Repair Robot vs. Repair Drones

[LiminalMask]

In my zeal to put all things Traveller on Excel o: I'm making a Ship Design spreadsheet and came across this (seeming) discrepancy.

When designing a ship, one can choose to install Repair Drones on it. Repair Drones are installed according to the size of the hull, which to me implies that bigger ships need more drones to do equivalent repairs. As the size of the ship goes up, you have to buy more units of Repair Drones, which also take up more tonnage in the ship. Example: a 100 ton ship needs 1 ton of Repair Drones (at a minimum) which costs 20MCr. (I assume you can choose to buy more units of Repair Drones at these intervals, which allow for more Repair actions or die mods.) So far so good. However, the Mongoose rules have this to say about Repair Drones:

Repair Drones: Carrying repair drones allows a ship to make
battlefield repairs with the AutoRepair software or when managed
by a character with Mechanic or Engineer skills. Repair drones
have the same statistics as repair robots (page 95) only without an
Intellect program. (Emphasis mine)

Here's part of the description on Repair Robots:

Shipboard repair robots are small crab-shaped
machines that carry a variety of welding and cutting tools. They
scuttle around tiny access tunnels but also crawl over the exterior
hull to conduct repairs and maintenance.

The rulebook prices Repair Robots at 10,000cr. They presumably do the same thing that Repair Drones do, except they also have an expensive Intellect software package.

So, a 100-ton ship needs 20,000,000cr worth of Repair Drones? If Repair Drones=Repair Robots, then that means the ship is carrying 2 thousand of the little buggers. Even if some of that cost is associated with storage, power systems, etc. that still seems like far too many.

Can someone explain why Repair Drones are so much more expensive than Repair Robots when they seem to do the exact same thing?

(EDIT: The same thing seems true for Probe Drones vs. Probe Robots. Probe Drones: 100,000cr; Probe Robots: 15,000cr. I can maybe accept a launcher installation as part of that, but the cost goes up for each set of 5 probe drones you buy.)

 

[Ackehece]

"battlefield repairs"
that seems to be the difference.

*imagines little repair bots using their intellect to decide it's suicidal to go outside when it is sleeting sand and refusing to do it (r2d2 whistle whir).... Drone just goes and does it (probably armored as well)"

*just an opinion until I dig through all the books again

 

[77topaz]

*imagines little repair bots using their intellect to decide it's suicidal to go outside when it is sleeting sand and refusing to do it (r2d2 whistle whir).... Drone just goes and does it (probably armored as well)"

*just an opinion until I dig through all the books again

That seems logical. Actually, I'd imagine robots being better built, since they usually serve more than one "accident".

 

[McPerth]

When designing a ship, one can choose to install Repair Drones on it. Repair Drones are installed according to the size of the hull, which to me implies that bigger ships need more drones to do equivalent repairs. As the size of the ship goes up, you have to buy more units of Repair Drones, which also take up more tonnage in the ship. Example: a 100 ton ship needs 1 ton of Repair Drones (at a minimum) which costs 20MCr. (I assume you can choose to buy more units of Repair Drones at these intervals, which allow for more Repair actions or die mods.) So far so good. However, the Mongoose rules have this to say about Repair Drones:

I'm afraid you made an error in your assuming:

Repair drones are described (Core Book, page 111) as needing 0.01 x ship tonnage tons and cost 0.2 MCr/ton, not per ton of ship, but per ton of drones. So, your 100 dton ship's repair drones (amounting to 1 ton of drones) would cost 0.2 MCr, not 20 MCr (a big diference).

If you look at the description of the Mercenary Cruiser (Core Book, page 127), its repair drones are 8 tons and cost 1.6 MCr, not the 160 they will with your numbers.

They are still more expensive than Repair robots, but not so much.

EDIT:

(I assume you can choose to buy more units of Repair Drones at these intervals, which allow for more Repair actions or die mods.)

I understand rules in another way here. The number of repair attempts you may do is dependant on your auto-repair software, not the number of drones. If you have auto-repair/1, you can make one attempt, if you have auto-repair/2, you can make 2 attempts, regardless the number of drones you have.

 

[Ackehece]

That seems logical. Actually, I'd imagine robots being better built, since they usually serve more than one "accident".

Price Point again. The drones need an advantage to cost more... Armor seems like reasonable assumption. And as I say in following - main computer may have a greater skill in repair.

I'm afraid you made an error in your assuming:

Repair drones are described (Core Book, page 111) as needing 0.01 x ship tonnage tons and cost 0.2 MCr/ton, not per ton of ship, but per ton of drones. So, your 100 dton ship's repair drones (amounting to 1 ton of drones) would cost 0.2 MCr, not 20 MCr (a big diference).

If you look at the description of the Mercenary Cruiser (Core Book, page 127), its repair drones are 8 tons and cost 1.6 MCr, not the 160 they will with your numbers.

They are still more expensive than Repair robots, but not so much.

No intellect and still more pricy.... Maybe intellect limits them to a lower repair skill while the drones can go higher?

EDIT:


I understand rules in another way here. The number of repair attempts you may do is dependant on your auto-repair software, not the number of drones. If you have auto-repair/1, you can make one attempt, if you have auto-repair/2, you can make 2 attempts, regardless the number of drones you have.

My problem with this would be that robots would easily be best at this point. Each has intellect skill and thus separate rolls.








Again all rationalisations and not anywhere in the rules . Do with this as you may

 

[LiminalMask]

Thanks, McPerth, that makes sense. With so many of the other calculations depending on Hull size, I guess I assumed that the drones meant the same thing.

This changes the number of drones at 10,000cr each to 20, which seems much more reasonable for a 100 ton ship. Even if it were, say, 10 drones per 100 tons and the rest of the cost being maintenance and storage for the drones, I could live with that. (Though it seems to me that Repair Drones, lacking an Intellect Program, are slaved to the ship itself, thus can't be used elsewhere. This, in my mind, should make them cheaper than a portable, Intellect enhanced Repair Robot. But there you go.)

Regarding using Auto-Repair and Drones, is it your understanding then that additional purchases of Repair Drones don't do anything (except provide redundancy in case a bunch of drones get destroyed?) If so, that raises the question of how many drones do you have to lose before you can no longer use Auto Repair to make repairs? Must you have the full complement? If you lose just 1, is there any penalty? What if you're down to half? etc. etc.

I imagine any Ref could make reasonable decisions here about DMs and so forth, but I think it's always good to ask.

 

[McPerth]

Regarding using Auto-Repair and Drones, is it your understanding then that additional purchases of Repair Drones don't do anything (except provide redundancy in case a bunch of drones get destroyed?) If so, that raises the question of how many drones do you have to lose before you can no longer use Auto Repair to make repairs? Must you have the full complement? If you lose just 1, is there any penalty? What if you're down to half? etc. etc.

I'm afraid I cannot answer this question, as I didn't find it on the Core Book. Anyway, neither did I found how many drones one ton represent, nor how many repair robots must be working in team to make a repair attempt, but I guess more than one, as they are represented (small, crab shaped machines), but that's only a guess.

One advantage I understand the Core Book hints is that repair robots are limited to one skill, either Mechanic or Engineering (in this case, I guess only one specialty), while drones, with the support of a ship computer, may attempt any repair task.

So, where you need a single repair drones complement to attempt any one (two if your software allows you) repair attempt, You'd need 6 repair robot teams* (one for mechanical and one for each specialty of engineering) to have the same flexibility (I'm not sure if the Expert Engineering (specialty) software of a robot also gives other Engineering at 0, as cascade skills rule, but even if so, the attempt would be made at -1 to dice roll, as expert systems act at skill -1, page 92 Core Book).

* as I don't know how many robots you need for an attempt, I talk about teams. If one robot is enough, then each team is one robot.

 

[BytePro]

...(I'm not sure if the Expert Engineering (specialty) software of a robot also gives other Engineering at 0, as cascade skills rule, but even if so, the attempt would be made at -1 to dice roll, as expert systems act at skill -1, page 92 Core Book).

Just to clarify:
The Expert software gives its rating minus one as skill level to a character or a +1 DM (not -1 DM). With Intellect software the computer is treated like a character regarding Expert software.

So a Repair Robot per pg 95 with Intellect/1 and Expert Engineer(any)/2 does skill checks as Engineer(any)-1. And Engineer is a cascade skill.

Repair Drones take up tonnage - 0.01 %. Purchasing more tonnage would gain nothing but redundancy. Dropping below the required tonnage should probably mean the Auto-Repair function is not available (or successful in a combat round...) - but the rules in the Core book really don't cover that eventuality nor provide for tracking damage specifically to the repair drones nor even the computer (specifically), IIRC.

The Auto-Repair software level determines the number of repair attempts per round for drones during a ship's action phase. (There is also the +upto rating DM option...)

However, and this is the big point (as McPerth already alluded to) - combat repair on pg 150 only mentions 'a character on damage control' and repair drones. Taken literally, that means Repair Robots can only make regular repairs per pg 143 - so battle field damage would be at -2 timing DMs in order to be completed in a round (6 minutes vs the 1 to 6 hours on pg 143).

Using the DM options for Auto-Repair/2 could also give Repair Drones another advantage during combat. (+1 DM).

Robots, on the other hand - you can keep adding them. At Cr 10,000 each vs 200,000 per ton - well, 20 robots could be available per 100 tons of ship for the same price...

Don't forget, though, robots have their own intelligence and may be illegal in certain areas - or be granted rights that are, er, undesirable. [You go out on the hull - its dangerous out there, I'm not sure my servos can take it... :devil:] No such problem with drones.

So, these are apples and oranges other aside from the raw stats. Or maybe different types of apples at drastically different price points with hard to evaluate pro/con differences...

Personally, I think the robot are priced quite wacky - and given way too little thought.

 

[McPerth]

I understand your knowledge on MGT is superior to mine, but just some points, as I understand it:

Just to clarify:
The Expert software gives its rating minus one as skill level to a character or a +1 DM (not -1 DM). With Intellect software the computer is treated like a character regarding Expert software.

So a Repair Robot per pg 95 with Intellect/1 and Expert Engineer(any)/2 does skill checks as Engineer(any)-1. And Engineer is a cascade skill.

While this is how cascade skills are handled, I'm not so sure expert software also gives you other skills in the same cascade group at 0. I know this is not explicited in any way in the Core Book, and so regular rules should be used (as you did), but, using common sense, and IMHO, to allow you an expert program than gides to performing some tasks you don't need the theoretical/practical knowledge that you need to truly have the skill yourself, so I'd see some logic to limit skills given by Expert software to the specific skill, without any effect to other related (cascade) skills.

Repair Drones take up tonnage - 0.01 %. Purchasing more tonnage would gain nothing but redundancy.

I'm afraid you confused the numbers (or typed them erroneously) here. Repair drones take 0.01 x tonnage (so 1%), not 0.01% (so 0.0001 x tonnage). See the Mercenary cruiser (800 tons, page 127 Core Book) needs 8 tons for repair drones (1%, or 0.01 x tonnage).

Personally, I think the robot are priced quite wacky - and given way too little thought.

Fully agree here. Both in the price and the lack of ruling how to use them.

 

[BytePro]

Wouldn't claim any superior MGT knowledge - just very technically inclined (sic) and had to read the books a lot to try to make some kind of sense of them... (so I can get to a page almost instantly now o

Notably, I don't know the Book 9: Robot ... and it probably wouldn't be my cup of tea. Perhaps some of these points are addressed in that book.

I don't disagree with your assessment of cascade skills as applied to automation... hence just stated the RAW and left that open to inference. Personally, I've gotten away from the cascade skill mechanic entirely (so IMTU, such robots would just have Engineer(all) ).

Doh, yeah, the 0.01 % was a screw up - I meant 1% and then looked up the rule to make sure I had the right amount and put in the 0.01 without thinking... (can't even blame that one on the automated spell checker!).

Robots have always figured prominently in my Traveller (CT) games even though I never had the robots book till 18 years after first playing. PCs couldn't play them, nor own them (they might come with a ship when owned by someone else - or be independent).

 

[McPerth]

The fact that the repair drones number needed are tonnage dependent, I guess you'd need a similar number of repair robots to conduct the same repair actions on a ship (even if I cannot know how many, as I could not find how many such robots/drones are in a ton).

Maybe you could then make more than 2 (by carrying more robots), as they don't need computing power form the ship's computer.

 

[McPerth]

Just to clarify:
The Expert software gives its rating minus one as skill level to a character or a +1 DM (not -1 DM). With Intellect software the computer is treated like a character regarding Expert software.

So a Repair Robot per pg 95 with Intellect/1 and Expert Engineer(any)/2 does skill checks as Engineer(any)-1. And Engineer is a cascade skill.

While this is how cascade skills are handled, I'm not so sure expert software also gives you other skills in the same cascade group at 0. I know this is not explicited in any way in the Core Book, and so regular rules should be used (as you did), but, using common sense, and IMHO, to allow you an expert program than gides to performing some tasks you don't need the theoretical/practical knowledge that you need to truly have the skill yourself, so I'd see some logic to limit skills given by Expert software to the specific skill, without any effect to other related (cascade) skills.

I don't disagree with your assessment of cascade skills as applied to automation... hence just stated the RAW and left that open to inference. Personally, I've gotten away from the cascade skill mechanic entirely (so IMTU, such robots would just have Engineer(all) ).

I know this discusion is a little old, but I have been thinking about it since then, and now, while reviewing the rules, I think things may be clearer than we thought (albeit I agree this is only one possible interpretation of them).

The key is that rules (page 92 of the Core Book, software table, under expert programs) state (as you quoted above) The Expert software gives its rating minus one as skill level to a character or a +1 DM (not -1 DM). With Intellect software the computer is treated like a character regarding Expert software. (emphasis are mine).

If you put on a computer (or robot, in this case) an expert software for a cascade skill (Engineering in this case) it will serve also as a 0 rated expert system for all related skills in the same cascade. As the rules quoted above tell about rating minus one as skill level (not rating as skill level with a -1 modifier), the skill is given (the robot has it in this case) at one level below 0, and that means it has not the skill.

As said, this is only one interpretation of the rules, and as such, open to debate, but IMHO it may as well resolve the case.

Notably, I don't know the Book 9: Robot ... and it probably wouldn't be my cup of tea. Perhaps some of these points are addressed in that book.

Neither I have it, and maybe it is all specified on it and the discussion is already solved while we don't know it.