Robots of the Imperial Army

[Ulsyus]

Carl & Sabre, nice designs, thanks for those, they'll make appearances in my campaign when appropriate :]

I can't think of a single adventure or world writeup that mentions the routine employment of robots as substitutes for human workers. Apparently there is some reason why they are not economically sound¹. Perhaps the economic details for robots should be revised?

¹ IMTU terrorists and 'humaniti first' activists enjoy hacking robots so much that safeguards and mandatory insurance payments make them more expensive than human workers in most cases.​

Hans

I'll go back to an idea I've introduced before: when the OTU was put together and sticking as much as possible to hard science maybe robots were just low down on the writing agenda. The explanation for their absence is likely to be a lot more Occam's Razor-ish than complicated.

Remote Visual Sensor alfa

The Remote Visual Sensor alfa (RVS-a) is an Imperial military bot intended to provide observation at the squad level. The bot's body, at 28 cm length by 14 cm width and height, is the smallest producible, a bit smaller than a shoebox.

Carl, there are smaller prototypes for this type of mission in the works now. Given that, they should be able to produce something smaller by then. What TL does molecular circuitry kick in? At that point, and with better batteries, the bots should be able to be pushed down to insect sized (again, there's testing of those sized remotes right now)

Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Improvised Explosive Device Detector would likely be two immediate areas of use. Loss rate for humans would be sufficiently high to discourage volunteers, and not the easiest job to draft someone too.

Good catch!

Rich folk today seem to get great pleasure out of having people serve them, and I suspect that will not change in the future. I also suspect there's a certain resistance to having bots take peoples' jobs, but that's not going to stop bots from being built or large corporations from using them; it just means you're less likely to see bots in highly visible roles unless it's doing something a person can't do.

This raises questions about the replacement of robots by synthetics in some areas, the transition from robots to synthetics in society, the status of synthetics an their possible suppression due to 3I attitudes to AIs, and even the migration of human labour from one lower-tech over-populated world to others where they're willing to work for less (economic migration debate...). But that's for another thread, not here.

Talking about evidence of absence, does the Army career provide skill in robot operation

That would depend on whether their operation was considered to be like operating a vehicle (use that skill with a specialty in bot operation), use computer (same deal again), or at higher levels whether the operation is similar enough to other things people do that it just requires an INT roll.

 

[Carlobrand]

...Carl, there are smaller prototypes for this type of mission in the works now. Given that, they should be able to produce something smaller by then. What TL does molecular circuitry kick in? At that point, and with better batteries, the bots should be able to be pushed down to insect sized (again, there's testing of those sized remotes right now)

I am constrained by the rules available in Book 8, which is what I used for the design. Book 8 doesn't do design the way Striker or MegaTrav do, where you decide the size. Book 8 does a modular approach, more or less as if you had a catalog from Far-Future-Radio-Shack and went through it selecting from a list of the chassis and components they had to offer for a build-it-yourself project. The 5-liter body is the smallest available.

Book 8 also doesn't do tech level improvements, at least not with respect to size of components. Nothing scales below a certain size. The smallest power source available other than batteries is a 20-liter fuel cell, the smallest motive source is a 1-liter wheel carriage with a 0.3 liter transmission, the visual sensor is about the size of a paperback book, and so on, and so on. The slave unit, which makes it possible for a bot to be run without a brain (or rather, by someone else's brain), is as big as a good-size hardback book, and the smallest and dumbest brain is three times that size. You can build Plug-in-Fido, but most of the tinybots we can build today are beyond the capacity of Imperial technology, it seems.

It would be cool to have rules that shrunk these components with advancing tech levels, especially since current technology already beats some of those supposedly far-future components, but such rules are not part of Book 8. Anything I came up with would be an IMTU thing. That's an interesting idea for a future thread, exploring what rule changes we could make to make ideas like the insect-bot a (game) reality, but at the moment I'm having fun with my newly developed robot builder spreadsheet and wanting to see what I can come up with out of that.

 

[mike wightman]

I tend to use the robot design rules in the early JTAS articles - odd that it was one of the first add ons to the core system don't you think? And then they used them in the second published adventure...

 

[sabredog]

I like these. Have you considered putting a couple of small slave bots aboard the ambulance drone, to act as stretcher bearers to get the wounded into the vehicle?

As I have it now the drone just hovers over the casualty in his battledress, lowers grappling arms, and then lifts the casualty into the rotating drum system that has all of the trauma maintenance gear. Stretcher bearers wouldn't be needed in most cases.

IMTU battledress will automatically send out a distress signal if the soldier bcomes a casualty. If the suit determines you are still alive after whatever it was that made you a casualty it will stabilize you with various medical systems. No-shok, a couple of blood bags, painkillers, etc... The drone then comes looking for you and continues the medical first aid by putting you in cold sleep while still in the suit (or what is left of it). Once back on the casualty clearing ship or ground station the drone is unloaded by triage personnel and sent back out for more.

I'd like more details on those ECM screamers. High power Radio/radar jammers? Do you put a bot brain in them so they can go evasive and get an evasion DM?

The only details I have on these is that they have a rocket assist take-off to get them away from the drone as noisily as possible to attract attention away form the drone. Then the screamer switches to anti-grav and darts off in an evasion pattern (so yes, they get an evasion DM) while sending out signals on radio, radar, and meson systems to attract incoming and paroling enemy drones and missiles. It will fire off chaff and has an active IR beacon as well.

The missing bit in Striker is using decoys - electronic or otherwise - against drones and missiles. There is the rule on jamming, but that doesn't really cover things like chaff & flares as decoys, decoy signals from transmitters, active interception beyond just incoming artillery, and the other modern things we have now. Some were available then, too. Obviously something like a T-90's Shtora system didn't exist then, and the game doesn't support such a system. Heck, it didn't even have the sort of anti-personnel belts the Slammer's had on their blowers and combat cars, either....Striker had odd gaps even then. Chaff fired to decoy missiles doesn't just cloud radar for detection purposes as the rules have it, it pulls missiles (and would drones) away from the intended target and missiles may even be able to counter chaff by flying through it. Drones should have programming to avoid it under certain conditions.

I used the rules in TacForce for the active IR and electronic jamming rules for acting as decoys to missiles. Unfortunately I no longer have those rules and they've been out of print since the early '80's and are ridiculously expensive if I do find them.

So IMTU screamers act as color more than anything since I very rarely play my game as a wargame and players encounter them as stage dressing anyway. If the players got a hold of one I'd figure out the rolls and DM's on the fly and hopefully remember to write them down.

 

[Carlobrand]

... Heck, it didn't even have the sort of anti-personnel belts the Slammer's had on their blowers and combat cars, either....Striker had odd gaps even then. ...

Meh, that bit was nice storytelling but it'd risk any friendlies as well as any unfriendlies. The Slammers always seemed to make a point of using tech to avoid the need for friendly infantry, but it was curious that their universe's infantry never managed to keep up with improving tank tech. It was basically a claymore (also regrettably not in the game) on the hull of a tank. In a Striker context, that becomes a good deal less useful when cloth and then the combat environment suit arrive on the scene, and for the point defense role the Slammers use it in, a gatling with a PDFC is just as effective. Still, you might make a mine out of a Striker flechette round that had the same effect, and then slap that on the side of a tank.

 

[Ulsyus]

IMTU battledress will automatically send out a distress signal if the soldier bcomes a casualty. If the suit determines you are still alive after whatever it was that made you a casualty it will stabilize you with various medical systems. No-shok, a couple of blood bags, painkillers, etc... The drone then comes looking for you and continues the medical first aid by putting you in cold sleep while still in the suit (or what is left of it). Once back on the casualty clearing ship or ground station the drone is unloaded by triage personnel and sent back out for more.

There'd be some pretty impressive engineering for a battle dress suit that provides all its normal protection but can be removed when damaged to enable treatment of a casualty. Too, the suit couldn't be relied upon as a coldsleep unit given the near certainty of damage to the shell if the wearer is in a state that requires them to be put into coldsleep.

 

[jec10]

The missing bit in Striker is using decoys - electronic or otherwise - against drones and missiles. There is the rule on jamming, but that doesn't really cover things like chaff & flares as decoys, decoy signals from transmitters, active interception beyond just incoming artillery, and the other modern things we have now. Some were available then, too. Obviously something like a T-90's Shtora system didn't exist then, and the game doesn't support such a system. Heck, it didn't even have the sort of anti-personnel belts the Slammer's had on their blowers and combat cars, either....Striker had odd gaps even then. Chaff fired to decoy missiles doesn't just cloud radar for detection purposes as the rules have it, it pulls missiles (and would drones) away from the intended target and missiles may even be able to counter chaff by flying through it. Drones should have programming to avoid it under certain conditions.

I used the rules in TacForce for the active IR and electronic jamming rules for acting as decoys to missiles. Unfortunately I no longer have those rules and they've been out of print since the early '80's and are ridiculously expensive if I do find them.

So IMTU screamers act as color more than anything since I very rarely play my game as a wargame and players encounter them as stage dressing anyway. If the players got a hold of one I'd figure out the rolls and DM's on the fly and hopefully remember to write them down.

Actually, I quite liked that Striker subsumed much of the potentially complicated ECM and ECCM stuff into the Basic or Advanced ECM packages rather than making a game-within-a-game of it as some rulesets do. Rather an elegant design solution I thought. You can use your imagination to envisage what an ECM package might include at each TL but for game purposes that is chrome.

 

[Ulsyus]

The Black Hornet Nano drone is now in use with the Brits in that mountainous place everyone seems to gravitate to every hundred years or so. This is effectively a TL8 unit - what could the Imperial Army have in action at TL12?

 

[mike wightman]

It's TL7 - it doesn't use fusion or grav

More seriously TL8-9 micro drones like these are going to be smaller still, insect size. By TL12 they are going to be mite sized - I have BD include a cloud of such things IMTU to explain the enhanced sensors and bonus to surprise.

 

[sabredog]

Meh, that bit was nice storytelling but it'd risk any friendlies as well as any unfriendlies. The Slammers always seemed to make a point of using tech to avoid the need for friendly infantry, but it was curious that their universe's infantry never managed to keep up with improving tank tech. It was basically a claymore (also regrettably not in the game) on the hull of a tank. In a Striker context, that becomes a good deal less useful when cloth and then the combat environment suit arrive on the scene, and for the point defense role the Slammers use it in, a gatling with a PDFC is just as effective. Still, you might make a mine out of a Striker flechette round that had the same effect, and then slap that on the side of a tank.

True, just consider it a claymore. And yes, it must have been hard on the infantry but in that universe they were always mech infantry and used combat cars; rarely dismounting if at all. But the stories were about tankers after all.

Still, Striker had some odd omissions even for its time given the technology available and in common use. What about reactive armor? That stuff is probably hard on the infantry, too, but it is used more and more all around the world. Blazer will even help against kinetic penetrators so it was sorely missed in the game.

The game also missed downward targeting warheads - like the Javelin, even though it was around when the game came out - the rules for two-stage HEAT missiles are nice, but really can't compare to something like a self-forging slug or explosive AP warhead focused on the top deck.

But I'm probably just quibbling....Traveller seems to encourage more quibbling than any edition of D&D ever did.

 

[sabredog]

The Black Hornet Nano drone is now in use with the Brits in that mountainous place everyone seems to gravitate to every hundred years or so. This is effectively a TL8 unit - what could the Imperial Army have in action at TL12?

One that is autonomous, target memory, and blows itself into a self-forging slug when it finds the target. Or has a collapsed round in the center with implosive lensing surrounding it to create a subkiloton blast around .001kt or so per Striker) when it floats into the room to find the enemy HQ.

 

[sabredog]

There'd be some pretty impressive engineering for a battle dress suit that provides all its normal protection but can be removed when damaged to enable treatment of a casualty.

Why not? If the suit existed in the first place, and at TL-13 yet, what kind of idiot designer would not allow for being able to get the casualty out of the suit for treatment? It would be like treating a motorcycle casualty - leave the helmet on until you get the neck and back stabilized and then cut it off carefully. The guy in the suit might be hurt badly enough that taking him out of it before inducing a medical coma (which would be today's equivalent to cold sleep) and stabilizing his body piece by piece as components were removed. Otherwise, imaging what can breach a suit at the same TL (PGMP-12 or 13) is going to leave the soldier in it a mess means maybe the suit itself should also be designed to support him medically. It is going into combat you know - and if the armor is powered and can thereby allow for greater loads then why not make part of that some sort of trauma support?

Too, the suit couldn't be relied upon as a coldsleep unit given the near certainty of damage to the shell if the wearer is in a state that requires them to be put into coldsleep.

The suit isn't a cold sleep capsule or support unit - it is merely what may be holding the legs and torso compressed enough by the onboard trauma support that if you removed it without first stabilizing the patient and inducing cold sleep, the casualty would bleed out within seconds of removing the suit. The suit's support systems can be used to keep the soldier alive.

The rules support this in a way depending on how deeply you examine the concept of powered armor as more than just powered armor, but rather an entire combat system that acts as not only a force multiplier for the wearer, but a full life support system for the most hostile environment imaginable. And I'm not talking mechs here.

The rules state that when considering damage points against a battle dress wearer, when the suit is removed only half the points are actually counted against the wearer. (Combat armor is only unpowered battle dress per Mercenary, and it doesn't allow for this wounding rule, thus helping support my concept of BD.)

OK, that means a suit can be "killed" but the guy inside is only unconscious with minor or severe injuries. He may die soon if nobody can get to him and treat him - well, in a nuclear, vacuum, or exotic atmosphere environment, how do you do that? The suit has medical systems on board that will generally keep the guy alive for long enough (hopefully) that a rescue team or drone can get to him...at this point the team or drone can apply better care, possibly at least starting the cold sleep process or administering something like medical slow drug....now the guy will live long enough to make it to a MASH unit equivalent for full care.

Along this rescue track the suit only acts as a first aid unit, rescue beacon, and holds the guy inside together long enough for experts to work on him.

 

[Carlobrand]

...The rules state that when considering damage points against a battle dress wearer, when the suit is removed only half the points are actually counted against the wearer. ...

Is that a T5 rule?

 

[jec10]

True, just consider it a claymore. And yes, it must have been hard on the infantry but in that universe they were always mech infantry and used combat cars; rarely dismounting if at all. But the stories were about tankers after all.

Still, Striker had some odd omissions even for its time given the technology available and in common use. What about reactive armor? That stuff is probably hard on the infantry, too, but it is used more and more all around the world. Blazer will even help against kinetic penetrators so it was sorely missed in the game.

The game also missed downward targeting warheads - like the Javelin, even though it was around when the game came out - the rules for two-stage HEAT missiles are nice, but really can't compare to something like a self-forging slug or explosive AP warhead focused on the top deck.

But I'm probably just quibbling....Traveller seems to encourage more quibbling than any edition of D&D ever did.

I got my copy of Striker in the very early 80s, so there is no chance Javelin was around then. The first Javelin test launch was in 1991!

Actually, Blazer doesn't effect kinetic energy rounds. Later Russian ERA does, although this is complicated stuff and it doesn't mean kinetic energy rounds are all affected. TNE/T4 had ERA and postulated ESA. You can design vehicles with it in both editions of FF&S.

I think you overestimated the performance of SFF. These don't get much more than 50mm penetration in a top attack scenario. The Striker followup HEAP rounds are actually better performers although they hit the main armour of course. Angled attack or plunging HEAP warheads like in Javelin are definitely missed, although again they are in the later Striker-2.

 

[sabredog]

Is that a T5 rule?

er, no. It's Houserule #536 IMTU. My bad.

Now that I've checked my notes I must have extrapolated it from the JTAS #3article on Advanced Battle Dress which multiplied STR by 3 and then reduced damage done to the wearer's STR by the same factor. I wrote the same rule to BD but used the factor of 2. Combat got nothing.

 

[sabredog]

With buckets of gasoline in either hand I run towards the sound of scratching matches...

I got my copy of Striker in the very early 80s, so there is no chance Javelin was around then. The first Javelin test launch was in 1991!

Design work on the Javelin began in '83. SADARM went all the way back to the mid-70's and combined self-forging penetrators with top-attack targeting. The top-attack concept was also being developed and tested in the TOW in the late '70's even though it didn't make it to production until later due to budget issues, which was the same reason Javelin was delayed so long.

Just because a specific weapon hasn't made it to actual production doesn't mean it's concepts shouldn't be in place in a game like Striker (which came out in mid 1981). After all, we don't exactly have plasma and RP-Y guns, do we? Meson guns? Anti-grav? Bonded superdense?

ERA and spaced armor has been around in some form or another since WW2 in theory if not in actual fact. They should have been included, but I forgive the omission by adding my own rules for them. They were in TacForce, though, and it was contemporary to Striker and by the same company and designers.

Actually, Blazer doesn't effect kinetic energy rounds. Later Russian ERA does, although this is complicated stuff and it doesn't mean kinetic energy rounds are all affected. TNE/T4 had ERA and postulated ESA. You can design vehicles with it in both editions of FF&S.

Yes, Blazer does have a level of effectiveness against APDS penetrators - and improvements to the speed of the charge has increased this effectiveness. Not as much as something like the Kontak series of non-explosive blocks, but those incorporate a bulged rubber system that was being developed by the British for use against Soviet penetrators back in the late '70's. As with many weapon systems, the concept had to wait until budgetary or materials technology requirements caught up with it before making it into regular use. Since everybody these days seems to be bricking up their frontline MBTs and IFVs with the stuff it must be more effective than you seem to think it is. Particularly since the vaunted Silver Bullet penetrator (just not always in DU materials) now exists in many forms across the board and is the primary DF gun tank-killer round now.

I think you overestimated the performance of SFF. These don't get much more than 50mm penetration in a top attack scenario. The Striker followup HEAP rounds are actually better performers although they hit the main armour of course. Angled attack or plunging HEAP warheads like in Javelin are definitely missed, although again they are in the later Striker-2.

Self-forging rounds have an upper limit, no doubt - again, it is a question of TL and the mission for the weapon. SFR's will eventually lose out against MBT's if those MBT's treat SFR's as the dominant weapon on the battlefield - designers will rework the armor/firepower/mobility equation to shift protection to the upper deck or something like that. Then the balance will shift again to the next tank-killer, and so on. It doesn't mean, though, that the weapon is obsolete. It's mission just changes.

Now it gets used as area denial against infantry in battle dress, light armored vehicles, counter-battery against SPA guns, etc..... And it's cheaper than an energy weapon, and has better range than an ATGM - which definitely become extremely iffy to use later in the tech tree.

 

[Meeko100]

I can't think of a single adventure or world writeup that mentions the routine employment of robots as substitutes for human workers. Apparently there is some reason why they are not economically sound¹. Perhaps the economic details for robots should be revised?

¹ IMTU terrorists and 'humaniti first' activists enjoy hacking robots so much that safeguards and mandatory insurance payments make them more expensive than human workers in most cases.​

Hans

Interesting. Best not speak that too loud, next on the news will be how the next batch of Fords all have their transmissions in backwards with hello kitty all over.

 

[rancke]

Interesting. Best not speak that too loud, next on the news will be how the next batch of Fords all have their transmissions in backwards with hello kitty all over.

Who says what now?!?

The gist of your post eludes me.


Hans

 

[samuelvss]

Who says what now?!?

The gist of your post eludes me.


Hans

I'm guessing his gist is a jest 'bout the potential for Luddite hackers to meddle with all our industrial robots, hurling rhetorical guano over the technological assumptions of YTU, in an otherwise apparently random act of thread necromancy. That's my read. :CoW:

 

[mike wightman]

I think he's saying that here in the real world robots are used for an awful lot of manufacturing - to assume that they have been replaced by living beings as TLs advance is just silly.

The robots and the computers that control them will get smarter and more capable over time, but remain dumb enough that human oversight is needed more as a failsafe rather than a requirement.

Robot factories etc don't appear in published sources because no one has set an adventure in such a facility - but I know the final act of the Guilded Lilly series of adventures for TNE would have had the RC gaining control of a robot controlled ship building facility.

It is stated in several sources (eg the GT core rulebook) that such technology exists it is just in the background and not worthy of mention.