In a space opera setting, how would you design robots that are available to player characters yet still feel like robots?

To me it feels like a contrived cop-out if a robot doesn't have most or all of these advantages, but I can be persuaded that my ideas are wrong:
- Superior strength
- Superior intellectual processing speed
- 100% recall and photo-video-audio recording capabilities.
- Immunity to pain
- Immunity to psychology and emotions
- Immunity to physiological issues (disease, poison, starvation, suffocation, exhaustion)
- Immunity to telepathy
- Ability to be upgraded or re-fitted
- Can lie flawlessly

That's quite a list of assets for a player. The usual disadvantages I've seen are:
- Cannot harm sentient creatures or let them come to harm (Laws of Robotics, getting kind of corny and don't make sense in many settings)
- Must obey certain creatures.
- Have terrible social skills (except for lying).
- Vulnerable to hacking.
- Super vulnerable to EMP and similar "kills tech" effects.
- Energy hogs.
- Can't heal naturally, must be repaired rather than medically treated.

I'm not sure if some configuration of the above is really enough to make such a character option work. Ideas?

Point based games like GURPS and HERO make robots fair since you have to buy all those advantages / disadvantages.

Mutant Future does a good job with its Robot PCs too. Worth a look.

No sure I get the justification for flawless lying.
Surely being able to think creatively is the point at which "humans" beat robots.
Aside from that you have 2 choices

i) the Paladin option - Robots are simply superior but they are limited by a code (the 3 laws, The Robotic Constitution, whatever). Thus you provide roleplay options that limit an otherwise more powerful character

ii) Point buy - you have a pool of points you have to buy all those advantages. A robot doesn't have to be stronger or faster or smarter, it only gets to be if you spend the points.

I guess there are other options like if there is "magic" of some description in the setting be it Psyche powers, the Force or whatnot Robots will not be able to make use of it. Robot PCs being hacked could easily get very out of hand and make them most unpopular.

I think Cyborg PCs who have allt eh robot advantages but no disads woudl eb even less balanced.

Look at Star Wars games and see how they handle it. I've never heard anyone talk about playing in the Star Wars universe and complain that C3PO and R2D2 are too powerful.

IMHO, there's exactly one defining characteristic of a robot: it's electromechanical.  There's nothing about Shipyard's laundry list that's necessarily the case.  (Heck, what stops a PC in a GURPS/HERO-style system from designing a PC robot that looks like a Roomba?  No Fine Manipulators and ST 5 would sure save a lot of points!)

Quote from: Ravenswing;750170IMHO, there's exactly one defining characteristic of a robot: it's electromechanical.  There's nothing about Shipyard's laundry list that's necessarily the case.  (Heck, what stops a PC in a GURPS/HERO-style system from designing a PC robot that looks like a Roomba?  No Fine Manipulators and ST 5 would sure save a lot of points!)

I think someone already made it, since I bet Darths & Droids are at least a bit inspired by actual player antics.

Make all robot characters highly susceptable to advertising malware.

Spacemaster Privateers had the very best robot rules I've ever seen.  Robots pay points and money for their abilities.  They get fixed stats by design type and there are tech level limitations on what you can buy but the real kicker is that you have to pay for yourself and your features and upgrades with real cash money.  It's a very well devised system and well worth the read.

For instance there are naval androids.  The ship design system turns out really high crew requirements so the navy uses naval androids to fill a lot of humdrum shifts.  These guys are built by the lowest bidder.  They get flat 50 / 100 for all of their stats.  They have down graded optics and very basic programming.  Oh you can upgrade but the reality is that the frame itself is bad.  Of course, you can also buy a better frame and computer and transfer your data but it costs a fortune.

Quote from: jeff37923;750180Make all robot characters highly susceptable to advertising malware.

Oh yeah, and the robots in the main setting can't log into the sensenet at all because something in there kills them dead.  My speculation is that it's a brain tape of an Xanotasian Queen but that's because my speculation about the setting is that Xanotasian's are behind it all.

But really if I was a robot the very idea of viruses would make me very gun shy of logging into a network.

Quote from: jeff37923;750180Make all robot characters highly susceptable to advertising malware.

:cheerleader:

Quote from: jibbajibba;750167No sure I get the justification for flawless lying.

No physiological or psychological flaws like shifty eyes or flushed skin or wavering voice to betray the lie.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145In a space opera setting, how would you design robots that are available to player characters yet still feel like robots?

To me it feels like a contrived cop-out if a robot doesn't have most or all of these advantages, but I can be persuaded that my ideas are wrong:
- Superior strength
- Superior intellectual processing speed
- 100% recall and photo-video-audio recording capabilities.
- Immunity to pain
- Immunity to psychology and emotions
- Immunity to physiological issues (disease, poison, starvation, suffocation, exhaustion)
- Immunity to telepathy
- Ability to be upgraded or re-fitted
- Can lie flawlessly

That's quite a list of assets for a player. The usual disadvantages I've seen are:
- Cannot harm sentient creatures or let them come to harm (Laws of Robotics, getting kind of corny and don't make sense in many settings)
- Must obey certain creatures.
- Have terrible social skills (except for lying).
- Vulnerable to hacking.
- Super vulnerable to EMP and similar "kills tech" effects.
- Energy hogs.
- Can't heal naturally, must be repaired rather than medically treated.

I'm not sure if some configuration of the above is really enough to make such a character option work. Ideas?

Looks like you just built yourself a Hero system character...easy as pie :-)

A while ago we were playing Star Wars D6 and one of our fellow PCs, a Droid Bounty Hunter, was running amok, killing civilians, causing a lot of collateral damage and generally being a dick.

The technician PC who fixed him after combat, plus another PC, teamed up to reprogram him as a particularly "refined and polite" C3-PO-like protocol droid. Player was miffed but there was nothing he could do.

True story.

Need to recharge every day.
Not socially acceptable.
Unreliable parts.
Not able to increase skills/learn
Limited cognitive powers
Limited physical abilities
Low DEX

QuoteIn a space opera setting, how would you design robots that are available to player characters yet still feel like robots?

Have you seen reality?

Point me to one technological apparatus that actually achieves more than one or two of what you describe, without also being prohibitively expensive or rare?

Yes, my cell phone is powerful, even has an AI in it, of a sort. but it's got a battery that is measured in hours instead of days, and while it does have a host of sensors, space, energy, and processing cycles are not unlimited.

My wife's car is pretty tough, for a consumer product, but at the end of the day, a few high end rifle rounds will put it out of commission. The US military keeps losing tanks to homemade explosives, because no matter how advanced your armor, there's a limit to everything.

And so what if it's 'immune to disease'. It ain't immune to rust. To dust build-up. To overheating, system overload, file corruption, digital pathogens, bad software, bad coding, operating bugs ...

Technology now is far from perfect, and I see no reason to assume the physical and economic realities that keep it that way are going to ever be 100% solved. They'll get better, sure, but also worse in other ways, as the market plays out.

Your list seems to assume a perfect engineer, working with an unlimited budget, in a perfect economy that supplies infinite resources to operate, and a set of physical laws that provides no natural limit to the function of the engineers' design.

That's not how technology works. That's how gods do.