BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
BattleTech Game Systems => General BattleTech Discussion => Topic started by: Kitsune413 on 24 June 2017, 11:46:17
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The planet of Mizar has robotic bartenders. Apparently chatty ones.
I don't think I've ever noticed any other mention of robots in Battletech. Not semi-android ones.
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Well, there's the robotic components of the SDS systems, and the robotic drones utilized by the word of blake and also appearing in Necromo Nightmare.
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There's also those security robots and agricultural robots from the 1st edition of MechWarrior RPG.
(And I wanna say the Kell Hounds or Gray Death Legion scenario book had a MechWarrior scenario that featured security robots as well...)
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I know I shouldn't be surprised because the base setting of the game is, "Giant Robots" but.. I'm surprised.
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You're surprised there aren't more around? or you're surprised there were this many already?
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Well... I've spent pretty much my whole life playing battletech... and game mastering for battletech... and reading battletech novels...
But i've never come across robots before...
And so now they are a thing that exists.
I feel like I've gone through my whole life not knowing that cats existed.
"Hey cats are a thing. Also.. there is one in the room with you right now."
I spent the morning thinking it's weird Ato2 doesn't have riggers because there are drones in 3026... and now there are robots.
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They aren't anywhere near as common as cats. It's not like Star Wars where R2 and C3P0 are at first sight, rather unremarkable to a stranger. It's not terminator, where the robots are the antagonists. (barring Necromo Nightmare). One of battletech's chief strengths, one of the things that makes it stand out from the rest of sci-fi is how tightly focused on humans, and humans fighting humans it is.
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Battletech has robots but I don't think they have artificial intelligence. It's one thing to have fairly complex scripts for security bots and 'chatty' (think Cleverbot) artificial bartenders but it's entirely another thing to have something that mimics human intelligence. There are a lot of challenges to building true artificial intelligence that mimics the analogue transmissions of the 100 billion neurons connected by 100 trillion synapses that make up our brains. The challenge wouldn't be just in simply matching the processing power of the human brain but in emulating its complex architecture.
So even if Battletech has robots far in advance of anything we have today they could still be lightyears away from sentient AI capable of emulating biological intelligence. Think ED-209 rather than Data from Star Trek :D.
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Indeed. The BattleTech universe has no sapient robots; the Caspar network was close, but really was more of a complex and adaptive tactical combat program than anything that was self-aware (as evidence by the fact that all Amaris needed to do to compromise the entire network was key in a new series of commands).
The smaller robots of the BT universe have typically been simpler, single-job machines that probably looked like Star Wars droids, but were nowhere near as creative. The Kell Hounds Adventure with a security bot basically was a track-based drone that stood about human height and mainly just chased down and fired at anything it recognized as an intruder. The larger Agribots mentioned in the first edition MechWarrior rules were basically automated WorkMechs and/or vehicles. The bartender bots on Mizar are likely just glorified vending machines.
The thing about robots is that they'd be high end tech (Think Tech Rating C or higher), and you'd see very few worlds that had any in abundance in the wake of the Star League's collapse. What worlds do have them would mainly be those that could afford such luxuries AND had a local tech base capable of maintaining them. Planets that regressed to 20th century levels wouldn't see many bots at all, except maybe in the homes of the highest ranked local nobility and corporate/political leaders. Worlds with no industrial base to speak of--where people travel to work on horseback--probably have none at all.
And, of course, military-grade robots are basically drones.
Hope that helps.
- Herb
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Well, apparently the Widow trashed some combat droids, at some time or another. Maybe they were a secret Star League black project that was forgotten and lay dormant until the Black Widows stumbled upon them and caused them to activate. Too bad she didn't leave enough left to examine and reverse-engineer the technology 8):
(https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0149/6074/files/scan_grande.jpg?13452959339878469662)
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That's why you don't go fishing around old star leage Lostech vaults. Robots.
I appreciate your input on this universe shaking development for me Herb.
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(And I wanna say the Kell Hounds or Gray Death Legion scenario book had a MechWarrior scenario that featured security robots as well...)
It's the Kell Hounds.
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The bartender bots on Mizar are likely just glorified vending machines.
I'm envisioning something like the bartender bot from The Fifth Element: Something vaguely humanoid with a soda gun.
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When writing Lawyers, Guns and Money, I took the concept of a security bot from the old MechWarrior 1st Ed rulebook for the conflict setup fluff-text on pages 3-4. Admittedly though, I envisioned it to be more like the security robot/drone from the Aliens movie: basically a box with ammo, gun, and a smart-ish motion sensor that would track and fire on anything that crossed its path, rather than the 6 ton, two small laser hover-bot described on p50 of the MW 1st Ed rulebook.
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Like a beefed up....
(https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oIlhlEuingI/V2MBUYGDF5I/AAAAAAABYRM/cCE5NcY91U4EbYLKig_QaM3wmvKuXuFGgCLcB/s1600/54c8aef86f51f_-_swords-bot-430.jpg)
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The way I see Robots in B-tech is that they are basically drones, controlled by a central computer. Basically the M5 Caspar's were robotic drones. There are no autonomous robots in the BTech universe.
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Yeah, almost exactly what I had in mind. :)
Like a beefed up....
(https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oIlhlEuingI/V2MBUYGDF5I/AAAAAAABYRM/cCE5NcY91U4EbYLKig_QaM3wmvKuXuFGgCLcB/s1600/54c8aef86f51f_-_swords-bot-430.jpg)
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That's why you don't go fishing around old star leage Lostech vaults. Robots.
I appreciate your input on this universe shaking development for me Herb.
Don't you mean VaulTech?
^-^
TT
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I'm envisioning something like the bartender bot from The Fifth Element: Something vaguely humanoid with a soda gun.
Or the robot vending machine and camera from macross.
If we want to get sued...