• Welcome to the new COTI server. We've moved the Citizens to a new server. Please let us know in the COTI Website issue forum if you find any problems.
  • We, the systems administration staff, apologize for this unexpected outage of the boards. We have resolved the root cause of the problem and there should be no further disruptions.

How long does it take to build a robot?

I have three related design systems for robots - JTAS, TD, and Book 8 - for CT, plus Striker, and I can't find anything that says how long it takes to actually build a robot.

I'm a little surprised Striker doesn't address this, at least as far as I can find.

Starships, I have construction times, but not for anything smaller.

Do other editions address this?

I can make something up but I'm curious if there's a source I missed.
 
T20 treats robots as vehicles. If I remember, Book 8 has robots as durable as a toaster to the durability of a tank, and you either encounter them or buy them in a store already made.

A human to small vehicle sized robot takes a week for a factory built unit. (T20 Vehicle)

A medium vehicle sized robot takes a month for a factory built unit. (T20 Vehicle)

A human sized robot takes a month or more if built by hand, time dependent on being able to buy premade parts versus building it mostly/completely from scratch. (T20 Technical Skills)


I just did a search, and a family car takes 18 to 35 hours from start to driving out of the factory, depending on a number of factors that could finish building between minimum & maximum times.

Another search: A factory built robot might take a few days to a few months depending on how complex it is.

Yet another search: A hand made human sized robot might take years or decades depending on complexity & level of detail desired.



From this, it's up to the GM how robust the robot is in determining time to build in a factory or by hand. Tech level & education, or innate technical ability, could make a difference for being hand built. (I was thinking of C3PO being built by Anakin, off the top of my head)

Hope this helps.
 
Have you tried asking Grok what the proposed construction time for an Optimus robot will be when production ramps up?

Edit - 33 per day, take with a pinch of salt.
 
Hope this helps.
It very much does, thank you - I have T20 and didn't even think to look there, for starters. [*sound of hand smacking forehead*]

One of my characters in my Beltstrike game is a belter-turned-roboticist. He designed an asteroid mining robot and now he's building a prototype, and I'm trying to get a handle on how long that might take. I have a rough idea, but I wanted to see if the game already addressed this elsewhere.

I need to look at MT task profiles for tasks relating to the relevant skills: Robotics, Electronics, Computer, Mechanical. I believe robotics are handled in the MT Referee's Companion, a book I don't own - I may have to break down for the .pdf.
 
The Referee's Companion has a couple of pages on how to set up tasks for research projects using uncertain tasks and the cycle of hypothesis, testing, modifying the hypothesis, testing, etc. It also has a few pages on robots in the 3I, their history, etc. Nothing very solid.
 
The Referee's Companion has a couple of pages on how to set up tasks for research projects using uncertain tasks and the cycle of hypothesis, testing, modifying the hypothesis, testing, etc. It also has a few pages on robots in the 3I, their history, etc. Nothing very solid.
Bummer.

For a game that invests heavily in designing stuff, this is an odd blind spot.
 
The Skills section in T20 gives an idea of how long to create something based on how difficult it is to create. Check the Technical Cascade Skill. Robotics isn't in there, but you can get an idea from the other Tech Skills. Depending on if you're building the robot from the ground up, using factory made parts or from scrounging a robot junk yard, Mechanical, Electronics, Computer, and Robotics skills would be needed. Appraisal or something similar to find the good parts in a robot scrap yard.
 
Back
Top