Domo Arigato...
Mister Roboto.
In spite of my dismay over Scouts & Merchant Prince, I am still curious (read: a pathetic addicted collector) enough to have laid hands on Book 8: Robots. It just arrived. I haven't really looked at it yet, on account of I'm at work. And I will, not so much to use it for this project, but just to see what it plays like. At first glance, there's a lot of attention to the OTU paid there: same business as Scouts & Merchant Prince. I'll be interested to see how the actual mechanics work.
I remember being struck by the relative absence of robots in Traveller back when I'd started with it all. I don't think I ever really gave it the kind of serious attention that I have done with this ProTU.
I don't have book 3 in front of me now, but I recall the TL for artificial intelligence is pretty high. So that's one limiting factor for the presence of robots in a Traveller universe. Many, if not most of the worlds in a rolled-by-hand TU are of insufficient tech to support robots in a significant way. But also, there's a lot of worlds with low pop and high tech that seem to scream for fairly advanced robots to bolster the meager human population. I'll futz around with it.
In spite of my dismay over Scouts & Merchant Prince, I am still curious (read: a pathetic addicted collector) enough to have laid hands on Book 8: Robots. It just arrived. I haven't really looked at it yet, on account of I'm at work. And I will, not so much to use it for this project, but just to see what it plays like. At first glance, there's a lot of attention to the OTU paid there: same business as Scouts & Merchant Prince. I'll be interested to see how the actual mechanics work.
I remember being struck by the relative absence of robots in Traveller back when I'd started with it all. I don't think I ever really gave it the kind of serious attention that I have done with this ProTU.
I don't have book 3 in front of me now, but I recall the TL for artificial intelligence is pretty high. So that's one limiting factor for the presence of robots in a Traveller universe. Many, if not most of the worlds in a rolled-by-hand TU are of insufficient tech to support robots in a significant way. But also, there's a lot of worlds with low pop and high tech that seem to scream for fairly advanced robots to bolster the meager human population. I'll futz around with it.
posted by Jwarrrlry at 9:53 AM
2 Comments:
Keep in mind that LBB8 has an over-complex robot design system (I've tried it many times; quite time-consuming, more complex to design a LBB8 robot than a HG warship).
Also, OTU technology is very, very conservative (blame the Vilani :)); there ARE robots on many high-tech worlds (especially low-pop ones as you've noticed), but they tend to be firmly in the background. LBB8 robots with any level of intelligence or long endurance are EXPENSIVE and high-TL; building an android akin to Ash/Bishop from Alien(s) would cost multi-million Cr and be strictly TL15+, and even a more modest robot would cost tens of thousands of Cr for the very least.
On a first read, that's my impression as well. 'Bots are generally much better used as background.
Although it'd be really neat to have a group really accustomed to bacground dum'bots, only to find themselves in a situation where it becomes really, really important to pay attention to what the 'bots are doing...
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