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.
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.
- Ability to be upgraded or re-fitted
- Can lie flawlessly
I disagree with those included above:
* Strength - As you say, it is Space Opera, it is not a Mecha Anime. The most known robot characters in space opera is R2-D2 and C3PO, and neither of those has exhibited any form of "Superior Strength".
* Intellectual processing speed - Read Only Memory: essentially, if the knowledge and programs isn't in its memory, ... it cannot be processed.
* Recall - You propose it stores EVERYTHING it sees and hears?
Interesting idea, but it also takes up a huge amount of processing and storage.
* Upgrades - weapon upgrades are one thing, software is different, and depending on setting, it may be near impossible to find the right kind of software.
Replacing Hardware may compromise the abilities of the body and/or the Memory.
* Lie flawlessly? - Read only Memory: Again, if the knowledge and programming isn't there, it isn't possible.
To understand WHEN a lie may work, is a function of social skill, and even the idea of stating something incorrect is, from machinery pov, being inefficient.
One advantage you did forget, though, was Natural Armor.
It might not be very high, admittedly, but it may protect against simple bruising.
Some disadvantages not yet listed that would apply to a super strong, super intelligent killer robot:
Hated by everyone who didn't own it.
Feared by even its owner.
Probably illegal in most jurisdictions (WEG Star Wars has this limitation.)
Susceptible to hacking and/or remote control, and a desirable target for that.
Memory can be deleted, even forcibly or wirelessly.
New models coming out all the time necessitating crap parts that easily die (e.g. modern PCs)
I like the remote hack, remote control (e.g. kill the President), then wipe the memory scenario myself. Seems like few players would tolerate that character for long.
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?
A robot might not be super strong or smart. Those are dependant on the manufacture and materials used, and the coding. A robot might only be as strong as and smart as a human. A flying robot might be particularly weak due to lightweight frame.
Immunity to pain: Depends on how tactile advanced the robot is. More tactile sensors means it can potentially suffer via them. Damage may produce feedback and overload that is equivalent t pain or trauma. But one advantage a robot might have is the ability to shut off sensory input from a distressed area. More primitive robots of course might not have much in the way of tactile senses.
Psychology and emotions is another that is dependant on the level of the robot.
Telepathy they might be immune to. But they might be very vulnerable to telemechanics and instrumentality powers that dont work on humans but do allow the user to interface with and control machines.
Energy limits is an iffy one. On one hand you have the Robot in Lost in Space, and on the other you have robots that seem to just keep going and going and going. And in between are ones that need to "eat" regularly.
Upgrades is another iffy one. Dependant on how modular the robot is. Some never change at all. Or cannot. Which can be a plot hook all on its own if you have to go looking for the specific part replacement the robot needs since you cannot just swap in any old piece.
A robot would likely be immune to pressure and vacuum.
A robot might be able to swap in new skills as needed. But might have a memory limit.
A robot might be near invisible to IR scans. Or it might light up if its using alot of wattage to power.
All the disadvantages seem good, though of course dependant on the robots tech.
Some more potential disadvantages along with the vulnerability to telemechanics control and specific parts needed.
Vulnerability to energy drain.
Vulnerability to electrical or water exposure.
Vulnerabulity to sensory attacks. Especially optics.
Possibly weaker senses that a human, depending on the tech and function. But. More sophisticated senses may mean more ways the robot can be attacked.
An "off" switch. Just in case.
Terrain limits could be a problem depending on the locomotion system.
Reaction speed might be a problem. Or might be an advantage.
Achilles Heel type vulnerable locations.
MAGNETS!!!
In StarCluster 3
Any robot that is playable as a character is sapient. Any sapient is subject to messy thinking and approximation. It's those cracks and shadows that allow sapience. Any sapient being is also, therefore, subject to neuroses and psychoses, the nature of which vary from sapient type to sapient type. Robots do not have the same *kinds* of mental problems meat puppets have.
Robots are skill limited.
Robots can be physically better than humans, but for the most part they aren't. Why go to the added expense?
All robots cost money. Non-sapient robots can be slaves, but most societies frown on sapient slavery. No one is going to build robots just to set them free, so in those societies without sapient slavery, sapient robots have to work off their cost in service. The more expensive they are, the longer the service.
No one in their right minds would put a sapient robot brain into a missile...
-clash
Your robots are boring. They're like every other robot in the last 40 years. No, they won't be balanced character-for-character.
If you use XP tables for advancement, then give them an outrageous amount of XP for the next level.
But seriously... Boring. You're designing a very specific robot, not a robot character class or race. Give your players the option to use some or all of these advantages in smaller segments. Don't force them to play Data.
Remember, the market test of a robot it's whether it is more cost effective than a human laborer at the same job.
Nobody is just going to start building robots for no reason other than they can, not in any great number anyway.
Yes there will be prototypes that are superhuman walking internets, but the bulk of the labor force it's going to be the manufacturing, labor, and consumer models.
There's honestly a lot to be said for the Star Wars and Futurama robots here.
Quote from: J ArcaneHave 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?
Quote from: Scott Anderson;750326Your robots are boring. They're like every other robot in the last 40 years.
All I did was rattle off a list of standard expectations players are likely to have of robots, based on widespread media conventions. I'm of the school of thought that you want to rely a lot on tropes and familiarity in a tabletop RPG because it speeds up play and helps players navigate an already complicated hobby. Originality is nice and important in carefully applied bursts, but true originality is for novels, not games.
IMO, 'bots are not going to be necessarily stronger than humans, just maybe on the strong side of normal. They will have faster reflexes, as their nervous system will work quicker. While maybe their abilities will be naturally better, skill wise they will be lower, not only that, they will have limited experience (and often be very young). Aging will take a major toll without re-manufacturing. They will be viewed as slaves or disposable people by large segments of the population, and thus will have very low social standing/charisma.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750329All I did was rattle off a list of standard expectations players are likely to have of robots, based on widespread media conventions. I'm of the school of thought that you want to rely a lot on tropes and familiarity in a tabletop RPG because it speeds up play and helps players navigate an already complicated hobby. Originality is nice and important in carefully applied bursts, but true originality is for novels, not games.
Star Wars robots are purpose built contraptions that frequently lack even full humanoid mobility, and are prone to erratic behavior without regular memory wipes. They're basically like Windows machines built for a very narrow range of tasks, outside of which they are repeatedly demonstrated to be useless.
Futurama robots are cheaply built, again often eschew full humanoid mobility, are often limited in function, and so prone to erratic behavior there are entire criminal justice and mental health apparatuses for dealing with them.
I'm not talking about originality here, I'm just talking about relying on wider assumptions than seeing too many Data episodes of NextGen.
Quote from: J Arcane;750343I'm not talking about originality here, I'm just talking about relying on wider assumptions than seeing too many Data episodes of NextGen.
Good points.
When I play superheroes, I like to bend the tropes a little. My last superhero was a ball of light. No powers per se, just floated around and lit things up. Before that I played a superhero who was always six inches tall with proportionally-reduced strength and speed. No shrinking, just small.
I think my next superhero character will be one of those welding robots from automobile factories. Now THAT is a robot!
Quote from: Scott Anderson;750326Your robots are boring. They're like every other robot in the last 40 years. No, they won't be balanced character-for-character.
If you use XP tables for advancement, then give them an outrageous amount of XP for the next level.
But seriously... Boring. You're designing a very specific robot, not a robot character class or race. Give your players the option to use some or all of these advantages in smaller segments. Don't force them to play Data.
That was my reaction to Doove's Chakats.
Immune to disease, resistant to radiation, can function briefly in vacuum, enhanced senses, stronger, smarter, faster, better reflexes and endurance, possible psionics, hermaproditic AND can breed with other species AND override and breed true with said species. etc ad nausium. Just add a big letter S on the chest.
A race/object that is engineered to do everything better might be a logical step. But it is either boring as all hell, or a pain in the ass to GM challenges for, or is levelling reeeeealy slowly.
Back on topic.
Pulp robots were of two types.
PC types: which tended to be essentially humans. Occasionally a toolkit box type.
And NPC/Enemy types: which tended to be all the things listed in the OP half the time. And might or might not look human.
Quote from: jeff37923;750180Make all robot characters highly susceptable to advertising malware.
You just start talking like a Junkion, all late night infomercial style.
Quote from: Emperor Norton;750557You just start talking like a Junkion, all late night infomercial style.
d20 Gamma World had... Hoards of free roaming advertising bots that swarm the PCs trying to get their attention to show ads for products likely not being produced in a long time.
Extending Robots to their logical conclusions you could go all the way to Sam Slade RobHunter. - http://www.comicvine.com/sam-slade/4005-53109/
Robo cigars, robo boots etc etc
(Scott - I played a sword once in a D&D campaign. My PC died I could see no way for him to come back until we escaped the location so the DM offered me to play an intelligent blade the owner of which the party had just killed. Was pretty good fun for a few sessions :) )
Quote from: jibbajibba;750981(Scott - I played a sword once in a D&D campaign. My PC died I could see no way for him to come back until we escaped the location so the DM offered me to play an intelligent blade the owner of which the party had just killed. Was pretty good fun for a few sessions :) )
Intelligent weapons are among my favorite DM tools. It takes a special kind of player to successfully roleplay one though I find.
A robot character needs to have a reason for being built in the first place.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;751809A robot character needs to have a reason for being built in the first place.
Quite the opposite. People build thousands of robots, unless they are one of a kind, Data-like robots.
Robot characters need to have a reason for why they are doing what they are doing, why they are different to other robots, but not why they were built.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;751791Intelligent weapons are among my favorite DM tools. It takes a special kind of player to successfully roleplay one though I find.
It was great. Took a Uriah Heep approach right up until the bearer had dropped enough HP for me to own them on ego :)
Quote from: soltakss;751875People build thousands of robots, unless they are one of a kind, Data-like robots.
Link, or it didn't happen.
Also, why are the robot(s) being built? No fail this time.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;751809A robot character needs to have a reason for being built in the first place.
One of my favorite passtimes on a MUD I used to play on was to transform myself into a magical sword and just lay there waiting for some new player to happen along and pick me up. Then theyd hear in their minds "Who now dares wield me!!!"
A few months afo I believe someone Kickstartered an RPG where you play magical weapons.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;751900Link, or it didn't happen.
Also, why are the robot(s) being built? No fail this time.
Servant robots: Janitors, maids, etc.
Military robots: Soldiers mostly
Worker robots: Heavy lifters, construction, etc.
As for why build an advanced robot?
Hobby: Because you can.
Assistant: Data storage and retrieval, lesser tasks.
Exploration: Hazardous environs or mobile sensor platform.
Weapons platform/Bodyguard: Carry the recoilless rifle without getting tired.
Proof of Concept: They said it couldnt be done!
Infiltration: Spy, walking bomb, built in recording of evidence, etc.
Medical research: Testing platforms for human cybernetics or even a platform for a full conversion cyborg.
Entertainment: Robot gladiators, robot actors, etc.
Crew: To fill positions or because they can handle the station better.
Grief: To replace or honour a lost loved one. Or to avenge them.
Companionship
Lots of other reasons to build.
8-Man was a special police operative/detective. Fairly common on TV as well.
Astro Boy was built by a grieving father in the image of his son. Pops up in movies now and then.
Data was built as a proof of concept mostly.
Cherry 2000 was an adult companion bot. Also a fairly common theme.
Quote from: Omega;751910Cherry 2000 was an adult companion bot.
And a pretty good film, with the bad guys going off into the desert with packed lunches.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;751809A robot character needs to have a reason for being built in the first place.
No, the robot may have been built to serve a purpose, but when it becomes a character it no longer has to pursue that purpose.
There is a guy who builds robots out of technological parts and pieces of dead animals (some of his stuff has been seen in NIN videos) and he calls it art.
Quote from: jeff37923;752023No, the robot may have been built to serve a purpose, but when it becomes a character it no longer has to pursue that purpose.
I played in a comedy anime style game where everyone just came up with whatever they could think of and stuffed it into one game, my wife came up with an assassin android that desperately wanted to be a cook.
She had a high poisons skill and the fault of "Confuses poison skill for cooking". She worked for an eccentric billionaire who had an "immunity to poisons" advantage and loved her cooking that was played by another one of the players.
It was actually really a fun game. Anyway, yeah, robots trying to be not what they were built for is a fun concept to explore, either seriously or not.
Quote from: Emperor Norton;752055I played in a comedy anime style game where everyone just came up with whatever they could think of and stuffed it into one game, my wife came up with an assassin android that desperately wanted to be a cook.
She had a high poisons skill and the fault of "Confuses poison skill for cooking". She worked for an eccentric billionaire who had an "immunity to poisons" advantage and loved her cooking that was played by another one of the players.
I'm stealing this.
One of my favorite setting setups for d20 Gamma World was the City of Forgotten Toys. Which was a ruined city where robotic AI toys had gathered into a society and attracted other lost machines over time.
Planned but never published was a TSR RPG where you would have been playing robots. I believe it was all robots. No humans. Been ages and cant pin down the article.
I wouldn't bother to make a robot PC "fair". They'd have great strength, AC, but would be immune to or affected differently by a great variety of spells, couldn't heal naturally, etc.
Quote from: Omega;752167Planned but never published was a TSR RPG where you would have been playing robots. I believe it was all robots. No humans. Been ages and cant pin down the article.
It was called Proton Fire. It was sometime between Dragon 98 and 150 I think.
There was also a game called Nuts and Volts by the author of Top Secret in White Wolf Magazine it was issues 10 - 11 maybe.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Superior strength
Depends on design. Brute strength might be relatively affordable, but great strength COMBINED with good or even passable desterity is going to cost a lot of money, as you'll need a lot of percision parts.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Superior intellectual processing speed
Depends on model design. Possibly FAER better than organics in mathematics and organizational skills, not necessarily as good in skills requiring creativity unless a "full" AI.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- 100% recall and photo-video-audio recording capabilities.
Depends on the memory management system, after all storing EVERYTHING the robot senses is going to take a lot of space and be difficult (slow) to search; AIs will probably have memory systems organized along Human lines rather than a hard drive.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Immunity to pain
Possible. An AI with a synthetic body might be programmed to feel pain. Otherwise yeah, immunity to pain.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Immunity to psychology and emotions
A sentient AI will probably have emotions and psychology of some sort, this usually goes along with consciousness. semi-sentient proto-AIs will most likely have software bugs instead of psychological issues.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Immunity to physiological issues (disease, poison, starvation, suffocation, exhaustion)
Might be vulnerable to radiation instead and require large amounts of energy instead of food. Might also require routine maintenance instead of rest. And routine maintenance on an expensive robot might be costly.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Immunity to telepathy
Vulnerability to hacking, which is typically more common than telepathy.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Ability to be upgraded or re-fitted
Upgrades might be expensive. Also, a robot might get obsolete soon and thus NEED to be upgraded to catch up with software updates and/or fix hardware and software bugs.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- Can lie flawlessly
Might not understand WHEN to lie and/or might be programmed to provide the truth at all times.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;750145- 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.
A semi-sentient proto AI might have much slower learning rates than a sentient being, that is, it might start with good skills, but be unable to improve them by learning, possibly requiring costly upgrades to improve its skills, and/or much slower learning.
That was pretty good Golan, thank you.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;753621That was pretty good Golan, thank you.
You're welcome :)
I was actually thinking about simple rules for Aliens-style androids in Traveller as PCs; the idea was that they get pre-assigned skills and characteristics, BUT cannot heal naturally (they need to be repaired and that costs money) and cannot improve their skills well (this is Traveller, so most characters don't progress much, but humans can study to improve skills, androids cannot, or, at least, will take much more time to learn). I had three models in mind: Pleasure/Servant (relatively weak physically, has good social and lifestyle skills, almost no combat skills), Combat (good physical chracteristic but VERY combat-focused skills) and Worker/Tech (strong, good technical skills, almost no combat skills).
A robot wouldn't be worried about the environment for the same reasons as a human, but there's still plenty for them to be wary of.
It all depends on what terrain and environment they're designed to handle. A robot that isn't designed to handle the grueling heat of a desert or the sand will quickly find itself overheating with sand in its gears.
A robot that's not meant to handle mountains will not be able to traverse that treacherous terrain. Not to mention the cold and ice.
Instead of poison, they can have the wrong kind of anti freeze or oilings. Think of all the things that can go wrong with your car. They can rust too.
They'll also be easy to detect, and probably noisy too.
They might be good at lying, but they would have a hard time to detect lying as well.
This thread made me think of the Star Wars robot character, IG-88. He was one of the most interesting and lethal robots. Didn't really have many weaknesses though... but Boba Fett was able to outmaneuver him at every turn, just barely.
In my DCC game last session I had an NPC robot named Bolt-0, who had originally been created to produce cogs, but after the collapse of his civilization went out into the wilderness in search of interesting conversation.