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Robots
Nov 19, 2015 12:18:23 GMT -6
Post by zurajai on Nov 19, 2015 12:18:23 GMT -6
I agree principally with I Like Turtles. Robots are not overpowered in anyway. I point to the Penal Regiments of the Union of Asteron; they fight with unbreakable morale and are even capable of self-destructive detonations using their exploding collars. That sounds a lot like traits we'd see robots use, but with perhaps maluses to things like movement speed and what not.
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Robots
Nov 19, 2015 19:42:26 GMT -6
Post by RWU on Nov 19, 2015 19:42:26 GMT -6
Sure, but he can't build entire armies of Penal Regiments. That would be WAY OP.
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Robots
Nov 19, 2015 21:25:01 GMT -6
Post by I Like Turtles on Nov 19, 2015 21:25:01 GMT -6
I'm sorry, I get that an army of unshakable troops that can self detonate is badass, but overpowered? We're still talking about infantry here, man, a few well place artillery strikes and some air support and they're done. Sure they'll do some damage along the way, but that's the point of having traits.
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Robots
Nov 20, 2015 1:43:40 GMT -6
Post by zurajai on Nov 20, 2015 1:43:40 GMT -6
Yea, I disagree Aspen. there just needs to be manageable maluses for them.
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Robots
Nov 20, 2015 1:50:39 GMT -6
Post by RWU on Nov 20, 2015 1:50:39 GMT -6
I'm sorry, I get that an army of unshakable troops that can self detonate is badass, but overpowered? We're still talking about infantry here, man, a few well place artillery strikes and some air support and they're done. Sure they'll do some damage along the way, but that's the point of having traits. Are you kidding me? Even in scifi warfare, literally annihilating an entire army with "a few well placed strikes" is absurd. Unbreakable-morale troops are an extreme advantage no matter how you put it. Even elite troops, normally, will break after something like 70% casualties. Having literally every soldier in an entire army fight to the death is beyond "good." It's overpowered. If robot troops become an option, there will be NO reason NOT to just have all-robot armies. The advantages easily outweigh the costs.
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Robots
Nov 20, 2015 2:34:34 GMT -6
Post by zurajai on Nov 20, 2015 2:34:34 GMT -6
Not if you make the maluses equivalent.
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Robots
Nov 20, 2015 10:19:23 GMT -6
Post by I Like Turtles on Nov 20, 2015 10:19:23 GMT -6
The reason is flavor. Personally I don't want a robot army for the Retaren. And immunity to morale doesn't necessarily mean they all fight to the death. Robots with at least a basic intelligence could analyze their odds of success and, should that not be in their favor, they may retreat to conserve the resources it would take to recreate all of those troops. So maybe their morale doesn't break but they realize they've been beaten and retreat. They don't get terrified when a giant space monster shows up to kill them all, but after it's torn most of them in half the rest realize that the best course of action is to leave.
Also each trait takes 2 units away from an army. Sure it's a really efficient army, but it's more expensive to match the amount of troops of a typical army.
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Robots
Nov 20, 2015 10:44:28 GMT -6
Post by I Like Turtles on Nov 20, 2015 10:44:28 GMT -6
Also the caveat to "unbreakable morale" could be that they don't gain benefit from high morale. It's always neutral
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Robots
Nov 20, 2015 13:06:40 GMT -6
Post by dragonlord7012 on Nov 20, 2015 13:06:40 GMT -6
(My apologies if i get a bit ramble-y)
High moral isn't nearly as good as unbreakable. It might add a small bit to combat bonus, but that is wholly eclipsed by the benefit of no moral.
Unbreakable moral means the enemy can't catch a break against the tide of the mechnized bodies as they wade into them in an untiring wave. It means that you don't have a chance of routing for high risk manuvers. Sure you can get destroyed, and take losses, but thats it. You won't lose a battle if your plan fails. You can therefore afford to manuvering to gain tactical advantage freely. Whereas your enemy might fall apart at any time.
You also get perfect obedience to orders no matter what is what your getting.
Now to shift gears a bit, Automation is also incredibly difficult from a scientific perspective. It requires a massive amount of processing power to be able to take in and quantify environmental factors, make conclusions based upon those reading, make predictions based upon those conclusions, Make decisions based upon those conclusions, and act upon those conclusions in a meaningful way, all while coordinating with other machines doing the exact same thing. Sentience is HARD to fake.
EMP bombs are stupid easy to make as well, we have them even now, and in a sci-fi setting they would only be better. So you would have to both harden your bots.
You cannot put these processes remotely unless you want to as then they could be hacked easily, or read and acted upon. (Its easy to ambush somone who is broadcasting their "waypoints")
All of this if you are trying to fit in a "human sized" infantry model is an amazing technological development. Now for tanks/Artillery/Air its a lot easier, you have other parts of the craft to make room with, but infantry EVERYTHING is trying to be as small as it can already because if you don't you aren't Infantry, your Armor.
Most societies won't have this level of dedicated sophistication, which is why i'm against it aesthetically.
I'm not saying that robots like this *cant* exist, but they wouldn't be mass producible at any realistic level, they would be a serious project taken by a people, similar to the kind of dedication they might put into training an elite squad of marines. Thus -2 for a trained group. Their wouldn't even likly be a lot of them. But they would be deadly as hell.
The primary reason i've seen for this is that they should exist because Robots are in science fiction, therefore they should be a major option. There are LOTS of things that *could* be implemented. That doesn't mean they *should* be. Lots of things would be unfair to players, or broken if attempted to realistically implement.
On a more personal level; If mass spamable robots also gives everyone an option that then directly hoses my guys trait. I fight with anti-moral terror tactics(As befits bug monsters). I eat people to supplement my economy. Robots are immune to moral. They can not be eaten. It is literally a perfect, hard counter against me. And personally i don't really think its fair to implement things that are hard counters to other players traits. Nor could I endorse an action that would do so.
Spork runs Carrier Doctrine, and has good fighters, i think he would be annoyed if there was suddenly a PD gun ammo that could be rotated in that instead auto-destroyed several fighter squads at the cost of defense for the turn, say with some sort of AoE Heavy metal grain flak cannon?
Or a anti-immuno nanoswarm weapons that massively fatigue anyone caught in them. Unless your a like blarf's guys, in which case they suffer full body rejections all over the place, and die.
Wuxian needs Order, so outright getting rid of order providing structures is something i'd have to be against.(even if order feels like it needs tweaking >_<)
A suggested change, that knowingly screws over someone is a bad idea to make. There are lots of opportunities to screw people over, lets do it in game instead of in the mechanics.
Speaking of faction traits, they are inherently there as a system to bend the "standard" our races start off with, we tell the mods ideas for what we might want out of a civilization to run in a scifi setting, and they try to make it work in a reasonable, non-gamebreaking way.
Again, a faction with robots as a primary focus of its development sounds interesting, but giving it to everyone seems entirely unnecessary. There isn't a REASON it needs to be implemented en-mass all of a sudden. Everyone presumably has some level of the technology, they could get the trait i mentioned earlier. But it would take a massive investment of science, and probably a research agent, to advance the field to make them mass deployable.
Even then, they would probably cost an exuberant amount of science in upkeep until robotics is upgraded another step.
Their is one good and primary reason most societies wouln't have developed robots. Because in their history someone brought up the idea of robot armies, and after twenty minutes of talking about how badass it would be, the fact that a few months of training can pop out a marine that can do almost as good of a job, and who is far more adaptable, all at a fraction of the cost pops up. And thus they stopped developing mass deployable robots.
Its a bit cynical, but humans are cheap to recruit, train and upkeep in comparison.
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Robots
Nov 20, 2015 13:57:36 GMT -6
Post by I Like Turtles on Nov 20, 2015 13:57:36 GMT -6
I think you are overestimating the power of robots in a science fiction world based on how ridiculously OP they would be in the real world. The real world doesn't have giant aliens with bulletproof bodies and super strength that would tear a man-sized robot in half. And yes, immune to morale would mean they *could* keep going and that they'd never get routed, but it doesn't mean that their plan wouldn't fail. It doesn't mean they can't lose against superior strategy/forces.
As far as people creating racial traits, yeah, I agree they shouldn't do it just to fight one group. Bringing in a faction to take out the bugs and only the bugs is silly, but that may not be the intent of bringing robots in. Just because robots are a perfect counter to bugs doesn't mean that bringing them in is to take the bugs out specifically.
But I am absolutely opposed to the idea that the ONLY way someone could have robotic units is to have a robotic faction. I don't want them, but IF the Retaren wanted to develop robotic troops and I was flat out told no because it's "unfair" then phooey to that. It is fair if we make it fair. This is a roleplaying game. It's all in the flavor.
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Robots
Nov 20, 2015 15:10:47 GMT -6
Post by zurajai on Nov 20, 2015 15:10:47 GMT -6
The fact of the matter is that robots in traditional SciFi settings are not nearly as strong as you make them out to be; many settings see Insectoid races like yours to be just as overpowered, certainly when they're as intelligent as yours. I one hundred percent agree with I Like Turtles on this one. Things are as OP as we want to make them. Hell, you could easily reduce movement and combat effectiveness in return for unbreakable morale and increased cohesion. All viable options. If you really wanted to balance it, add science or industry to the upkeep. It's really quite an easy option to solve.
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Robots
Nov 20, 2015 16:41:31 GMT -6
Post by RWU on Nov 20, 2015 16:41:31 GMT -6
There is no malus y'all have mentioned so far that even remotely approaches the benefits of unbreakable morale. The only way to compensate that I can think of is to make robots expensive as all hell or *really* shitty at combat.
I agree with dlord here. If the only reason for adding this mechanic is "it's scifi," then we need to add nano-swarms, death stars, shields that cover entire cities, and all sorts of other things that are found repeatedly in the scifi genre. And I'm not going to do that, because throwing a bunch of new shit into a system that already works fine is the way things start to unravel.
That is my final word. As a mod, I am categorically opposed to adding this mechanic. If Zur and Tal outvote me, so be it, but I am not changing my stance in the meantime.
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Robots
Nov 20, 2015 17:05:35 GMT -6
Post by I Like Turtles on Nov 20, 2015 17:05:35 GMT -6
That's just unreasonable. There should always be an option. This is a game, and as someone running the game you should not be putting your foot down against a cool thing, you should instead try to find out how it can work.
Everything you've listed can work. We just need to come together and find out what it would take to discover that technology and how expensive it should be to maintain, so long as it's fair.
I'm sorry there are just so many "No'" around when they should be replaced "Yes'" or at least "let's find out how to make it work."
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Robots
Nov 20, 2015 17:36:04 GMT -6
Post by RWU on Nov 20, 2015 17:36:04 GMT -6
I appreciate the spirit, Turtles, but you never played a Theo RP. His endless new mechanics to add "cool" things destroyed every single forum he made. It's not that the mechanics were bad, but that all the changes destabilized things and messed up expectations. That is a serious danger if we add death stars, nanobot clouds, city shields, and robot armies.
No forum can do everything, and no forum SHOULD do everything. If you want robots, make a new nation and give it a robot-related trait. Or hell, be creative and start a research project which we can deal with through modmarks. But don't insist on an entirely new, universally-accessible mechanic that is almost guaranteed to throw our entire combat system out of balance.
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Robots
Nov 20, 2015 22:00:20 GMT -6
Post by I Like Turtles on Nov 20, 2015 22:00:20 GMT -6
Oh no, I totally agree with you there. I don't think it's something everyone should just be able to up and do. They should either dedicate time and an agent to the technology, or it could be an unlockable tech (like the new eden device).
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