When did Luke Skywalker learn to speak bleep-bloop?

[DudeGuyMan]

Increasing reliance on the laughable idea that as long as most people in-universe don't find something to be stupid, it can't be. Gee, that would only end about 50% of sci-fi discussion around here. The Klingons had a successful empire and were regarded as competent fighters in-universe, I guess bringing swords to a gunfight isn't lame after all.

And of course the whole R2 line was an abject failure in the SW universe because of this lack of voice interface for... wait, no it wasn't. Never mind, obviously it works, and no amount of you asserting it doesn't will change that.

Pathetic. See above.

So you demand that machines regularly fulfill tasks they weren't designed to do. Gotcha.

Non sequitur. You asked if I'd like a copy machine to be able to deliver detailed error messages out loud. I said that if the machine were sentient and communicative, like a droid, then yes I would.

Yup, and since they don't have voice interfaces, the line is an abject failure in the SW universe... wait, no it isn't. Once more, they work fine without voice interfaces, the movies have shown this to be so, you're the child stamping his feet and demanding that they don't in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

Worthless. See the beginning of this post.

I see nothing of substance here, so moving on in the hopes that you say something coherent...

I listed a litany of features the R-series has which would make no sense to include if they were never meant to operate independantly or communicate with humans, as you were trying to insist. Keep squirming.

Shit, they actually have the ability to record and play back holographic messages with speech! That's a hell of a feature to include on a droid that's always off in space somewhere, never interacting with human beings!

Wait for it... wait for it...

Because they don't need to.

Phasers don't need to have sights. They still manage to kill people. They're still stupidly designed.

Damn, you should tell that to everyone in the SW universe who has been doing just fine with this setup.

Concession accepted.

Not to mention your hilarious strawman that a protocol droid is necessarily hooked up to one unit and one unit only. It's pretty damn obvious that the protocol droid serves as the general interpreter for all the droids in a given locale. The protocol droid is the equivalent to the computer monitor letting you know what's going on with the various systems.

All you're telling me is that since these droids require dedicated translators, people will make sure to keep dedicated translators around. Despite, yet again, the droids already being programmed with human language and possessing audio hardware.

Now to hit submit and read the next post from some retard repeating all of this crap over again.

[DudeGuyMan]

You have to demonstrate there is a problem...in that universe. But you don't. You applying this situation from the point of view of an outsider and expect us to see your logic.

I've spent the entire thread from the first page throwing out examples of situations where the ability to speak Basic would be more useful than the lack thereof. Components damaged beyond repair, lack of parts, any conceivable circumstance that would result in not having an entire second robot there to translate for the first one even though it already knows Basic.

Examples from the films where R2 being able to communicate critical information was entirely dependant upon C3PO not only being part of the film but also being in the room at that particular moment, which were derided as being outside of normal operating circumstances. Mundane examples that would fall well within normal operation that were simply ignored.

I'm not going to repeat them. This goes for Batman as well.

I accept your concessions. This has been far below the level of discourse I had come to expect lurking here. Short of some new and exciting argument, I consider the debate concluded.

[Ghost Rider]

It probably would have saved Chewie some pain if Artoo could have said "the hyperdrive has been shut down" in The Empire Strikes Back, without having to go through that idiot 3PO, who was more concerned about himself than forwarding the message.

That's a good reason for any maintenance guy to talk. "Fix it." "It isn't broken" beep woo "What the hell are you just standing around for?! FIX IT!" "You're the one doing it wrong." woooow beep boop "Useless droid!"

R2D2 at least took some initiative and fixed the hyperdrive himself, without orders, but that's only because he's a special case, right? Droids are supposed to be slaves, and his orders were to fix Threepio, not the hyperdrive. Oops, bad guys win.

Yeah, good thing he never got memory wiped, then .

Ultimately a problem of taking situations out of context and claiming a problem given that is no different then going "Obi Wan should just force pushed Anakin into the lava...solve that Alderaan destruction issue, right quick."

[Oni Koneko Damien]

You know what, I'm conceding and leaving this thread. Others are already addressing the same points I am, and I keep getting drawn into defending things I had no initial intention of defending.

[Havok]

I've spent the entire thread from the first page throwing out examples of situations where the ability to speak Basic would be more useful than the lack thereof. Components damaged beyond repair, lack of parts, any conceivable circumstance that would result in not having an entire second robot there to translate for the first one even though it already knows Basic.

Useful does not equal NEED. NEED has been your argument. You have not demonstrated a NEED for R2 units to be able to talk outside of very specific circumstances that baseline R2 units almost certainly would not encounter.

Examples from the films where R2 being able to communicate critical information was entirely dependant upon C3PO not only being part of the film but also being in the room at that particular moment, which were derided as being outside of normal operating circumstances. Mundane examples that would fall well within normal operation that were simply ignored.

There are just as many examples of R2 NOT needing C-3PO in the films. And nothing about R2 or anything that they show him doing in the movies is 'mundane'. Every example that you have pointed out is something that NO OTHER Astromech droid would be a part of.

I accept your concessions. This has been far below the level of discourse I had come to expect lurking here. Short of some new and exciting argument, I consider the debate concluded.

That's probably best because your argument is completely founded on assumptions and unique circumstances and you have failed to demonstrate a NEED for the R2 LINE of Astromech to have an ability to talk.

Consider these...
When R2 is first activated, he is merely part of a team of astromechs. He has never even encountered 3PO, nor is there any protocol droid present on the ship, even though there are, what, six R2 units on board.

R2 has been extensively modified, yet no one, from the manufactures, to the Naboo, to Anakin through Luke ever felt the need to add voice capability.

Given the ability to talk, what language should it be? C-3PO is programed with over SIX MILLION forms of communication. Which one of those should Astromechs roll off the line able to speak? All of them?

Memory for Astromechs is not as abundant as this thread is assuming, which is why they only can store limited amounts of hyperspace coordinates.

An astromech droid's primary purpose on smaller ships such as starfighters was as a backup or replacement for a nav computer; however, due to the limitations of each unit's astrogation buffer, an astromech could only hold a set number of hyperspace coordinates. They also provided in-flight maintenance and repair, and performed a number of routine functions so the pilot could focus on flying the ship.

Larger starships usually carried a large complement of these in case of malfunctions or combat damage, while some snubfighters (notably the T-65 X-wing starfighter and Naboo N-1 starfighter), carried a droid in a special port for in-flight field repairs. Astromech droids had, in some cases, also been known to carry out light janitorial duties, and several instances of slicing carried out by these droids have been known, though this often required the installation of special programming.

Most astromechs were only able to communicate in writing, conveyed via another computer system, or through binary, a special code of clicks, bleeps, and similar sounds. Some craft that used astromechs could be equipped with astromech translators to facilitate communication.

The term "Astromech droid" had been used informally by spacers since around the time of the Jedi Civil War at least, to refer to the Utility droids that performed similar tasks during that era. It was not until some decades before the beginning of the Clone Wars when the company Industrial Automaton started launching their highly successful lines of astromech droids, that the term caught on and started to become synonymous with their models. Most notably the R-series of astromech droids, ranging from the R1-series to the R9-series.

Arguably, the most famous astromech droid was R2-D2, an IA R2-series astromech droid.

Also, I would like to point out that C-3P0 is programmed for "etiquette and protocol" and is not just a translator and that his language skills are there to facilitate different cultures, not droids that can't speak basic.

Anyway... onto your last attempt to try and fit in...

As soon as I saw the most recent poster's name to the right of the thread title I figured I was going to have to read another ream of weak-ass repetitious garbage backed up by a feeble attempt at attitude. Clearly I was not incorrect.

This isn't a fucking kid just out of mechanics school nimrod. What user error are you expecting from an advanced computer AI?

User error from the human being giving the orders, otherwise known as the user, you hopeless dipshit.

Be more clear next time and you won't have to go into your repertoire of lame insults.

As for user input being illogical or redundant etc... what the fuck does that have to do with R2 not being able to talk. That is operator error. If I tell an R2 unit to put a door on a tree, that is what it is going to do, because I am it's master and it is my slave.

Unless it knows for a fact that you don't have any doors in stock, in which case it's just going to look at you and bloop while you wonder what's wrong with it. I've been posting examples of why a droid might need to offer a complex response to a seemingly valid command since the first page of this thread, why don't you try fucking reading it?

Why, would someone give it a command it knows it can't do... that is an interesting question that you seem to not have considered. Do you routinely ask your car to mow the lawn? Computer to microwave you mac and cheese? You assume that people are going to be fucking idiots, and that is the basis for your argument and it is what makes it so pathetic, as demonstrated by the movies, people know what their particular astromechs are capable of and give them instructions accordingly.

If you tell it to do something it will do it.

Unless something prevents it from doing so, in which case you might want it to be able to quickly and easily report what the hell the holdup is. Jesus Christ, is this really so hard to understand?

And in what circumstance would an R2 unit not be able to relay that information?

I don't know why you have the fucking retarded idea that every droid is like R2. They do what you tell them to do. That is it. If you yell at it to stop what it is doing, it will stop what it is doing.

I'm going to quit responding to you and feel damn good about it if you don't soon display some indication that you're at least reading what you're responding to. I describe a situation where a droid can't complete a task because of extensive damage or a lack of parts and might want to communicate those facts, and you respond with this? In what fucking way does this even relate? Is there literally something wrong with you?

Actually that is not what you wrote...

Hey I just yelled over at that droid to abandon it's current task and begin another, but all it's doing is jabbering at me in droidspeak.

Again idiot, R2-D2 IS NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF BASELINE R2 UNITS, yet every part of your argument is based on this. If you yell at a BASELINE R2 unit to stop what it is doing, it is not going to start fucking sassing you, IT WILL JUST STOP WHAT IT IS DOING.

You are a fucking idiot. The point is that they were activated, given instructions on what to do then went and did it. They didn't need further communication.

In that one particular instance! If they roll out there and discover that the shield is totally fucked, they need to be able to report that. If they discover that the shield can only be restored to partial function, they need to be able to report that. If a second hit damages the sublight drive and the crew decides it's of greater/lesser priority, they need to be able to be told that.

A-FUCKING-MAZING! Multiple people have been yelling at you that your examples are context specific... and here you are... "In that one particular instance!". You are fucking laughable. Now of course you will demonstrate that the R2 units in "In that one particular instance!" had no way of communicating any of the information that you claim that they can not do, quickly and efficiently without being able to verbalize it. Which would be pretty impressive by the way, as they are in, y'know, space. Of course you can't though... because your whole argument is a pile of "What if!". But watching you try will be fun... oh except you left the argument 'victorious'.

Quit pretending that performing complex technical tasks under combat conditions is some sort of stupid monkeywork that could never ever require the rapid exchange of information. It's screamingly, blatantly, transparently idiotic and I'm getting tired of posting example after example after example to demonstrate that point only to have them all ignored over and over again by some dipshit fecophiliac mongoloid who thinks he can bullshit his way out of a debate.

Yet, as demonstrated by the movies, droids can in fact perform complex technical tasks under combat conditions without any communication whatsoever... oops. Guess you are dumb. Who knew? Oh wait, everyone in this thread.

First of all numbnuts... where did I say anything like that?

Either they can communicate with them or not, make up your mind! Or don't, since this specific example of droids operating in vacuum has been utterly immaterial to a discussion of what language they "speak" from the beginning.

How are droids operating in a vacuum WHERE SOUND CANNOT TRAVEL immaterial to the discussion of them not needing to be able to SPEAK?! What the fuck? Why, because it completely invalidates your argument? Is this like the whole "Oh well Han understanding growls and grunts perfectly as a language is not the same and immaterial to him understanding bleeps and bloops perfectly as a language!" argument? Gawd you are fucking stupid.

Second, where do you get the idea that the crew cannot tell the droids what to do? Again, the POINT is that all the work got done and not one person needed to communicate with the Astromechs outside of activating them and saying/commanding "fix the shields". In fact, it is entirely possible that they were just activated and they then figured out on their own what needed fixing.

I've already posted enough examples of why further communication could be required, I'm not doing so again until you demonstrate that you've at least read them.

See the difference here numbnuts, is that my example SHOWS THEM NOT HAVING TO COMMUNICATE TO GET THE JOB DONE. (Y'know, that pesky thing called evidence) Your 'examples' are all, "Well this could happen!" "What about this hypothetical scenario?!" "What IF this happened?!" I know it is hard for you to tell the difference from fact land and imaginary land, but at least try. Imaginary land is where you are intelligent and have sex with things that aren't inanimate, if that helps.

What is hilarious in this thread is YOU ignoring the fact that the entire universe in Star Wars seems to have absolutely ZERO problem talking with droids that can't speak basic or speak at all and just make noises. OBVIOUSLY it is not a fucking issue. "But but I want my droids to talk to me! whaaaaaaaaa" So it looks like the only twat here is you.

Some people are able to understand droidspeak thanks to long familiarity, but it's far from universal. Some people choose to customize their astromech droid with the ability to speak Basic. (Both of these facts were mentioned earlier in this thread, you should try reading it.) What's more, even if droidspeak were taught in every elementary school as a means of compensating for the oversight of astromech droids being forbidden from speaking Basic for some arbitrary reason, it would still be stupid fucking design.

OK, first of all dumbass, there is no universal 'droidspeak', as every droid model has a different pattern of sounds. Second, provide PROOF that astromechs are 'forbidden from speaking Basic'.

And hey, some people are able to understand Italian thanks to long familiarity. Yet, Han being able to understand Chewie has no bearing, but now you are going to say that Han being able to understand his droid because of long familiarity now has some relevance?

Actually I brought up the fact that Chewie speaks in grunts and growls which are just as equally unintelligible as R2's beeps and boops, yet Han has zero problem understanding him exactly.

And it was a pointless and irrelevant thing to bring up in the first place, since neither of them are droids.

Again, pointless and irrelevant because YOU SAY SO, as it completely weakens your argument that droids MUST SPEAK OR THEY ARE THE DUMBZORZ AND IMPOSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND!!! because OBVIOUSLY that isn't the case. I'm still curious as to why it is pointless when Chewbacca's growls and roars are just as foreign and unintelligible as R2s beeps and boops.

It was also pointed out that Han completely understood another droid language that was obviously different than how R2 sounded but you haven't addressed that either.

I addressed both this and the Chewbacca thing in direct response to you on the very first page of this thread you worthless illiterate fuck. Let me copy it into this post, in a shiny new color, in hopes that you'll actually read it this time.

Also, the fact that Han could understand that droid brings us back to the OP. Why would anyone ever possibly learn to understand droid language when it's likely a huge pain, it's used as a primary means of communication by only some droids, and any droid that can understand Basic AND speak ought to logically be able to speak Basic?

Oh hey, look, it's just as dumb the second time around... OBVIOUSLY it ISN'T A HUGE PAIN. Of all the people that we meet in the movies, Han shows the most disdain towards droids, and here is an interesting side tidbit, he shows the most towards the ONE that actually SPEAKS BASIC, but if there was one person that would be annoyed with having to learn a new droid language and would put a "speak basic" box on, it would be Han. Yet, he doesn't.

Han and Chewie understanding one another makes sense since they spend a lot of time together and neither seems to have the physical ability to speak the other's language. Someone learning to understand a series of bleeps and buzzes because a droid engineer somewhere went ahead and installed the Basic language pack but set it to "understand only, never speak" for some incomprehensible reason is vastly less sensible.

And you can provide evidence that R2, or any of the dozens of different droids we see in the movies are able to speak any other language aside from their own particular noises and are just set to not speak it? Of course you can't. Like every other argument you make, it is all founded on you not liking something and trying desperately to convince other people to think that what you think is dumb is actually dumb but isn't backed up by any evidence or fact.

So why don't you go fuck yourself and stop bald face lying.

This was really a piss-poor post on your part. I mean you should feel embarrassed. You're failing Internet 101 here, but I just know you'll come right back and post "BUT U TELL DROIDS WHAT TO DO AND THEY DO IT!!" yet again like it's some sort of crushing rebuttal.

Man, this is awesome, because really, this is all anyone has to say to diffuse your argument.

Every 'example' you make up, has to do with the droid in question back talking you, or questioning your orders, which is a trait that is not indicative of baseline, routinely wiped, droid personalities and memories. Or it is a 'what if scenario' that never actually happened and therefor has no relevance. That and the droid's owner being a fucking idiot. However, your simple mind cannot fathom that R2-D2 is a very unique droid and one that in no way, represents standard or acceptable droid behavior.

Really, if you thought that it was stupid that a basic speaking feature was not added, you should have just said so and left it at that, because lets look at your OP...

So here's a question that's been on my mind for 25 years: How the hell can Luke Skywalker understand what R2-D2 is saying? That beepity-boop "language" he speaks must be excruciating to learn, since it has no real "words" and is probably dependant upon all sorts of tiny variations in timing and pitch unlike any human language.

I mean it would take years to master that. Why the hell would anyone bother? I couldn't find anything about this on the R2-D2 Wookipedia article.

As you yourself said, time spent together is probably why Luke can understand R2, it obviously is not excruciating to learn or, you know, no one would and would just add the speaking modules that we know exist. Oh, and of course, being able to understand Chewie's way of speaking is irrelevant because clearly, it does not rely on tiny variations in timing and pitch right?

[Crazedwraith]

Hav, according to your arguments, it seems like R2 units have no need for audio communication at all. So not only do they not need Basic, they don't need 'bleep-bloop' either. They should just be mute, am I right? If they do need to communicate why should they be programmed with their own special unique language instead of just basic? Again R2 units come with the required devices for output of that kind of audio they just need some addition software, which if we assume Industrial Automation has any droid lines capable of speaking basic would functionally be free because they've already developed it, they just need to do some cutting and pasting.

The idea that R2 is super special and unique and much smarter than the average astromech is something you've claimed without offering any proof. All astromechs are capable of starship repair which is hardly dumb labour, since every bit of battle damage is going to be different they going to have to look at the problem, analyse it and solve it completely independently.

[Havok]

Hav, according to your arguments, it seems like R2 units have no need for audio communication at all. So not only do they not need Basic, they don't need 'bleep-bloop' either. They should just be mute, am I right?

No. I have never disregarded the fact that they need to communicate, simply that there is no reason they need to do so in basic. This is why I brought up the Chewie Han dynamic. Han doesn't have to speak Wookie and Chewie doesn't have to speak Basic for them to have communication. Since that is irrelevant though , just use the Han and his little helper droid example from TESB for the same relevant example.

If they do need to communicate why should they be programmed with their own special unique language instead of just basic?

This is a good question. As far as I know, this is a droid language of some sort, so perhaps it allows them to communicate with other devices that don't have the correct physical inputs that R2 units have or droids/computers that only communicate through sounds, like a fax machine. Remember that C-3PO is fluent in over six million forms of communication, and that isn't all of them in the galaxy, so R2's noises could be any number of things.

Again R2 units come with the required devices for output of that kind of audio they just need some addition software, which if we assume Industrial Automation has any droid lines capable of speaking basic would functionally be free because they've already developed it, they just need to do some cutting and pasting.

Again as I said to Red, having the software is great, but that doesn't mean it is going to cost nothing to install a program onto MILLIONS, if not TRILLIONS of independent wheeled hard drives. Who installs it? Who makes the copies? How long does it take to copy MILLIONS of files onto MILLIONS of separate, unlinked hard drives? You are being ridiculous if you think that there isn't going to be a HUGE cost there, even if it is just in time.

And who knows, maybe IA has a program you can get for them, but no one wants to pay the 50 credits to download it because people realized they don't really need them to talk, or them being able to shake their heads yes and no and making yes no noises is enough.

The idea that R2 is super special and unique and much smarter than the average astromech is something you've claimed without offering any proof. All astromechs are capable of starship repair which is hardly dumb labour, since every bit of battle damage is going to be different they going to have to look at the problem, analyse it and solve it completely independently.

I have never said this wasn't the case. In fact I supposed in one of my posts that all you had to do was activate an R2 unit and they would be able to pinpoint, diagnose and fix the problem all on their own with zero communication from anyone (something that is backed up by how they show the scene in TPM when the team of R2 units go about attempting to fix the shields) However the fact that R2 hasn't had a mind wipe since at least the The Phantom Menace is a canon fact. That is what makes him unique and special. His time accumulating memories and developing a personality. I never said anything resembling 'R2 is smarter than the average astromech'. I did say he was smarter than humans, but I would think that was a given being that he is an advanced AI.

[Crazedwraith]

Again as I said to Red, having the software is great, but that doesn't mean it is going to cost nothing to install a program onto MILLIONS, if not TRILLIONS of independent wheeled hard drives. Who installs it? Who makes the copies? How long does it take to copy MILLIONS of files onto MILLIONS of separate, unlinked hard drives? You are being ridiculous if you think that there isn't going to be a HUGE cost there, even if it is just in time.

If you're talking about upgrading all existing astrounits from speaking bleep-bloop to basic then sure that right but I'm talking about IA manufacturing stock R2 units like this. Which isn't going to be any more expensive that making them as they do, only able to speak in beeps, aside from the development costs the design, which I pointed out should be negligible if IA has any other robot capable of it. (Do IA even make any other droids? Or just astromechs?)

[Havok]

Every piece of tech you put in, be it software or hardware is going to keep the droid on the assembly line that much longer, and slows down the process just that much more, which is going to drive costs up just that extra little bit, thereby keeping your product out of the consumers hands just a little longer and adding that 50 extra credits to each unit... multiply that by the billions of atstromechs that they would have to realistically supply to keep a galactic population satiated... The cost savings of eliminating a feature that obviously isn't a necessity and that people don't even seem to want has to be HUGE, even as I said, just in time alone.

And as is clear, just because it is called 'basic', that is not the only language the galaxy speaks... so which language do you program them with... keeping in mind that protocol droids are fluent in over six million forms of communication, and that isn't all of them... why am I using so many ellipses... bed time...

[Crazedwraith]

Although If you replace Beep code with Basic then the overall size of your program isn't going to go up, significantly. And even if you aren't, I can't believe that next to a complete understanding of astronavigation and starship repair and a fully sapient AI, the programming time for a single language can be anything more than negligible. (Though your point still stands that this marginal time would add up of a few billion units)

As to why basic, have we ever met a character in Star Wars that might be using astromechs and doesn't understand basic? Is beep code (Sorry but saying bleep-boop repeatedly was making me feel retarded) superior over basic because almost no-one understands it as opposed to most people speaking it.

As to C-3PO if we go by the EU at least a lot of those languages are highly obscured dead languages as opposed to languages in common use in the galacxy. In any case if someone didn't want their astromech to speak basic then it would be all the better for IA since they'd have them over a barrel when it came to costs for language upgrades. I mean its not like they'd be able to object. Have we seen any non R-series astrodroids?

[DudeGuyMan]

Havok, you are absolutely the worst poster I've ever seen here. You haven't come up with one new argument since you first posted in this thread, and frankly most of them have been excruciatingly poor to boot. You demonstrate a very poor grasp of the arguments you've supposedly read and are responding to, and seem to be content to just flap your jaw and pose while hoping I get tired of kicking you around.

I'm going to give you one last boot, because the level of logic in your posting really has declined to utterly deplorable levels, and then I'm simply through humoring you.

Useful does not equal NEED. NEED has been your argument. You have not demonstrated a NEED for R2 units to be able to talk outside of very specific circumstances that baseline R2 units almost certainly would not encounter.

You really just aren't good at reading the thread. My arguments have been that the ability to speak would be useful, and that given the software and hardware they're already equipped with, there's little good reason for them not to have said ability. Ergo, they are badly designed in this regard.

For some reason this kicked off four pages of sperglord fanboy nonsense screaming about how R2 units are perfect and would never ever possibly have any good reason to speak Basic because they never ever talk to humans and so on and so forth ad nauseum, with you as one of the primary offenders.

There are just as many examples of R2 NOT needing C-3PO in the films.

Does this... really sound like a rational point to you, or are you just taking the piss? I could just as easily post a bunch of pictures of people accomplishing tasks while sitting in chairs and call them examples of humans not needing feet. Something can be important and worthwhile to have without being required 24/7 in every single circumstance.

Does this really not make sense to you? Are you over there thinking "Wrong, anything you don't need at all times is worthless, idiot!" or are you so wrapped up in shrieking and hooting and trying to convey what you think is the proper attitude that you don't care?

And nothing about R2 or anything that they show him doing in the movies is 'mundane'. Every example that you have pointed out is something that NO OTHER Astromech droid would be a part of.

No, the mundane parts were all the "Droid can't fix the hyperdrive because it's not broken/too broken/we don't have the parts" and such that I and others have posted and which you've been going through some stunning mental gymnastics to ignore. Later in this post you're actually going to insist that user error need not exist. It's staggering.

Consider these...
When R2 is first activated, he is merely part of a team of astromechs. He has never even encountered 3PO, nor is there any protocol droid present on the ship, even though there are, what, six R2 units on board.

R2 has been extensively modified, yet no one, from the manufactures, to the Naboo, to Anakin through Luke ever felt the need to add voice capability.

A great deal of technology in a great deal of popular science fiction is oddly or poorly designed because the writers favored aesthetics over apparent function. The characters take no notice of it because that's not what the story is about. When pressed to rationalize this in-universe, we just sort of shrug and mutter that despite being smart enough to have FTL travel and such, these people are just kind of weird/dumb/myopic about certain things.

This is hardly a new concept to anyone that has read this site for more than five minutes. If you want examples, yet again, look at pretty much everything related to Star Trek. That the characters don't see a problem with mute droids, scopeless phasers, impractical walking vehicles, or whatever the topic of the moment is, does not constitute a meaningful argument that these things aren't poorly designed no matter how many times you repeat it.

Given the ability to talk, what language should it be? C-3PO is programed with over SIX MILLION forms of communication. Which one of those should Astromechs roll off the line able to speak? All of them?

Basic, obviously. It's the dominant language of the galaxy, the vast majority of people we see in the films speak it, and most significantly... I've said this repeatedly so pay attention this time... they're already programmed with an apparently excellent understanding of the language.

I have answered this exact question with this precise response at least once, probably more than once, in previous posts in this thread. How many times do you feel I'm obligated to repeat myself for your benefit?

Memory for Astromechs is not as abundant as this thread is assuming, which is why they only can store limited amounts of hyperspace coordinates.

They already understand the language and can generate text. They even already include a speech-quality speaker as part of the holographic message capability. The only thing they need in order to speak Basic that they don't already have is a text-to-speech program, a relatively small and trivial piece of software even by the comparatively primitive standards of the real world.

Unless you want to accept as valid evidence one card from the discontinued Star Wars CCG, which claims that a particular piece of shipboard hardware is required to translate signals from an R2 unit into text. I personally have chosen not to make an issue of it, even though it would mean that an astromech droid was completely dependant upon specialized external hardware in order to generate useful output. Pretty much the epitome of "stupid design" for a unit that already has a fluent understanding of Basic, and an excuse for me to bid this disgrace of a thread farewell. But feel free to call upon it if you wish.

So that's it. Either all they need is a routine bit of speech synthesis software in order to speak Basic, or else there's some sort of bizzare flaw in their programming that prevents them from even hypothetically framing output in Basic despite a fluent understanding of the language, requiring every ship in the fleet to carry specialized equipment for the express purpose of being able to talk to astromech droids.

This is another lengthy segment of response that contains absolutely nothing I haven't said already. Thank you for making me type it again.

Also, I would like to point out that C-3P0 is programmed for "etiquette and protocol" and is not just a translator and that his language skills are there to facilitate different cultures, not droids that can't speak basic.

All the more reason protocol droids should have better things to do under normal circumstances than sit around playing astromech translator.

Why, would someone give it a command it knows it can't do... that is an interesting question that you seem to not have considered.

Because they're dumb. Because they're misinformed. Because they're new. Because they forgot that the ship is out of spare hyperdrive motivators, but the droid remembers. Because the command is reasonable, but the droid is malfunctioning. Because anything. Oh to live in the magical world you seem to inhabit, where computers never have need of any error message more complex than beep-boop. Tech support must be a breeze there.

Do you routinely ask your car to mow the lawn? Computer to microwave you mac and cheese? You assume that people are going to be fucking idiots, and that is the basis for your argument and it is what makes it so pathetic, as demonstrated by the movies, people know what their particular astromechs are capable of and give them instructions accordingly.

This is the sort of thing you post, that when I see your other posts elsewhere on the board I can't help thinking "Oh yeah, it's that really dumb guy."

Look chuckles, this is a hell of a long post already, I don't have all morning to screw around with this shit, and I just realized that I'm less than halfway through your horrible rambling garbage post. Long story short, you're wrong and stupid, and should probably read this thread very slowly from the beginning with a dictionary in hand.

[Wing Commander MAD]

This is actually a rather interesting observation.

The first issue I would like to point out that regarding the limited amount of hyperjump coordinates. This arises from most likely two issues. Hyperjump coordinates are, most likely for safety reasons, stored in memory that is separate from the main memory of the unit, either physically or logically. This insures that while the unit is continually modifying its own codebase it doesn't overwrite the coordinates, or accidently modify them. Think more of BIOSs and ROM, rather than RAM and secondary memory(hard drives) in computer terms. Secondly, hyperjump coordinates are probably more than simple positional coordinates. Indeed, astromech use as either backup or replacement for navigational computers means that they are actually storing routing and other kinds of information. What this means is that the limited memory devoted to this easily filled up. Keep in mind astromech droids are utility first, and navigators second (or maybe lower).

The next issue the idea that astromech and other droids are meant to have little to no interaction with people. This is simply not the case, the mere ability for them to parse and interpret verbal commands implies that they are designed to have at least some interaction with people who speak a language. I cannot think of one droid in the entire universe that doesn't seem to have the ability to interact with people. Even the damn mouse droid appears to shit itself when Chewie growls at it and it runs away beeping something. It certainly was not the behavior of a dumb automata meant to have no interactions with people, and thus generally ignore them.

If they are meant to interact with people, they need to have a meaningful manner of providing output to user input. If they used a "simple" beep code like modern home computers that would be fine as it would allow the conveyance of the necessary simple information. What we get instead is some kind of language, far in excess of any kind of simple system. The fact that there is a language at all for conveying information that can be used by droids like R2, who can get quite verbose, having an audible component implies there was a desire to have the droid interact with humans. There is certainly no reason to have droids communicate with each other audibly. That funcition is far better served by some form of communication usesing the electormagnetic spectrum, if only becuase people expect things designed to operate in the background without human intervention to not draw attention to themselves. Really, I question the need of machines to need a language to communicate with each other. Everything, is afterall just data, its how its interpreted thats matters. A system of predifined identifiers to indicate to the reciever the nature of a piece of data sure, an actual language not so much. Hell, the only reason artificial high level programming languages like C or Pascal exist is to provide a means of packaging data that is intelligble to humans who use natural language. In short, the only reason for droids to possess an audible form of communication is for interacting with people. If it is complex enough to be considered a language in its own right, and not merely a listing of tones and pitches in some series with a predifined meaning, and the droids seem to possess an understanding of spoken languages, it begs the question of why not use the spoken language to communicate output, even if in a simple form (ie the SW equivalent of pidgeon English), rather than invent a new language. R2 and other droids sure seem to be conveying more than affirmative, negative, hey I require attention, and error #41926.

[DudeGuyMan]

Hmm, that's a good point.

Do the droids have the ability to communicate wirelessly at all? When Luke needed to tell R2 to turn off the garbage masher in ANH, he had to go through 3PO, who was physically holding a commlink. When Anakin needed to be able to talk to R2 at the beginning of ROTS, R2 had to carry a commlink around in a little internal chamber and couldn't even dial down the volume when it was giving away his position.

Adamskywalker said something a couple pages ago about being able to use a datapad to understand an astromech droid in Vision of the Future, but he used the term "translate" which implies that the droid still had to be physically present and communicating via "spoken" Binary. I'm not familiar with that book.

I mean it's kinda unthinkable that they wouldn't be able to communicate wirelessly, isn't it? You wouldn't let your human technicians walk around without commlinks. Nobody had better try to tell me that R2 units can repair everything automatically and never need to be told what to do, either. Military service is one of their primary intended purposes, and when multiple systems are damaged, repair priority can be an important consideration which changes based on the tactical situation.

So if you've got droids rolling around the roof of your cruiser or whatever, your shields and engines are both damaged, and the enemy is incoming, you can't tell them "We'll never outrun them anyway, fix the shields so we can fight them off!" or "They can blow us aways shields or no, but they're slow, so fix the engines!" as the case may be depending on what's coming? They're not physically plugged into the ship out there like they would be in a fighter.

If they CAN communicate wirelessly, why do they have the ability to use "spoken" Binary at all? Some humans might learn it, but it's not intended for communication with humans. And for communicating with other droids, wireless is better anyway if only because the other droid doesn't need to be right next to the first one. What the hell IS the purpose of that bleepbloop vocabulator on a sensibly designed droid?

[Gaidin]

Adamskywalker said something a couple pages ago about being able to use a datapad to understand an astromech droid in Vision of the Future, but he used the term "translate" which implies that the droid still had to be physically present and communicating via "spoken" Binary. I'm not familiar with that book.

They can communicate via wireless. Artoo smuggled a datapad into a prison that Han and Leia were in and basically walked them through an escape plan.

[DudeGuyMan]

Okay, good times. Anything else would be beyond belief. One wonders why they don't use it more, or why they sometimes need to hold comlinks, but as long as you're not stuck trying to yell up through the ceiling "No, fix the engine, they're gonna catch us!" then it's not so bad.

[Gaidin]

Okay, good times. Anything else would be beyond belief. One wonders why they don't use it more, or why they sometimes need to hold comlinks, but as long as you're not stuck trying to yell up through the ceiling "No, fix the engine, they're gonna catch us!" then it's not so bad.

well....to be totally clear....he was jacked into the city network and using their wireless.

[Mad]

Astromech droids are designed to be advanced tools, capable of fixing things the [surviving] crew may not fully understand. They are put into dangerous situations.

The manufacturer recommends that they be memory-wiped regularly, ostensibly to prevent them from developing quirks that would appear to be a personality to people. A new or cleanly-wiped droid gives very terse text output.

Adding voice capability would make it much easier to anthropomorphize these tools. Perhaps the manufacturers learned that it is more profitable to keep people thinking of them as "smart tools" instead of as very handy pets or even people.

It might also keep more people alive if they aren't risking their own lives to keep their favorite astromech droid from being blown apart in combat. After all, Anakin has gone against orders to keep Artoo from dying.

This could very well hep PR for the manufacturer, too. How would you feel about a manufacturer that built a droid with a simulated personality if your son needlessly died trying to save that droid?

Anyway, in a typical usage scenario, such as starship repair, the ability to have text output displayed on a readout screen should be sufficient (perhaps with audible tone to alert the operator to a new message and its relative importance). In a combat situation, the operator can prioritize any text-based status reports without being interrupted by new audible reports by the droids.

[Drooling Iguana]

"Sure man, I'll have this hyperdrive fixed in ten minutes. Er, I mean, beep boop."

"Okay, but it'll take me about six hours to fix the hyperdrive. It's pretty messed up. Uh, bloop beep I mean."

"The hyperdrive is fixed, but you should go easy on it and not take it above 100c until we get home and can do a full overhaul. By which I mean boop beep whistle."

"Wait, did that droid say six hours or six parsecs? And what was that speed it told us to keep below again? Dammit, why couldn't it have just sent that information in an e-mail so that I'd have it written down?"

[DudeGuyMan]

"Wait, did that droid say six hours or six parsecs? And what was that speed it told us to keep below again? Dammit, why couldn't it have just sent that information in an e-mail so that I'd have it written down?"

Being able to broadcast a text backup of important output to the ship's computer for reference would indeed be a useful ability. That doesn't mean that making the droid essentially mute and completely dependant upon external peripherals in order to generate any sort of useful output is a good idea. Especially when I still haven't seen a good reason for failing to program them with a simple voice synthesizer, a dirt-common bit of software even on current computers that have far less use for it.

Also, while useful, I haven't seen any evidence that an astromech can actually do what you just said. Not without moving away from whatever it may be doing to plug into the nearest computer access point, as Gaidin made reference to.

[DudeGuyMan]

Ghetto edit: Or without audibly "speaking" into a nearby microphone so that another computer can translate the "speech" into text, which would be a pretty absurd way for a robot to send email.

[jollyreaper]

This thread is awesome. Too funny.

Real-world explanation: It's a common trope for heroic characters to have side-kicks who are either mutes incapable of communicating in any language or are natives who speak a language only the heroic character knows. There's also the Lassie principle, non-human characters who interact with humans in an intelligent fashion. This is what Lucas wanted. This is what he did. And R2 is kewl. I can't imagine a suitable voice for him.

In-universe explanation: It doesn't make a lick of sense. End of discussion. It's the same level of ridiculousness as the original Galactica having three Cylons sitting in a Raider flying it with manual controls. We know the real-world explanation for doing this, the viewer needs a someone to look at. If three Centurion brains were needed to fly the ship, just hardwire them in. Plus this also gives the humans the chance of stealing a Raider. "Oh, well the Raiders were designed before the Cylons went from being reptiles to cybernetic organisms so that's why the controls were retained." No, please don't try to rationalize it. It's just as ridiculous for Cylons to communicate with each other using sound waves. Why not just transmit with radio? The real explanation is that human characters need to overhear the Cylons talking and it's easier exposition for the fans at home.

The arguments made above are perfectly correct. R2 already has the ability to comprehend spoken commands and generate a response. If he can generate text for the X-Wing to display, he could just as easily route this through the same speakers used for his holoprojector. My freakin' 286 could do Stephen Hawking speech synthesis through the PC squeaker.

But you're wasting your time trying to in-universe explain this. The real challenge is explaining why Ben Kenobi was hanging out on Tantooie wearing Jedi robes years after they'd been wiped out by the Empire. That'd be like a Jew walking around in full hassidic kit after the Nazis won WWII. You don't think that's going to attract some attention? Real-world explanation: Lucas wanted visual continuity and so made Kenboi's gear the Jedi default. I understand why it was done even though it was really, really dumb. There is no possible valid explanation for it in-universe. You also can't explain away Luke retaining the name Skywalker. You can try saying Skywalker is as common as Smith but that's trying too hard. The real-world explanation is that Lucas hadn't decided Luke's dad was Vader, the whole "twins kept from their father" thing didn't get invented until the third movie, and that's the long and short of it. If Hitler won WWII and Eva Braun was whisked away somehow and she was pregnant with Fuhrer twins to be hidden away in the hopes that they would grow up and defeat him, you can bet your bottom dollar that the boy wouldn't be called Luke Hitler. And they sure wouldn't hide Leia with some Bavarian nobility and let her get elected to the Reichstag.

[jollyreaper]

Ultimately a problem of taking situations out of context and claiming a problem given that is no different then going "Obi Wan should just force pushed Anakin into the lava...solve that Alderaan destruction issue, right quick."

Characters in a story are no different from marionettes, the writer no different from a puppeteer. A skilled puppeteer will make the marionettes move as if of their own volition, the strings invisible. The illusion will be perfect and the puppets seem alive. A bad puppeteer will jerk them about by their strings and the contrivance becomes plain for all to see. A truly awful puppeteer will dispense with any pretense and simply drag the marionettes through the dust behind him, jostling along on their strings.

While we all know that the writer is directing his characters through the adventure, the illusion to be preserved is that they have goals and needs of their own, that the events transpiring and actions taken are flowing naturally. If the only explanation for what is seen is "Because then you wouldn't have a story," that's awful.

Q: Why didn't Obi-Wan finish off Vader when he had the chance?
A: Because then you wouldn't have a story.

No, awful. A better explanation would be along the lines of Vader getting maimed but the last minute arrival of stormtroopers driving Obi-Wan away before he could kill Vader. He wanted to, he would have, he was prevented.

[jollyreaper]

Useful does not equal NEED. NEED has been your argument. You have not demonstrated a NEED for R2 units to be able to talk outside of very specific circumstances that baseline R2 units almost certainly would not encounter.

My Roomba speaks in bleep-bloop. It has a distinct sound for turning on, docking at the base station, and getting stuck on something in the middle of the cleaning cycle. But it will also speak to tell me of specific errors that are not obvious such as "Please clean brushes." Oh, that's why it isn't running. That's more instructive than getting a defiant "no" beep when I try to turn it on.

There was a fetish for putting voices in cars back in the 80's. "The door is ajar. The door is ajar." It was determined in situations like this that a simple bong was less annoying, or you could use a display on the dashboard with an outline of the car to show which doors were open. But navigation systems, ah, that's where speech really comes in handy! "Please make a u-turn! Destination will appear on right." A bong can tell you the door is open or you left the lights on or the key in the ignition. But directions, no series of bongs could substitute for that. And we're talking dumb-as-bricks automobiles in 2010, not self-aware and sentient droids in a galaxy far, far away. They're already working on navigators that will accept spoken commands rather than relying on keyed input.

[jollyreaper]

"Wait, did that droid say six hours or six parsecs? And what was that speed it told us to keep below again? Dammit, why couldn't it have just sent that information in an e-mail so that I'd have it written down?"

Being able to broadcast a text backup of important output to the ship's computer for reference would indeed be a useful ability. That doesn't mean that making the droid essentially mute and completely dependant upon external peripherals in order to generate any sort of useful output is a good idea. Especially when I still haven't seen a good reason for failing to program them with a simple voice synthesizer, a dirt-common bit of software even on current computers that have far less use for it.

Also consider how silly it was that the Falcon could not verbally speak to the people flying it to let them know what the problem was with the hyperdrive. It took an astromech to talk to it and a protocol droid to translate that to basic. This is putting me in mind of Better Off Ted where the motion detectors couldn't see black people but management could not admit to making a mistake so every black employee was given a white employee to follow them around to activate lights and doors.

If droids are capable of flying starships, why isn't a droid brain built into the Falcon? Yeah, I know, that's not the story Lucas was trying to tell. It's WWII in space. But in-universe, if I had a starship, I'd be hardwiring a nice, dependable droid brain into it. If you want to talk about a bit of an oversight, the Falcon at bare minimum needs one person to fly it and two to operate the dorsal and ventral quad guns. Han plus Chewie makes two. Who flies the thing when they're in a fight? Obviously this was not a problem in the script as written since Chewie and Leia were in the cockpit and Luke and Han were going to be in the turrets. The ship was designed around the needs of the script. But looking at things beyond that, it makes no sense. At the very least you'd think an auto-turret would work.