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Why not more Robots?

Hmmm, where to begin.

From the very first, Frankenstein and RUR and onto Dune's Butlerian Jihad, HAL, Daystrom/V'ger/Nomad, Menschenjaegers, etc. robots are painted as a potential threat, precisely because they are manmade and therefore flawed with unintended consequences.

So I think you want a bit of that around.

Assuming bots are useful and not terrors most of the time, you might consider up and downsides.

Economically they are big cost sinks to acquire, but can be a fast fix to getting some expertise where you need it when you need it.

Pay attention to those 'lifespan' at TL issues, the economics at the lower tech levels IMTU means an ugly replacement cycle for most bots.

My players get either a pet or a bot as part of their character and for those who choose bots, I give them used ones only 2 years from their expiration date, only costing 20% of their original value, with increased maintenance, malfunctions and breakdowns in their near future.

IMTU there is a common practice of having a Ship's Robot, which is effectively an immobile robot server hooked into ship's power like the Ship's Computer, but linked to it's dronebots which do the actual physical work. The Ship's Robot therefore can have a lot of expertise stored, swap out for what is needed at the moment, and have a lot of 'hands' located all over the ship.

Another IMTU aspect is the Ship's Robot is NEVER integrated with the Ship's Computer or Bridge or Engineering, and that the ship's electronics and controls are always human interfaced and deterministic and intentionally 'dumb'. This is to prevent HAL episodes, hacked control systems, maintain responsibility/liability on the ship's operators, and robots don't do unusual situations well.

There may be military experiments that break this intentional barrier, and of course therein lies adventures.

My task resolution system actually captures the robot weakness of lack of creativity vs. inhuman accuracy- Simple, Easy and Routine tasks can be checked against Education+Skill, which robots will have more of then most (or with enough investment, ALL) humans, but the minute they get into something Challenging or Difficult their lower intel hurts badly, and they won't be able to handle it.

The Ship's Robot can never therefore replace the crew requirements, but they can help spell the very minimalist crewing of the smaller ships and help repair at critical times when your ship is being overwhelmed and possibly critical crew is hurt, or to go fix something near that radioactive reactor.

In other words, the SR can end up being some pretty cheap insurance against not losing your ship, a kind of low end Frozen Watch for the adventurer set.

Another use for the immobile robot would be the Autodoc. Always good to have those around, especially if your medic gets hurt.

As to robot shape, the most common shape my player's given bots are is a box, with attached sensor stalks, power and digital connection to equipment to control (the functional equivalent of say a webcam, power cable and network/wireless adapter for a PC). Mobility is an additional function that has to be necessary to the design in my view and dispensed with if not needed (to save costs for chassis, additional power, etc.).
 
As to macroeconomics, we can presume that there is a lot of integral robotics going on as per earlier postings, but that humans are not entirely replaceable.

The bottom line is the same as the big jump humanity saw going from TL 4-7, more mechanical and electrical power created big productivity jumps (which the usual 10% TL pricing doesn't really capture), so you can presume people will end up being useful for 'new' jobs but more and more be crowded out of menial work by robots.

IMTU robots are in use in many cases because you cannot get humans to come out to the frontiers readily with the needed skill sets.

This gives rise to a peculiar subspecies of Traveller, the robot bum.

These are people who buy or inherit a robot that has desirable skills, but they do not possess salable abilities, so they effectively act as the robot's 'agent/owner' and sell the robot's time for salary and/or passage and not work themselves.

The crewing limit would tend to suppress desirability for ship's passage, but IMTU there is a lot of 'off the books' flouting of regulations out in the frontier areas and 'something might be worked out'.

Pirates would want robots badly, especially as they may have rare skills while not requiring a share in the ship's profits.
 
A couple other thoughts-

Law level should be considered regarding robots. I think at minimum it would be normal for robots to be outlawed carrying X weapon system one or two levels earlier.

Law level should also apply to the harassment roll with again maybe a level or two higher if in the company of a robot, and robots eventually get outlawed to do anything useful.

Or conversely, you could have a control freak society that decrees EVERYTHING must be done by robots, and outlaws human skill!

The Three Laws of Robotics would be in play in most civilian settings, but military robots are another matter, and can be the source of a LOT of trouble (say, those military surplus robots turned janitorbots seem awfully AGGRESSIVE....).

I too had issues with the 1977 era CT computer rules especially costing vs. capacity- until I looked at them as being essentially avionics computers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avionics

Avionics hardware and software have to be built to extremely high failsafe standards. Military craft have to be able to perform under duress and battle damage, and extreme safety is the watchword for commercial airliners.

One can presume with starships that will be in jumpspace for a week and out in the void for days and weeks and could slam into a planet/colony/city with nuclear weapon level force, that the standards will be that much higher.

We can see this ethos at work with the high level of damage Traveller ship computers can take before they fail.

Nonetheless I allow players to buy and/or operate much cheaper ship's computers- but there is a price, you are no longer certified for passenger safety and cargo assurance, and therefore below a certain computing level cannot charge the standard rates, or in some cases even enter a Class A or B starport, at least without significant bribery.

Also, the computers will break down much faster from damage then the full blown avionic models we use in the rules.

Choices and consequences.
 
I remain stymied by price. The cheapest ones cost 3 or 4 times a worker's annual salary, and the really useful ones cost several times that much. Sure, you'll run into them on a Tukera liner, or unloading cargo at a starport, almost anywhere there's a company with deep pockets and an interest in an up-front investment that yields long-term savings in labor costs. As to whether or not you can afford them for your free trader ... for some odd reason, players seem to be far more preoccupied with scoring combat armor or a triple turret to replace the double than with buying a bot to play nurse for the medic or serve drinks to the passengers.

If you've got to use that Cr 500,000 stateroom to bunk a gunner, who you then have to pay and support (life support) to the tune of 3 kCr/month, then you are losing the potential revenue from that stateroom. That's more expensive

An alternative under LBB8:
Astromech 1D droid. Gunner and basic rescue functions.
URP: 82203-04-LQ226-PF4L(L)
TL 13, kCr 243, 278 kg 25yr note @ kCr 1.54/mo.
Gunnery-4, Security-2, Mech/Elec/Med/Rescue/Commo/Ship's Boat-1

120 Liters Lhyd fuel gives 66 hr endurance (closed) or 600 hours endurance (open). Work stations typically have power run to them.
All systems will typically not run simultaneously, so endurance will typically be much greater. E.g.: Cannot walk use arms and all tools at once.


If you assume 10% annually for maintenance, it's still what you'd pay the gunner (and not get a Gunner-4), but then you get to rent out the stateroom, which you will be paying off for 40 years, instead of 25....
 
If you've got to use that Cr 500,000 stateroom to bunk a gunner, who you then have to pay and support (life support) to the tune of 3 kCr/month, then you are losing the potential revenue from that stateroom. That's more expensive.
I'm inclined to go with higher maintenance and shorter work life. I haven't done the math, but if your robot has to be replaced in five years' time, it may not be such a good deal.

Though the gunner ASME (autonomous self-propelled mechanical entity aka robot) would still be cheaper, since you could have it packed away until you needed, saving wear and tear and extending its useful service life.


Hans
 
I'm inclined to go with higher maintenance and shorter work life. I haven't done the math, but if your robot has to be replaced in five years' time, it may not be such a good deal.

Though the gunner ASME (autonomous self-propelled mechanical entity aka robot) would still be cheaper, since you could have it packed away until you needed, saving wear and tear and extending its useful service life.


Hans

Well, there are many things I would re-write if I were changing LBB8, but IIRC, they lasted a lot longer than 25 years, OTW there would be no reason to have 25 year financing. [I am far from my LBB8, or I would check, but I recall it being in excess of 40 years]. Your financing term is going to have to track with the longevity of the system. I would think of them as akin to industrial machinery, intended to be used for decades, with regular replacement of the wearing parts.

And yes, the gunners would be tucked nicely into the turrets, and brought out only for maintenance and the occasional drill. Similarly, the Medic would be low mileage.
 
Well, there are many things I would re-write if I were changing LBB8, but IIRC, they lasted a lot longer than 25 years, OTW there would be no reason to have 25 year financing. [I am far from my LBB8, or I would check, but I recall it being in excess of 40 years]. Your financing term is going to have to track with the longevity of the system. I would think of them as akin to industrial machinery, intended to be used for decades, with regular replacement of the wearing parts.
Well, if Book 2 specifies maintenance and service life, there's no percentage in trying to twist them into fitting with the existing rules. In that case I'll just propose some straightforward retcons. Increase cost and frailty of robot brains. Require Robot-2 skill to maintain them. Something like that.

Oh, and increase wear and tear on robot brains in space thanks to Space Radiation.
And yes, the gunners would be tucked nicely into the turrets, and brought out only for maintenance and the occasional drill. Similarly, the Medic would be low mileage.
Oh, and make it impossible to power down the brains without destroying them. The usual "positronic circuit" pseudo-science gobbledegook.


Hans
 
Oh, and increase wear and tear on robot brains in space thanks to Space Radiation. Oh, and make it impossible to power down the brains without destroying them. The usual "positronic circuit" pseudo-science gobbledegook.
Hans

Well, my notes have 55 years for the longevity of a LBB8 design, and I still don't have my book. I'm pretty sure I didn't make it up, though. That said, I think this longevity is perfectly reasonable for everything but the brain.

At the risk of going into the same, trite LBB8 rant about why a multi MCr ship can't fly itself, with a computer the size of a RV, but it can be flown by something costing less than 250 kCr, with a computer that would fit into a trash can, I won't.

But if there is any sense in this, it is that the shipboard computers are MUCH more durable, in addition to being more {insert techno-babble here}.

So a shipboard computer can be expected to be crazy-reliable after decades, but frakkin' R2's brain over there may have Seagate-HDD-esque MTBF, and need to have a depot rebuild every couple of years or so. If I was going to change anything in LBB8, [as opposed to just pretending it didn't happen] I'll go with you that this is where I would start. IMTU, I don't, and just take it at face value, but I won't even try to defend it on the basis that it makes sense scientifically. I mean, what really does in Traveller?

Robot brains wear out like the tires on my car. There. I'm OK with it. I may relapse in the morning, however. [Drinking the LBB8 Coolaid: :coffeegulp: ]
 
On the LBB8 lifespan financing issue, I won't redo the whole table here but there is a lifetime followed by a maximum years to finance. It's effectively half in most cases, although some odd numbers off here and there.

Three examples to give you the range-

TL Lifespan/FinanceYears
10 10/5
11 25/12
15 85/40

Can be some fierce financing either way, 5 years is a short time to pay off a 300K robot, and capable high tech robot crew members can easily run 1MCR per.

And you can lay off crew members during slow or repair times, the bank statement keeps on coming.
 
One other issue not commonly addressed is that these are all mech/electronic bots, rather then squishytech biologically based robots.

Replicants, RUR robots, terminators, silicates and tanks, many of the classic scifi bots have been biobots in part or a whole. That's usually not even approached in most TU.
 
One other issue not commonly addressed is that these are all mech/electronic bots, rather then squishytech biologically based robots.

Replicants, RUR robots, terminators, silicates and tanks, many of the classic scifi bots have been biobots in part or a whole. That's usually not even approached in most TU.

For those you are much better off reading the original Robots articles in JTAS, a condensed version of which made it into the first best of JTAS.

In the article all types of artificial beings are mentioned, but then design rules are presented for only the mechanical dumbbots. I always thought that there should have been a follow up article detailing the rest, but instead we got the DGP written LBB:8 which was only concerned with the mechanical.

T5 is where you have to look for the rules for the rest of the artificial beings mentioned in the original JTAS article...
 
So a shipboard computer can be expected to be crazy-reliable after decades, but frakkin' R2's brain over there may have Seagate-HDD-esque MTBF, and need to have a depot rebuild every couple of years or so.
Shielding! Most of the tonnage of a ship's computer is shielding against Space Radiation. ASMEs can't lug around enough shielding. That'll work, right? And it explains ship computer sizes to boot! :p


Hans
 
Shielding! Most of the tonnage of a ship's computer is shielding against Space Radiation. ASMEs can't lug around enough shielding. That'll work, right? And it explains ship computer sizes to boot! :p


Hans

Compared to a lot of canon-craziness work-arounds, this one is actually rather elegant. I like it!
 
Positronic Brains

What is a positronic brain anyway?

The term was coined by Isaac Asimov in the 1950's for his Robot Novels. At the time, the first particle of antimatter, the positron (or anti-electron), had just been experimentally observed, and it was "the thing" in the science and Sci-Fi community at the time. Asimov simply used the term as a descriptor for his AI-robot brain (without any real discussion of principles of operation - for all he knew it had nothing to do with actual positrons as particles). But the term caught on and has become a staple in the Sci-Fi community as a term for the AI robot brain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positronic_brain

In other words: the Positronic Brain is whatever you want it to be. :)
 
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