fit. Fifthly, how do you think morale would be affected among the officer corps and conscript/volunteer forces by the enemies you'd been fighting for three years in a bitter war being suddenly integrated alongside you?

[Thanas]

Because the droids are far less capable than your average stormtrooper? You do not integrate an elite unit with the bottom of the barrel.

[Samuel]

Because the droids are far less capable than your average stormtrooper? You do not integrate an elite unit with the bottom of the barrel.

Isn't that just programming? You can just reprogram the droids and they should be reasonably effective.

[Wing Commander MAD]

I'd guess that its also hardware issues as well most likely. It could be that whatever hardware the droids are built with isn't able to handle the higer end intelligence, that we see in the more advanced droids. Keep in mind as well, most B1s seem to be the equivalent of drafting up local peasants or even slaves, giving them the most basic training on how to use their weapons, and sending them to defeat the enemy by sheer weight of numbers. The B2s, seem to suffer from largerly the same issues, they just have heavier weapons and armor to make them last longer and are thus more deadly. The TF seemed more concerned with cost than effectiveness, afterall the droids have wanderfull abiltiy to be patched up by scavenged parts (far more so than the clones do) and any part that isn't destroyed or too badly damaged could be used in the repair of another droid or even the construction of frankensteinian droids. I can see the dollar signs in the Nemoidians eyes, at the thought of be able to reuse parts from destroyed or damaged units, instead of having to manufacture as many additional components. Do we ever see droids take lots of damage to the point of being rendered largly melted slag by weapons? I wander if the tendency for TF droids to blow apart when a kill is scored, isn't some kind of built in mechanism for maximizing the salvagable material from a lost unit.

[Darth Wong]

Because the droids are far less capable than your average stormtrooper? You do not integrate an elite unit with the bottom of the barrel.

Isn't that just programming? You can just reprogram the droids and they should be reasonably effective.

They might have physically low-end droid brains. A C3PO unit seems to have human-level intelligence (and demonstrably superior intellect in some ways), but that doesn't mean a battledroid does.

There are other reasons to avoid using them. The Imperial army largely turned into a police and occupation force after the Clone Wars. In that kind of duty, people might be seriously uncomfortable with battledroids.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

No one wants them to get too intelligent anyway, or else they'd start having some programming issues. Droids do get mindwipes from time to time for a very good reason; to avoid them from developing quirks and problems.

[Themightytom]

There's a politically manipulative possibility too: Droids and clones have no family connections whereas stormtroopers, well they are a way to engage the most hostile and militant human youths in a legitimate, prestigious capacity, er go, Palpatine is recruiting is most likely insurgents to work for him. This has added bonus in that family members of a person in the service are more sympathetic and willing to go along with whatever is happening.

Droids were scrapped because its better to keep a population occcupied doing things less efficiency than giving them idle time to think about their situation and dwell on how unsatisfied they are.

[Simon_Jester]

They might have physically low-end droid brains. A C3PO unit seems to have human-level intelligence (and demonstrably superior intellect in some ways), but that doesn't mean a battledroid does.

Although C3PO in particular was an idiot in many ways too... that was probably because he was assembled from scrap by an eight year old. I'd be surprised if there wasn't something profoundly wrong with him given his origins.

[Eleas]

Another possibility is that battle droids simply aren't mentally equipped for peacekeeping duties, which would include distinguishing bystanders from actual targets, ferreting out potential insurgents, and pre-empting sabotage.

[Nathaniel]

You'd expect the droids to be more useful for spacebourne ground forces though due to their stackability. Without the need for life support, food etc. you could probably carry dozens of boxed Droidekas for every stormtrooper. Furthermore, because they don't consume resources just sitting about, ships could probably be deployed for longer without resupply. Maybe not great for policing planets, but for the meat grinder boarding actions it's hard to see how stormtroopers could be more efficient.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The New Essential Guide to Droids suggests that some of the more advanced and specialist models actually did enter active Imperial service, specifically the Dwarf Spider Droid whose entry on p103 includes

You've fought against it, you know it's weaknesses, and more importantly you know what a killer it can be. Men, meet the newest addition to the Stormtrooper Corps.

The Colicoid Annihilator droids were appropriated by the Royal Guard, apparently, and several other high end battle droids were used up in live fire training exercises.

The B1 droids were not worth doing anything to other than scrapping, apparently, the B3s were too rare to be more than curiosities-but the mainline B2 did become war salvage and small groups survived in private- or pirate- hands up to the Yuuzhan Vong invasion.

Droidekas are interesting- apart from the variants, they come with a range of brain options- and apparently those built for home defence by the Colicoids are fully self aware, and they may have been allowed to continue producing them after the end of the Clone Wars, the entry's ambiguous. Those that survived were treated as war debris and appropriated by seveal factions, including the Empire.

So, it looks as if the best and most dangerous fo the trade federation's battle droids were attached to the Stormtrooper Corps.

[Korgeta]

You'd expect the droids to be more useful for spacebourne ground forces though due to their stackability. Without the need for life support, food etc. you could probably carry dozens of boxed Droidekas for every stormtrooper. Furthermore, because they don't consume resources just sitting about, ships could probably be deployed for longer without resupply. Maybe not great for policing planets, but for the meat grinder boarding actions it's hard to see how stormtroopers could be more efficient.

That's the thing that caught my eye during Episodes I-III, even though the clone troopers were a effective team, seeing how the Droidekas performed (I think only two were visibly destroyed and that was by anakin in the ship at the hanger bay) that in those 3 movies haven't seen any others smashed apart. The bigger battledroids also were big and strong and in theory could carry more heavier weapons and other array of weapons that would take two-three clone troopers to work on. And let's not forget grevious.

I can understand a AI, droid Ban in some aspects as they were getting too efficent with no real counter which would explain story wose that they would be not present during the rebellion of IV V and VI (storm troopers were the prefered choice of policing, didn't want rebels to get hands on the droids) or were given limited roles.

However the Empire caring or fearing a possible backlash if it intergrated the droids they made a enemy of is I feel not a strong enough of a reason given this is the same Empire that designs a base that destroys planets that they call 'death star'. I think quite a few people would be alarmed by that! Then again the Empire's peace is the by the peace of the gun.

[Serafina]

Because the droids are far less capable than your average stormtrooper? You do not integrate an elite unit with the bottom of the barrel.

Isn't that just programming? You can just reprogram the droids and they should be reasonably effective.

They might have physically low-end droid brains. A C3PO unit seems to have human-level intelligence (and demonstrably superior intellect in some ways), but that doesn't mean a battledroid does.

There are other reasons to avoid using them. The Imperial army largely turned into a police and occupation force after the Clone Wars. In that kind of duty, people might be seriously uncomfortable with battledroids.

More importantly, if it goes to agility, aim and various other physical features, software is hardly the only limitation.
You may upgrade tactics by better programming, but everything else is limited by hardware as well.

[Connor MacLeod]

Droids are relatively low maintenance compared to humans - you don't pay them salaries, you don't have to pay for food, room and board, medical, etc. Droids also don't require stuff like alcohol or the SW equivalent of cigarettes or other luxury items (for which they might pay for legally or illegally)

Greed and corruption are significant factors in the Republic an the Empire, esp under Palpatine. Don't neglect the possibility that there are political or economic considerations dictating human use, nevermind the greed/corruption factor. We're too used to thinking of Star Wars as either acting under "ideal" circumstances (Ie under a signficant threat) or against a minor threat (like Trek).

[Simon_Jester]

However the Empire caring or fearing a possible backlash if it intergrated the droids they made a enemy of is I feel not a strong enough of a reason given this is the same Empire that designs a base that destroys planets that they call 'death star'. I think quite a few people would be alarmed by that! Then again the Empire's peace is the by the peace of the gun.

Yes. But now we're getting into details of Imperial policy. At that level, you have to ask about questions like "does Palpatine want soldiers immune to psychic influence by the Force?" And "Does the Tarkin Doctrine of state terror extend into the Imperial Army?" And "Was the Tarkin Doctrine in force in the years immediately after the end of the Clone Wars, when the decision of whether or not to incorporate battledroids into the Imperial army would have to be made?" And "Are the Imperial ground forces a large enough fraction of the Imperial military that their cost is actually significant compared to the cost of maintaining thousands of mile-long spacefaring gunships, so that it makes a useful difference in the budget to start bulking out their numbers with battledroids?

And I'm not sure those questions can be answered.

Droids are relatively low maintenance compared to humans - you don't pay them salaries, you don't have to pay for food, room and board, medical, etc. Droids also don't require stuff like alcohol or the SW equivalent of cigarettes or other luxury items (for which they might pay for legally or illegally)

Eh... they do require maintenance, and electronics and precision machinery are not cheap. This could be a tossup. Although since Star Wars uses droids as menial slaves in certain environments, I suppose the maintenance could be cheaper than I'd think.

[Norade]

Also, who's to say all those droids aren't just stored somewhere in reserve. If they were kept folded in a cool dry place they wouldn't need any maintenance and thus could simply be sitting forgotten by the republic in Imperial storage vaults.

[TC Pilot]

That's a possibility. We've known since TTT that the Emperor likes to store away useful technologies in private repositories. Also, after Zaarin destroyed its production facilities, the Missile Boat was put into storage.

[Connor MacLeod]

[quote="Simon_JesterEh... they do require maintenance, and electronics and precision machinery are not cheap. This could be a tossup. Although since Star Wars uses droids as menial slaves in certain environments, I suppose the maintenance could be cheaper than I'd think.[/quote]

Do you have any proof to back up your assertions? We've seen plenty of the industrial capabilities of SW to know that building droids is trivial, even if its just low end crap like the Trade federation used. And the infrastructure to maintain them would be far easier to handle than with humans (something as simple as setting up an automated factory in an asteroid belt or on a planet.) Nevermind that droids are so ubiquitus and robust that farmers and slaves on backwater planets can get them. Droids don't need to eat, sleep, be paid, given time off, medical attention, they don't age the way humans do, etc.

[Simon_Jester]

Eh... they do require maintenance, and electronics and precision machinery are not cheap. This could be a tossup. Although since Star Wars uses droids as menial slaves in certain environments, I suppose the maintenance could be cheaper than I'd think.

Do you have any proof to back up your assertions? We've seen plenty of the industrial capabilities of SW to know that building droids is trivial, even if its just low end crap like the Trade federation used. And the infrastructure to maintain them would be far easier to handle than with humans (something as simple as setting up an automated factory in an asteroid belt or on a planet.) Nevermind that droids are so ubiquitus and robust that farmers and slaves on backwater planets can get them. Droids don't need to eat, sleep, be paid, given time off, medical attention, they don't age the way humans do, etc.

I think you badly misunderstood the second half of my statement.

Do you desire proof of the claim that machinery requires maintenance? Aside from appeals to experience, I cannot provide it. Naturally, this maintenance can be automated, but "automated" does not mean "free." If nothing else, there is an opportunity cost involved. Building an automated factory to produce spare parts for droids means not building an automated factory to do something else. Or an automated factory farm to provide large amounts of, say, hydroponically grown tomato-equivalents for an organic workforce.

So I feel extremely confident in asserting that droids require maintenance, and that maintenance costs money. In case you were not aware, I do NOT consider this to be some sort of ironclad proof that droids are uneconomical as a labor force, only that they are not free, and that a rational economic agent in Star Wars would have to weigh the price of upkeep for a droid against, say, the price of tomato-equivalents to feed a living being. There is in fact a calculation that needs to be made here; it's not just a case of "puny humans require food and are therefore more expensive than droids."

The fact that people like Jabba the Hutt use droids for menial labor that could be done just as well by organics (such as using a repair droid capable of hyperspace navigation as a self-propelled drinks tray) suggests that droid maintenance in Star Wars is cheaper than I'd expect. It would have to be pretty damn cheap for droids to be competitive with living beings for even unskilled labor. Since droids definitely require a more advanced tech base to maintain, this surprises me, but I do not reject it on grounds of surprise.

[Starglider]

Maintenance for droids is proportional to use. They will not experience any significant degradation while sitting idle in racks - in fact there is evidence in the EU of droids sitting idle for twenty five thousand years, with no maintenance, and still functioning perfectly once activated (the war robots of Xim). By comparison, organics cost you almost the same (excepting treating battle wounds and maybe combat bonuses) whether you are using them or not. Thus droids are an excellent choice for reserve forces, or as marines for patrol craft that don't see much action and are short on space.

[Simon_Jester]

This is largely true, although I have a quibble about the "marines" application. Patrol craft that don't see much combat aren't heavy capital ships; their marine contingent is likely to be used for complicated duties that present some of the same problems as peacekeeping- you need a reasonably intelligent droid to do the job properly.

That can easily be offset by the low duty cycle and corresponding low maintenance, though, so it's only a quibble.
________

What I'm trying to get at is that the fact that droid armies are not utterly ubiquitous in Star Wars suggests at least some strategic reluctance to use them. It's such an obvious good idea that there must be something that explains why you don't see everyone doing it all the time.

[Norade]

There is a lack of need in most cases, why use droids when you have a navy crewed by organic sentient beings that can do the job? You need those people anyway for smaller more organic jobs so if you don't need a second type of force why bother. If you do need droids you know you can churn out fodder droids at an amazing rate and droid ships and such only marginally slower.

[Connor MacLeod]

I think you badly misunderstood the second half of my statement.

Which part, where you claimed that droids were not lower maintenance compared to humans (my original argument), or that electronics and precision machinery for droids in SW is not cheap? Or are you trying to assert that I somehow am claiming droids are maintenance free even though I flat out SAID that they are "relatively low maintenance? compared to humans? Do you not understand the difference between "low maintenance" and "zero maintenance"?

Do you desire proof of the claim that machinery requires maintenance? Aside from appeals to experience, I cannot provide it. Naturally, this maintenance can be automated, but "automated" does not mean "free."

I never claimed otherwise. Stop pretending I did.

If nothing else, there is an opportunity cost involved. Building an automated factory to produce spare parts for droids means not building an automated factory to do something else. Or an automated factory farm to provide large amounts of, say, hydroponically grown tomato-equivalents for an organic workforce.

For droids, you have to have facilities for replacing parts, storing them, and some kind of recharge facility. For humans you need places to eat (food preparation, waste disposal - including bathroom facilities, the actual place to eat, AND storage), places to sleep (which must be maintained as well). They need medical facilities (and storage for all the medical supplies and places set aside for recuperation, etc.) They need entertainment facilities, exercise and training facilities (not much good if your troop's abilities degrade is it?) They need to be paid, they need time off. They may need companionship. There are lots more, but its already pretty straightforward.

So I feel extremely confident in asserting that droids require maintenance, and that maintenance costs money. In case you were not aware, I do NOT consider this to be some sort of ironclad proof that droids are uneconomical as a labor force, only that they are not free, and that a rational economic agent in Star Wars would have to weigh the price of upkeep for a droid against, say, the price of tomato-equivalents to feed a living being. There is in fact a calculation that needs to be made here; it's not just a case of "puny humans require food and are therefore more expensive than droids."

Why don't you actually reread what I've been saying rather than going off on your own tanget based on what you think I said?

Droids are relatively low maintenance compared to humans - you don't pay them salaries, you don't have to pay for food, room and board, medical, etc.

We've seen plenty of the industrial capabilities of SW to know that building droids is trivial, even if its just low end crap like the Trade federation used. And the infrastructure to maintain them would be far easier to handle than with humans (something as simple as setting up an automated factory in an asteroid belt or on a planet.)

I never said that droids were fucking free, or that there wouldn't be a financial cost involved. I said that they were cheaper and easier to maintain than humans, even if its just the low grade shit like the Separatist forces use. - you know the same Cheap-ass separatists that fielded an army of quintillions of droids? Humans have far more requirements attached to them than robots do. Deal with it.

The fact that people like Jabba the Hutt use droids for menial labor that could be done just as well by organics (such as using a repair droid capable of hyperspace navigation as a self-propelled drinks tray) suggests that droid maintenance in Star Wars is cheaper than I'd expect. It would have to be pretty damn cheap for droids to be competitive with living beings for even unskilled labor. Since droids definitely require a more advanced tech base to maintain, this surprises me, but I do not reject it on grounds of surprise.

If you accept that SW droids are "cheaper" than humans (which I presume to mean long term cost, if not short term) then why the fuck are we having this argument? Did you really just skim over what I posted initially?

[The_Saint]

Think I read a couple of EU stories (at least one featured Luke either during or just before the Yuuzhan Vong Invasion) where Droidekas were being used as pub bouncers (amongst other things), less for the checking of customers but the threat of a high-firepower guard.

Now if B1's are used in numbers they're probably not so useful to smaller pirate or guard companies as they probably can't maintain a large pool but more independent droids such as Droidekas probably would be useful as movable automated gun turrets


Do we know how much of the CIS military forces the corporate sector absorbed at the end of the civil war?