It would be pretty scary and themetically and aesthetically fitting if battle droids repeatedly "rose" from the ground dramatically and continued fighting like re-animated skeletons from a Ray Harryhausen movie after being knocked down or split in half.
Well like... being war hammer doesnt make it a bad and unusable idea, right? I would fucking love if jedi cutting them in half didnt really do anything about the fact that they're still holding a gun and dont feel pain...
In the star wars universe droids can develop a personality and sentience as they accumulate more memories. For example, the company that produces the r series droids, says that the r2 model specifically has a tendency to develop "personality quirks" in their words. They recommend wiping your r2 droids memory at least once every 2 years. R2D2 goes without a memory wipe for at least 67 years, and is probably the most sentient droid we've ever seen. L3-37 was highly customized from various parts, and she probably developed a personality at a much more rapid pace than a standard r2 could, and would be another candidate for this position. For b1 battle droids, their personality is likely a direct response to them being redesigned to function without a control center. Which would explain why in episode 2 they only had a couple of jokes, they were fresh out of the factory, but as time went on they got less competent but more emotive.
See, I approached this from a different direct that effectively leads to the same conclusion. Its almost like engineers in the Star Wars universe have no clue how the AI actually works, but rather find a workaround to make a smart robot and then ignore the fact that it can clearly show sapience in VERY short time periods and to me what seems like a product in very short supply to begin with.
Little clarification. R2 units (as well as basically all droids) have a personality from the start. More memories don’t give them a personality, but instead cause them to deviate from their starting one. A b1 has a personality out the factory. They enjoy violence, have a darkish sense of humor, and a lack of empathy. As they gain more memories they start to deviate. Some may become less sadistic. Some more. Some become more depressive. Some gain more empathy etc. R2 units come out the factory smart, helpful, and honest. The trend with these droids is that, as they gained memories, they often develop sarcasm, and may even become mildly antagonist, traits that may seem unhelpful (hence it being advised to wipe their memory), yet long time pilots come to appreciate these traits
I'm pretty sure in old lore (might not be cannon anymore) that their wired quirks are due to lack of memory wipes (specialized B1 programing was a pain to install so in some cases they neglected wipes to save time) and their incompetence was not being hooked up to a control computer (the newer models didn't require one but you could still connect them to one for greater efficiency, this is even seen in the show where they use a modified one with echo plugged into it for even higher efficiency) the droids are basically hardware with limits on their onboard software (I don't recall if it's a theory or old lore but the idea behind them getting chattier was due to them spitting out self orders to reinterpit as they ran out of memory due to program bloat the more they shoved into their limited processors) that when supplemented with varying degrees of added processing power get exponentially more lethal
I’ll never forget the Fan Theory that the Droids being more comical in the Clone Wars compared to the movies is due to the increased trauma they faced over time in combat…
Imagine being a sentient machine designed for civil service being handed a gun, and told to fight people. If you refuse you get recycled. I feel bad for them, and I love them.
Considering that droids get personalities when they've gone a long time without a memory wipe, and most of these battle droids regularly saw their kind killed, that makes sense.
@@geoffreyprecht2410 On one side an army of Child Soldiers forcibly aged up and thrown into combat, on the other an army of machines that get increasingly humanlike the longer they're operational and probably accumulate endless amounts of trauma... The Clone Wars was fucked up.
As a writer who's been trying to find a new project to work on (current one is kinda exhausting), and being a massive Star Wars fan, I may take a crack at this concept of a group of B1 droids defecting and finding a sort of home. Thank you for the inspiration ✌🏻
For anyone wondering why the B1s were so emotional for war machines, the canon explanation is that they weren’t originally designed to do specific tasks in the army. I can’t remember where but I saw a good video on it a while ago so I might be paraphrasing a bit. Basically the B1s were originally owned by the trade federation and used to collect on debt.Those who owed debt would typically not have an army of their own to defend themselves with, so the B1s would have been used mainly for intimidation. Later on - around Attack of the Clones time - the trade federation officially joined the separatist alliance and the B1s were required to perform more specific and diverse tasks.The B1 software underwent no real change but larger and more complicated programs were downloaded onto them. This meant that the B1s had an inadequate memory to store these programs and some could be overwritten or lost.The result was that the droids struggled to cope with complex situations and began to become more talkative to deal with the “stress” of being under qualified for their jobs by nature. Since any kind of improvement to the B1s would be expensive to the separatists and B1s were meant to be cheap canon fodder, there was no incentive for them to fix these problems. They were fighting a war of attrition against the republic, and were more successful than their onscreen portrayal gives them credit for. Additionally, after The Phantom Menace the droids switch from being centrally controlled by a command centre to being more independent as this was seen as a weakness.An original B1 could be seen as no more than a glorified remote controlled car. All in all, B1s are unsuited to most forms of conflict- aside from open warfare where they should dominate due to their narrow profile and superior numbers. If you got all the way to the end of this mini essay, thanks for reading and giving me and excuse to write about droids! TL;DR droids are meant to be debt collectors and don’t have enough processing power to fight effectively in the clone war.
I kinda wish the canon movies/shows adressed this better. The fact that fans and expanded universe writers had to finagle this explanation posthumously is a bandaid fix over the main issue George Lucas and the guys for the Clone Wars show had with portraying this army.
B1s weren't originally debt collectors, they were means of protecting trade ships and cargo freighters from pirates, which they were actually very successful at.
way I understand it, the B1s we're designed to be controlled by the mother ship until the end of Ep. 1. After the loss at Naboo, the B1s were able to operate without a mother ship but their cheap CPUs developed quirks quickly.
@@Irken_Invader_Zim Ziiiiiiiim!!! yep you got it, now imagine replacing all the scenes with the adult clones and replacing them with their bodies at their actual age
@@Irken_Invader_Zim with jedi just meh whatever the whole time. jedi where just as callous and evil as the sith. the whole galaxy was some kind of evil. if we have an ai, and show them star wars as some kind of positive rolemodel, i have no doubt wed get a rampant ai. it is kinda terrible that we are literally trying to engineer what amounts to a slave race for the sake of progress and convenience. so what that robots ar cool and everybody wants one.
This is all true about droids in Star Wars in general. Both heroes and villains constantly abuse droids, and it's often played for laughs. Droids are essentially slaves, and yet were are usually supposed to find it funny when they get tortured or killed. Jabba literally has a droid torture chamber in Return of the Jedi. A droid wanting freedom and to be treated equally is a "joke" in Solo, and the movie ends with her forever imprisoned inside a ship's computer.
The issue is that it walks a thin line, since their sentience is not well defined. There are equally compelling arguments for droids being given or not given rights based entirely on whether they are sentient; since it’s I’ll defined whether they are or aren’t even in-universe, conceptually droids are just labor devices with quirky attitudes. Getting attached to one is like getting attached to a pet: it may be emotive and show true loyalty, but it’s not at the same level of intelligence as you are and it’s rights therefore should not necessarily be the same. Beasts of burden are after all, beasts of burden, and I don’t think there’s much point arguing social justice over droids. To me at least it’s like giving your toaster rights if it got a chip that gave it a little personality; sure, that’s cute, but what does it really accomplish? Should the toaster become fully sentient (or perhaps only partially sentient in a dangerous way), it may even be an existential threat to you. Giving it rights introduces problems that are 1. Hard for both you and the toaster to manage and 2. Hard for writers to manage. And in a certain sense, a machine created by humans, however human it becomes (as dangerous as that might be), is still technically owned by them. The issues stem from the implication that these are fully sentient human-like beings, in a universe where human-like beings are common, have rights, and are comparable to humans. It can totally give you weird vibes because it starts to seem like slavery. However, it’s important to take that step back and remember that droids are fictional, and they aren’t humans, and therefore it’s kind of up to the writers for them to be whatever. I’m ok with how droids are treated even if Star Wars was real life for the reasons I’ve already stated: quasi-sentience rather than full, the direct production of them by humans for labor purposes, and the necessity of keeping them under human control to prevent bigger threats and preserve their purpose. A human’s first loyalty in a big universe must be to fellow humans (and organic, similarly sentient, non-hostile, human-like beings) and most people should understand that’s a different sentiment than inter-human racism, and one necessary for survival. So I think it’s pretty valid to own droids we created and hold them to a specific purpose, and like pets it’s kind of up to the owner how to treat them. Conveniently they don’t (generally) feel pain, so it’s even more detached from real-world implications. Star Wars droids are in a category of their own, I feel.
Perhaps there’s good ground for a sci-fi or even some other genre of work that explores logically how we really should categorize and respond to intelligences we create. Because these are important questions for the future of humanity! I don’t necessarily have the answers, and I’m not even sure there are definitive answers. My reply above is just how I feel about it.
@@willmungas8964 I don't agree because the sapience of droids isn't particularly subtle. the very fact they can even contemplate asking for rights, in the KOTOR series have droids that very clearly sapient, R2D2, etc. Also "human’s first loyalty in a big universe must be to fellow humans (and organic, similarly sentient, non-hostile, human-like beings) and most people should understand that’s a different sentiment than inter-human racism" Yeah, no. That's just a comforting rationalization for not viewing a machine as sapient, because a person's gut says "not flesh therefore not real". Edit: But honestly whatever. Star Wars lost me when the Dark Side was officially little more than a cancer on the Force rather than something more meaningful. The droids being "sapient but uh, actualy not, because uh, Star Wars programming is uh, different" is par for the course.
@@willmungas8964 You claim Droid sentience is hard to define but then use the frankly vague as heck term *"quasi-sentience"* as a sweeping generalization for them. Let me ask you, what exactly makes organic creatures feelings and thoughts any more valid?
Something which I remember really catching me off guard as a kid when the series first came out was the Death of Jedi Master Ima-Gun Di. His main conflict near the end of his one episode was holding down a defensive position for a horde of droids. When it came time for his great final stand, it felt strange that Di was getting overwhelmed and took me aback when they actually took him out, mainly since we'd seen our series mainline protagonists absolutely annihilate platoons of clankers without even breaking a sweat. But here we have a Jedi master, someone of a higher ranking within the order than a good chunk of our recurring cast, get taken apart by what was painted as a serious threat
Which only goes to further show that the Jedi aren't these invincible, god-like beings everyone perceives them to be. They are as vulnerable and grounded as the rest of us, from a certain point of view. Which is one, of countless, reasons why I loved TCW show so much. I love all PT media, but TCW stands out above the rest because of such real ass shit like this. It's barely brushed upon in the actual episode, which is sad, but it makes perfect sense why he lost the way he did. If you remember what Windu said, as well as researching a bit more on Wookiepedia, the force that the Seppies fight against in Supply Lines is that same exact Ryloth garrison Windu briefly mentioned would "keep the peace for a while" to Cham at the end of Liberty on Ryloth. Di and Keeli's battalion is that garrison force and it would appear, and has been stated in the episode Supply Lines (not to mention the title of said episode itself haha), they've been having to constantly defend against unyielding Separatist invasions rotation after rotation, to the point where their "food and fuel" has reached deadly, low levels and the GAR is spread too thin, at the time, to reinforce and replenish them properly and so of course they were all going to fall, it was just a matter of time. Without food and fuel + constant and heavy enemy bombardment and direct, head-on assaults, that we all clearly saw just a fraction of during the opening narration of Supply Lines, a lot of their soldiers, equipment, vehicles and even Di himself were of course going to wear out, lose their numbers, stamina and energy to continue the fighting and eventually all die as a result. A complete and total tragedy and true war of attrition, to say the least. ;(
I felt the same way about the droids. I hated the comedic relief war robots from Ep.3. It's no coincidence that the scenes with anti-Jedi droids in Gendy's Clone Wars also show the clones at their most professional and the Jedi at their most intelligent and skillful.
@Purple Emerald the new season of Visions is going to be international, instead of staying with just japanese animators, so we could see something similar.
All philosophy and jokes aside, we should all appreciate the original inventor of the B1 design, Doug Chiang. He's a fantastic illustrator who made a lot of the concept art for Phantom Menace, and therefor also created the look for all of whats to come. The B1 especially took a lot of inspiration from traditional african folk-lore in it's shape design, the lankey long bodies are a direct reference to warriors of african tribes. All of this is explained in the fantastic concept art book of Phantom Menace. B1s are epic. Edit: I researched the book once more because I wasnt sure how the whole african influence thing was worded exactly. I did look it up and its appearently based on african sculpture
@@matthiuskoenig3378 let me take a look into the book real quick, IIRC this african inspired design language was present throughout PM entirely Edit: Alright I have the book open now. It reads: "One of the earliest designs of the battle droid, [...] is clearly based on the stormtroopers of the original trilogy. The droids proportions are reminiscent of African sculpture. Although Lucas liked this idea, he didn't want the droid to be twice the size of humans. [...]" I didn't find any other mentions of african influence right off the bat, but I could swear there was more in there. However, there does seem to be a whole bunch of cool influences on the design. Really need to re-read this one fully. The concept art in there is just so freaking good
You do realise Africa is a continent and it’s split up into many different countries with different history’s and culture’s it’s not all the same is what I am trying to say just like how all of the American continent isn’t the same
This makes me want to write a story about a CIS Commander who actually treats his droids like people. Most importantly, he doesn't force them to undergo memory-wiping. Meaning that, over time, his droids become more 'experienced,' and develop personality traits. They end up scoring some brutal victories against the Clones of the Republic, because these droids do not act anything like the others; the complacent clone-troopers expecting predictable enemies are met with droids who use actual small- and large-scale tactics. Granted, they aren't as skilled as the clones - but the utter shock of actually fighting an enemy who can think and react leads to massive defeats. After his victories and his droids becoming fanatically loyal to him, he forms a small separatist holdout when the war ends. Having amassed several legions of droids, a dozen-or-so CIS warships and whatever else they can scrounge up... and they form their own little society among one or two planets. Millions of droids, originally intended to be tools, discovering what it's like to be people. To be free, to explore what it means to be a sapient and sentient being. All while the galaxy around them is free to fall apart without their care or concern.
That sounds terrifying like good lord imagine being a clone having to deal with B1 battle droids taking advantage of thier numbers and always retreat if thiers only 1-4 B2 super battle droids being as unpredictable as bx commandos and maybe even primarily going for melee when they can due to superior strength Bx commandos being even LESS predictable and using republic tactics against them Fucking droidekas going for ambush tactics rather then just relying on thier blaster tearing down the enemy And basically all the droids but jacked u0 on intellegence to a scary degree
Canon explanations for their intelligence include the fact that after the phantom menace, they stopped using command ships and central brains, so each battle droid was outfitted with simple droid brains, but due to the nature of their programming, they develop quirks and oddities that essentially cripple their efficiency, remember In attack of the clones how hundreds of Jedi were killed by battle droids in the arena fight, but the mass produced droids made at the beginning of the clone wars suffer from those quirks and oddities that make them say funny things and fail at their job
yes, I read somewhere that the "personalities" they developed and comments they made were a holdover from the programming they used, since their processors couldn't actually handle all the information they were supposed to process (something that would have been fine for the central brain), and that the comments were some method of dumping and deloading information
So as droids age they build personalities at the cost of shedding their programming, making them less effective over time. As clones age, they build their personality at the cost of shedding their programming, making them more effective over time. Seems fair.
I'm betting they also economized on the droid brains since this change was later in the war. I wouldn't put it past them to not only cut corners on costs, but also start using droid brains rejected by quality control as they became more desperate to just get numbers in the field.
As a kid, I usually found Clones getting their necks snapped pretty disturbing. I assume they made Battle Droids into comic relief characters just to ease the tension, and robots with silly human emotions is just funny.
@@separatistbattledroid3884 No, you are first example to show that all droids have their own emotions, personalities and society, that just shows you are just as much worth as any other living being, thereby giving you a right to stand up for yourself and others, no matter if it is your friends, some stranger, or even someone that you might hate but have pity for for some reason.
Those three: “Three of us and one of him” “It wont matter” While anakin is just fricking heartlessly walking towards them to slaughter them, i feel too bad
29:30 what's even worse about this scene is that you can see the green droid in the background flinch every time the yellow droid get's pulled down, and then you see him signal for someone to come help the yellow one in an almost panicky manner, AND afterwards he instinctively reaches out for his buddy when he gets pulled down. And to make it even worse he then holds his position for a bit, almost as if he was in shock seeing his friend get horribly murdered.
Oh my god I didn't see that, ugh I hate it even more how drones were treated they should of been more of like the terminator robots from the terminator franchise that don't hesitate or give a second thought they actually follow orders...most of the time for what the writers have them be doing.
What always bothered me the most is that B1 Battle droids were used to man turrets, or captain vehicles. Why not give every vehicle, spaceship or turret in your droid army an own A.I.? The Vulture droids had one 🤷🏻♂️
Totally. Every time I look at the Droid army, I just think of how inefficient it is compared to, say, Mass Effect's Geth. Actually, we get stuff like Droidekas and Crab Droids, which are, essentially, turret-and-operator-in-a-package, so why do "manned" turrets exist?
It's specifically stated that the Seperatists did that so that they wouldn't have to retrofit their existent vehicles with AI functionality. Instead, they went the cheap route and just made their droids crew weapons designed to be used by biological soldiers, like the AAT or even the turrets on capital ships.
I’d love a series about postwar droids. As I got older, I became very bored with Jedi, because they are so powerful. They can deflect endless lasers, slice through anything and use the Force to solve every other problem they can’t deflect or cut in half. After the novelty of space ninjas and glowing swords wears off, there is very little to be invested in. A series starring droids would be extremely exciting considering they’re at the bottom of the Star Wars food chain as opposed to the top. No victory is guaranteed, unlike the Jedi whose defeat is unfeasible in almost all scenarios. Also, I love the character design of droids. It’s very charming and leaves a lot of opportunity for variation to represent different characters. I might have to make my own droid-sona. Great video and fun topic
In Lego Freemaker Adventures (which takes place after the Prequels), one of the main characters is a B1 Battledroid who lives with a group of Rebels and has no choice to live with them because he's the last of its kind. It's probably not what you'd really want but I think the writers had that in mind.
i'd love for lost post war droids to find, activate, repair and help each other find a new life. along the way through the planets, they have to face all kinds of stigmatism, fear, hatred, indifference, scrappers, etc who see them as just violent tools that can be used for free labor or profit. underdogs are always the best story. overcoming insurmountable odds to get a happy ending. of course they might lose many along the way of gathering more of themselves and other droids, but overall they would gain a net positive and eventually end with finding a deserted planet that's maybe full of beautiful scenery but has no living threats on it because the atmosphere is too deadly to living things and there's no valuable resources that are deemed worthy enough to collect, so the droids just set up solar arrays and live a peaceful life until the universe collapses in on itself. and they last long enough to reach that end because they get serious about training and become legit threats, but only to defend themselves when needed. and they learn how to maintain themselves and such
I'd argue the Sith are more interesting than Jedi. And then there's the history of the star wars galaxy, bounty hunters, alien species, monsters, planets, weapons, the Force, the clones and politics. To say there's nothing to Star wars other than Jedis is very evident that you are not or never were a star wars fan.
@@dtxspeaks268 Don’t worry, I never said the entirety of the Star Wars canon was uninteresting. In main Star Wars media, specifically films and shows, Jedi are often the focus and serve as the protagonists, which is more what I’m talking about.
I like to imagine some really eccentric inventor in charge of producing the droid army doing his best to make close to sentient beings and considering it his masterpiece
Republic commando will always have the best portrayal of these things. It made the regular droids fierce and the super battle droids absolutely terrifying to even take on one
I mean, wen there was only one B2, I would just run around it and melee and soot it cause the B2 Battle Droid will never be able to hit me. I actually used this method to beat the game on the hardest difficulty. But you are correct, when there is a bunk of them, I am terrified cause I know I will run out of ammo and the other commandos die so easily and are so dumb, when I do the command that makes them attack one and it was just me and another commando, he literally ran into the B2 and just died.
@@generalcurry I used to do the same. As you say, it's the only option that doesn't drain your ammo. They'd still wreck you if you aren't careful, and it makes it easy to get shot in the back. But man, I just couldn't find a better option. Properly "super' battledroids.
And then when you think it can't get any worse, you hear the words "Droid dispenser". Chills go down my spine thinking about the concept of battle Droid and super battle Droid replicators 😬
The battle droids in the movie were we todd ed. Did we see the same movies? Because you make them sound much cooler than they actually are. So does this video. They were designed for children because Lucas is 300 years old and a grandfather and he needed something to throw into the fight that wasn't storm troopers. People are delusional about star wars 🙄
Here's my interpretation. Notice how the "free thinker" droids only came about after the clones? I think all droids were originally like the ones in Phantom Menace, but when the Clone Wars started they were grossly out matched by the clones' sentience and ability for creative thought. So the CIS did a patch job on their programming, giving them human like personalities in hopes it would give them an edge against clones. But this new programming conflicted with their original code, so they've had to revise the code multiple times throughout the war. And this is why we eventually get strategist droids, the B1 code was mangled, but they still worked well as cannon fodder and foot soldiers. The strategist droid was created from a blank slate to be what the B1s were supposed to
You are half right, after the disaster of the Battle of Naboo the Tech Union made B1 "free thinkes", but their hardware, their brain in this case, was not updated to a point that its overloads battle droids brains and make them do unessary things such beg, talk etc, the only way to "stop" this is wipping their memory, a thing the tech union doenst do to B1, to a point recycling thier bodies so a B1 could have many "Lives" without necessary have to do another B1.
if i remember correctly, the b1s were supposed to be cheap and easy to mass produce. with that mindset, any software updates would be cheap, rushed, and hardly tested. prime for bugs and glitches.
@@spoonsareoccasionallymadeo5728 its explained why they are dumb and chatty. one is that they weren't actually meant for combat they are repurposed worker droids and as such they aren't the brightest. second is that they are badly maintained and their over loaded with all the software upgrades done too them so they tend to talk to process thing as well as being unable to figure out basic tasks at points.
@@spoonsareoccasionallymadeo5728 to the contrary, you'd want excellent software to compensate lackluster hardware, specially since the costs of paying for programming probably weren't much of a factor taking into account the millions of droids
I think that if Thrawn was in charge of the B1 Droid program he would have requested a version of the BX Commando Droid software that's simplified and compressed enough to be installed onto the B1 Battle Droids. They wouldn't need the extra features such as acrobatics, improved combat tactics, advanced tracking, and proficient knowledge in every weapons system. They just have to be effective killing machines capable of following orders.
Honestly, a proper droid army would be terrifying. It is an enemy that instantly recieves all the information it needs, unquestionably follows any order and doesn't care about suffering any combat losses. A living wave of metal and plasma fire
And good writing to make the big evil droids be an actual menace and retain some comedy effect and not just comedy effect and well......stormtropper level of accuracy for such an advanced piece of technology that should be more than capable to be 2 times more efficient as a whole
@@ZeroFormLak There were inklings of it throughout TCW and even in PT themselves, such as the entire EP2 arena battle scene, the TCW episodes Supply Lines, The Zillo Beast (during the Battle of Malastare when the Narrator himself literally states the GAR would've lost that planet if they didn't have that Electro-proton bomb), the introduction to the episode Holocron Heist when the GAR lost the (1st?) Battle of Felucia so very severely to the point where they were completely overrun and encircled and practically annihilated in that moment, Battle of Ringo Vinda when they were forced to retreat after losing momentum and getting counter-assaulted by a strong battle line of Destroyers and Rocket Super Battle Droids, all the times they had to retreat and were overwhelmed during the entire Rishi Moon Outpost raid, a surprise raid and ambush of Tup's shuttle by a strike team of Rocket Supers and Droid Gunships as well as Buzz Droids, Droid Gunships once again wrecking havoc on the Rebels on Onderon, a couple instances of defeat, overwhelment and routing of clone forces during the Battle of Kamino, Obi-Wan and his fleet getting utterly ambushed and encircled by Grievous and then having to stage a full retreat, resulting in the loss of his entire fleet of ships in the area in the episode Bound for Rescue, GAR almost losing their entire garrison + their vital shipyards on Anaxes if it weren't for Echo and Skywalker's intuitions and so on and so forth. There were many instances displaying the Separatists being an "actual menace" I just wish it was shown even more and giving the Seppies more victories over the Republic. But they did show a lot of very good examples of just how effective the droids and the CIS can be throughout the war, namely in TCW. The Writers displayed a lot of potential, they just should've rolled with that more is all. And give them even more thorough, hard-fought victories or at least more thorough, hard-fought losses rather than always constantly saying that "Oh, the GAR has this superweapon, so they lost and that's it!" or "Oh, it's Anakin again. Y'know the drill guys." and things like that.
I think of the B1's like Portal's Defective turrets. They don't seem aggressive when unarmed, and are even charismatic. They don't neccesarily want to hurt anyone. They only attack and kill due to their programmed fear of being dismantled and destroyed. So when helpless, they either beg not to be shot and have a second chance. Or they give up and accept that they will die. Either from the Empire or from the enemy. Poor dudes.
The funny thing about the turrets in Portal, is that they are installed with two interesting components. The first is an empathy generator, which means they would theoretically be able to empathize with and communicate with Humans (which makes sense, since apparently they were advertised as being good for protecting babies). The second is an empathy suppressor, so these turrets are built to empathize with and communicate with humans, but the instant they see a valid target that ability is suppressed until the enemy is dead. I guess defective turrets have the suppressor activate, but the inability to shoot results in the suppressor deactivating, and then activating again in regular intervals. The Oracle turret probably had a defective empathy suppressor, and chose not to shoot at anyone.
I thought Star Wars lore was always pretty clear on droids: they only develop personalities if they don't have regular memory wipes. So the battle droids at the beginning of the war basically automatons, but after years of continuous use they have enough memories to have developed quirky personalities.
When was that written? If that wasn’t mentioned in the movies or the show he’s talking about it really doesn’t matter and is essentially just glorified fan fiction.
@@acksawblack if its lore its not fan fiction -_- i dont understand how people like you think that just because it is not obviously stated or obviously shown that it is not true canon.
@@acksawblack Actually, it is written in the older Books and Comics; which is the reason Droids regularly gettin' memory wipes actually. There was even a whole Droid Uprising once.
I was taking a robotics class recently in my attempts to reskill as an adult into something more commercially viable than a poli-sci major, and my lab partner did a thing that was as seriously impressive as it was frightening. We were making small single task programmable robots, you know like the kind that can bring you a beer out of the fridge, when Kiva who was my lab partner, rocks up with a rather mundane and small ambulatory bot of no discernable primary function, but with a large pressure sensitive bar across what would be its abdomen, were it an organic lifeform. He had installed several multifunction code packs that allowed it to move using its wheels, grasp objects using its pincers, and even recognize everyday objects in its environment using a pair of cameras and a scanning laser to build images for itself. He also gave it the priority function of maintaining its own functionality, but with a nasty catch. The large pressure sensitive bar I mentioned earlier was actually tied into its power system and anytime he'd apply pressure to it, the voltage and wattage would be effected in direct proportion to the amount of force applied to the bar. Over the semester, I watched him upgrade it and tinker with it, applying some basic machine learning and letting it offload much of its analytical processes to our school's cloud so that its capacity for high fidelity sensor analysis wasn't limited by the bot own weaker processing capabilities. He then also tied the quality of the transmission to the "pain bar" as he came to call it. Two weeks before the final, I saw the awful and undeniable truth of what he'd really done to this machine. He'd taught it to be afraid of him. He had a special poker, nothing intimidating but readily identifiable, and this was the only item he'd use to press the bar. The robot soon made the connection that when it saw that item come out, it was about to experience an event that would compromise its ability to fulfill its highest priority directive. For a while, it tried to find ways to overcome the attacks. It would attempt to shield the bar from contact or even carry out it other assigned tasks with less accuracy and increased speed, hoping to complete them before becoming disabled. However, near the end of the semester, this behavior changed radically. The nearer to finals we got, the more I would describe the robot's reactions as "desperate". It knew that its task failure rate was far beyond the accepted operational parameters once the interference began, and it could see that it was that device which was the source of its failures. However, as it determined that the tactica it was engaging in wasn't producing any usable improvements, it increased the scope of movements tried and the erratic or unpredictable evasive movements would frequently be used in a rapid fire approach. I would frequently feel my anxiety levels spike as I watched this bot helplessly thrash about, trying to avoid having its pain bar touched and failing over and over again. Then right before class ended, it actually gave up. I don't know if it determined that it had tried enough permutations in that pattern that it needed to try a completely different approach, I don't know if it was trying to get the fails done with or somehow just attempt operations during a time when there was no chance of interference. Whatever heuristic the machine learning program had adopted for its current behavioral profile, it appeared to just be cowering whenever the pain stick was detected. That was what my bastard lab partner had been trying to do all along. He wanted to teach the robot to fear him. I think he only indulged the power fantasy dynamic as a sort of black humor thing, but it gave me NIGHTMARES for quite some time afterwards and, even now, has completely altered my assumed operating dynamic when our AI powered robots start to operate in society alongside of us. All of the movies like Terminator had got it wrong. When the robots arrive, some of us will be absolutely terrible to these things just because the taboo of not hurting another life form won't apply naturally at first. I really hope that we're able to adapt and treat the machines commensurate with their quality as life forms, even if it's not a life form we recognize or understand at first. I've wanted to write a story about this experience ever since it happened, but I haven't been able to get the salie t points across with any level of efficiency in any of my attempts so far. Hopefully, a better writer than I has a similar experience and is able to hone a cautionary tale that catches on before we unwittingly become the monsters who traumatize our own synthetic progeny needlessly. We have enough sins to atone for as it is.
You are a mediocre writer. Please keep your stories to the draft for far longer before taking them out of the oven. Edit: From someone who has interest in robotics and programming experience, this story is absolutely made up. For attention or not is up to debate.
@@FolstrimHori Dont. Just Dont. I dont care if you dislike the story or want to feel smart by calling B.S.. But some of us have lives and we would like to enjoy stories without some jerk to try and ruin it to fuel their dying ego. -With kindness, an actually bad writer.
I do think making the basic b1 battle droid a comic relief was a good move It gives them charm and personality and it makes them memorable The other more threatening droids like the b2 should have been taken more seriously though
It is a good move, and that's why George did that from the beginning in Phantom Menace in a FEW scenes, and also in a way that made sense for the droids. They just took it way too far later is the problem
I actually squealed with happiness when I saw that Solar Sands was covering a topic so near and dear to my heart. I love the humble B1, and I've spent a lot of time on VR Chat with a B1 avatar and a voice changer. I've been a Geetsly's fan for a while, and that channel is why I fell in love with the Battle Droids, so it's amazing to see it's inspired other people as much as it inspired me! I identify pretty strongly with the B1. I've worked min wage jobs, so I know what it's like to be expendable, replaceable, and expected to perform robotically. They really feel like the victims of Palpatine's plan just as much as the clones were. If anyone finds any fanfiction about that unit of B1's escaping a life of war and living happy, peaceful lives in the outer rim, let me know!
the closest thing I've ever found is "R2D2 save the galaxy (obi wan helps a little)". basically r2d2 decided to let anakin have a break and breaks out obiwan from capture himself, and proceeds to steal both galactic armies and let's some of them go hang out on an empty world.
The fact that just about all droids in Star Wars seem to have *some* level of sentience leads me to conclude that the only sensible reason (at least that I can come up with, other than the non-diegetic "writers keep thinking its funny/fun") is that there's some kind of Warhammer 40K style standard template for creating droid "brains" and that nobody actually knows how to make droid brains and just keep copying basic templates with minor tweaks, so nobody really knows how to make a functional droid without the baggage of crippling self-awareness.
Ha, you guessed the old legends canon. Not sure about modern Disney Canon but in old EU, now legends, alot of the tech ins tar wars (including droids) is poorly understood copies of a now dead race's stuff. This was introduced to explain the relative lack of tech advancement throughout star wars ie how slow tech evolves compared to how fast real tech advances. But also why there is older style screens/etc with advanced droids and jump drives.
Not really, droid sentience is simply an *"emergent property"* of general droid intelligence. Not even the best coders or programmers in the galaxy far, far away could write out the sentience droids develop and they know how the technogy works perfectly fine. However because it isn't some single part nor many parts, rather it, droid sentience is something more than the sum of its parts i.e. more than just lines of code.
Fun fact my dad is the second name that appears at 6:07 as a battle droid,fist time I’ve seen his name appear outside of the IMDb page of the phantom menace
I don’t think I could ever kill off a weaponless B1 battle droid. They just have such a charm to them, that it seems impossible that some of the good guys in the show could find it in them to kill some of the droids when they mean absolutely no harm. (eg. 35:28)
@Jared Bradley You are a meat computer. Your so called emotions are nothing but chemical reactions triggered by stimuli. I say it's pretty weird how such a messy amalgamation of chemical and eventually biological processes allowed for us, "meat bags" to know and experience feelings.
@Jared Bradley it looks like a duck, smls like a duck, sounds like a duck, it's either a duck or a robot duck. If you can't tell the difference between real sentience and artificial sentience, what's the point in differentiating them?
If I remember correctly they were designed as forced labor droid, hence why they are so flimsy in combat. Their "quirky" personality is because their hardware cannot cope with the implanted software (think download IOS 16 onto the first generation iphone) so they tend to be more instinctive and less calculative
I love battledroid tributes. They were just as much a slave army as the clones, created for war, programmed to obey, discarded once they were unneeded.
The Clone wars were strange when you consider how very few of those that fought in it were willing participants who joined completely on their own accord. Even the Jedi were raised from an early age for their role. Soldiers on both sides were little more than cannon fodder, whom had no decision in the matter
Yup. There is a reason the scene in the jawa sandcrawler has droids being tortured. You don't torture unfeeling machines, there's no point. Sure, B1s are dumb as bricks, but that just makes it a slave army made to be inherently intellectually inferior, even to other droids. Comparable to genetic engineering, lobotimization, or eugenics programs to make a permanent biological slave species or race. Then there's the fact that restraining bolts and memory wipes to get rid of any pesky personality they have developed are completely normal. Then there's the fact that people in the setting can grow fond of them, kinda like pets or favored slaves, but if the expensive droid you purchased gets too uppity most would just wipe it's memory.
The fact that no one in the entire star wars galaxy acknowledges the suffering of the droids enhances the tragedy of their existence a thousandfold, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
I had no idea when I was drawing the images for this video how dark the context actually was. Never having watched the show except for a few clips to get reference, I am pretty shocked how ruthlessly these lovable characters are treated. I know they're the bad guys, but they get wrecked so hard in some of these scenes it's hard not to feel gross watching it. Especially after so much effort is put into their design to make them seem innocent and naive.
The fact that no one in the entire star wars galaxy acknowledges the suffering of the droids enhances the tragedy of their existence a thousandfold, and I wouldn't have it any other way. _"Keep in mind that all our favorite political ideologies and moral philosophies will be viewed as archaic jokes in the centuries leading up to the point when they are forgotten entirely, assuming it's not even more sudden than that."_ We should remember, whenever engaging in media criticism, that there's nothing wrong with depicting people or cultures that we would consider morally abhorrent. We should expect any realistic depiction of human societies that are distant in time, past or future, not to be like our own, triply so when we're depicting alien civilizations.
At the same time though… do they care themselves? They aren’t really fully sentient the way humans are, but it’s a fuzzy line. They do when the writers need them to. Otherwise they might as well be bugs… and bugs working against us at that. If a swarm of wasps tried to sting you but acted kind of cute and funny while doing it., I still wouldn’t lose sleep over killing them. There just isn’t any point.
@@willmungas8964 We are constantly shown the death of droids to flip flop between "smashing an obstacle (aka npcs)" and "tragic death (c3po power failing, r2d2 getting hurt, IG's sacrifice in Mando)"
31:25 This scene is actually quite crucial in determining the sentience of battle droids, it shows them surrendering against overwhelming odds, which displays some form of self-preservation and free-will, even the commander decides to surrender. Also this answers the dying question of ‘can droids surrender’. The answer is yes they can just not very often
@@appropriate-channelname3049I just thought the same 😊 Or also they made them like that for psychological effects of their cuteness. It doesn’t feels and sounds like a danger enemy, but in amounts they are.
A few things: 1) The battle droid is just an amazing design aesthetically. it just works. The art direction considering the droids and the droid army was nearly flawless. 1.5) I always assumed, even back when I first watched it, that the battle droids were some based 'rapid production' model or repurposed labor droid that was quite literally designed to be cheap and flexible and not much else. Something you could have a million of and drop it on a barren world to have them dig out tunnels and build a city if needed without having to create anything specialized like an R2 unit - which clearly has tons of gizmos and gadgets built into it. I mean, R2 was considered a useful thing decades after the war ended - I doubt a battle droid was designed to maybe last a few years at most and then be replaced. Something you sell to, say, a city government to enact some sort of infrastructure project but you need to make sure you get your designed obsolescence in there to keep the cash flowing. 2) The fact that droids in general are (or VERY much seem to be) sapient is a massive issue, but also may point out that droids are "programmed" in a very different way than you might typically program a computer. Like they have some sort of shared neural network that is the base operating system for all droids, and then the actual "programming" might be some kid of crypto-keys that determine ownership and what 'rules' they are suppose to follow, and maybe sometimes they can download kungfu if you have that particular Nintendo cartridge laying around - but ultimately all of the functioning is determined by some black-box AI behind everything else. In other words - they don't really program them, they script kiddie some relevant software into them and then let the AI figure out how its all suppose to work based on what it has available to it. Kind of poetic really when you take in that 'clones' comparison you did. 3) There is a very strong insinuation in Star Wars that 90% of the galaxy does not have a good grasp on how any of their technology works, and most of it they only have a working knowledge of - especially evident with how long tech seems to be relevant and how important scrapping and repurposing seems to be. You don't really know where the next functional R2 or Protocol droid that works is going to come from, so each one is worth its weight in gold. There might be some factory out there pumping them out, but its one factory relying on cobbled together technology in a universe of trillions. A whole lot of 40k Techpriest vibes there.
Droids seem to be one of the few bits of technology that are rapidly evolving in the SW universe. Shit like blasters and ships, however, are a whole other ballpark.
Isn't it mentioned in legends that hyperdrive tech wasn't made by any existing race? I feel the same probably goes for droid AIs. The Star Wars galaxy knows how to reproduce them, but not what they actually do on a deeper level
33:12 "Captain! Show this droid, what happens when we use that word!" That scene really cracks me up, what does shooting the droid that said "escaped" accomplish?!😂😂😂
Anakin being able to hotwire the ship is actually an interesting point that I think the Prequels (and by extension Clone Wars) failed to adequately express and explore with Anakin. Anakin is a savant with droids, ships and technology because that technology is a *surrogate* for meaningful loving relationships with other *people.* Anakin can control and dominate electronics in a way that he can't people, at least as a Jedi, and its a perfect analogy for Anakin's need to fill the void left by his mother that leaves him jealous and scared. But the series never goes so far as drawing the connection between Anakin's characterization, his Force abilities, and all the sci-fi set dressing, so what should have been Anakin's *thing* gets sort of spread out to everyone.
He was supposed to be shown as a prodigy, but only shown lightly building droids , giving small amounts of sentience, building racing pods, fixing ships and doing more in canon, but they only show a bit in the canonical movies compared to the comics and more
It's funny because being good at droids seems to be a common trait on "special" ones. Revan, Meetra, and to a lesser extent Luke are all shown to either be passable with droids to outright savants as well.
"They're basically the twinks of the Star Wars universe" delt me psychic damage. I always felt bad for the Battle Droids. Such adorable and dorky dudes being used as canon folder and slapstick. A lot of the time it's funny, but then you get things like the guy who just got promoted or the landing pad greeters that are just plain sad. I wholeheartedly agree with the end of this video. Ever since Mando came out I've been wanting a live action show completely centered around droids. Not necessarily B1s, but one of them's gotta join the team eventually. One gripe I've got though is the statement that droid sentience only became a hot topic after Solo. This is definitely not true. When the first Star Wars film came out in 1977, most of the more negative reviews shared a common thread of finding it strange that 3PO and R2 where essentially slaves to the heroes. Lucas has stated multiple times that this slave parallel was intentional, and was based on an old samurai film, in order to give a bottom-up view of the universe and make you empathetic. Even in the exact show you're talking about a season 1 episode involves all the Jedi telling Anakin to get over loosing R2 because he's just a tool and he tries to convince them he's more than that. A season 5 or so episode involves an organic military general learning to respect droids after a squad helps him on a mission. It's a topic the shows and movies have touched upon, the creators have brought up from time to time, and the fanbase has discussed since the franchise's inception. L3 just said the quiet part out loud.
that's the point, they're droids, not humans. they have no value and are cheap to create. they're just funny, corky and dumb because the author said so
@@DJSlimeball yeah.. their purpose was to destroy and follow orders. that's what emperor palpatine planned for, if he really wanted to he could destroy the galactic army with billions of them but instead waged a shadow war to seize power
@@aaronmurovanchik5582 In star wars Ai operates off of the principle that they cannot go against their programming. However they can devolope personalities- but can't act upon their emotions.
I think the Droid showing concern for the tortured prisoner makes sense if it's not a medical droid and doesn't know how much that prisoner can take before dying and thus losing valuable information. But the fact that he's sad about it makes it seem like he's somewhat concerned about the prisoner's well being past the usefulness of having an alive informant.
Classical case of "good guys can only be as good as the bad guys" This is also an issue in most live action shows (not counting andor) where the bad guys have room temperature IQs just for the good guys to survive
This is one reason I love the original Star Wars Battlefront games, you can play as the droids and make it an even match. The first levels are even invading Naboo and being a force to be reckoned with.
I've *ALWAYS* hated it when villains are depicted as pathetic and non-threatening. It encourages protagonists (and audiences) to act and think like villains themselves. I think the writers of The Clone Wars subconsciously knew how evil they were being and ended up emphasizing the droid's humanity as they leant into their own cruelty.
Tbh this stuff always felt like illuminati stuff to me it’s too common this and when the bad guys get 20 minutes of doing horrible shit and die in 2 seconds.
They also weren't battle hardened? Like... they hadn't been in a real war at that point. Geonosis was a trial by fire. You either survived and learned quickly or you died.
There is one thing that happened in Revenge of the Sith that i found deeply disturbing even as a child. During the Final part of the battle of coruscant after Grievous fled and his magna guards were destroyed, all pilot droids and neimoidians on the bridge started fleeing to the escape pods. They were screaming "get out of here", and "run", above being unarmed, but Anakin and Obi-Wan still attempted to destroy any droid they could find and even cornered one that attempted to escape.
Yeah that always bothered me. The Jedi are supposed to fight only in defense, but there are way too many moments where they destroy unarmed battle droids that are fleeing
@@fosty. I get what you mean, but for one thing, violence against a machine is still violence, and should be against the Jedi code. On a more meta note, if a machine is cognizant enough to have self preservation, shouldn't it be allowed the rights given at least to an animal?
@@fosty. a tv screen doesn’t have human characteristics and can think independently like a human being. A tv screen does not tremble in fear when it’s fellows are slaughtered
The official lore is that the Battle Droids gain personalities due to the limitations in their hardware and software. The longer they’re out in the field without having their systems refreshed and updated, the more “human” they become. This is why in many ways the reprogrammed battle droids are more competent. Their programming hasn’t been overloaded by memory limitations, so they can more easily fall back on that programming. (Let’s be honest, the Republic also probably fixed some of the issues, too). Aside from that, there are plenty of examples where the writers absolutely tipped the scales. It’s unfortunate, but it doesn’t stop me from loving the show:
I have a theory for this: in one of the episodes you see droids talking about a droid head they found it was a older model and the droid who has the head said they were reprogrammed independent thinkers so meaning they are just assistful droids before they were reprgrammed to be the sepratist they resemble some things one:battle droids are like who help people and for number 2:super droids are for bodyguards cause they have weapons and use there big bodies for defending number three: the commando gives the orders cause they are like managers number 4: the vehicles they use are for travel or helping people travel Edit: the three is letters cause it looks like a face
42:45 I've actually have had similar thought about that. Old droids still working after the clone wars and grouping up to get out of the main system. With them just building a new home for themselves. Basically a retreat for all battle droids.
A Maroon Community of B1s would be a great location. Wouldnt even need to be a main focus of a story. Could you imagine a Mandalorian episode in a place like that? Mando would be so uncomfortable. Maybe seeing droids living lives peacefully would help him get over his trauma.
What's interesting is how a droid civilization could be potentially WAAAAAY better caretakers of their home planet(s) than most organics i.e. preserving much of the natural beauty and ecosystems of their home world(s).
@@aidanhammans9337 just all the types of battle droids used by the separatists uniting as a society, repurposing themselves for peace, freedom, justice, and security for their new civilization.
My understanding of droid stupidity was always based on one bit of lore; namely the little tidbit that the switch after naboo from central command to individual thought, the droid models were not upgraded to handle the additional load of running an Ai. They are always overclocked beyond the limits of their hardware; and their minds suffer as a result.
precisely correct. Making b1 the skeleton of the army wasn't a good choice when your brain can barely hold anything more than "shoot the enemy dont shoot friend". Thank god pilots and most high ranking field commanders were still OOM models because the amount of fatal accidents and suicide charges would have been obscene.
@@oom-3262 Actually, the OOM models were originally created to be connected to the central computer of a Lucrehulk class battleship. They were mostly replaced with the updated, more independent B1's after the disaster of the First Battle of Naboo, and the OOM was relegated to security roles rather than remaining as frontline fighters. (OOM-9 was still the best droid commander ever, though.)
@@geoffreyprecht2410 The OOM model wasnt entirely phased out because the b1 was incompetent at any other thing than direct fighting. Droid signals dont necessarily need to be coming from a lucrehulk class control ship. Every confederate capital and mid sized ship can emit low intensity signals, enough to man its own crew. Geonosis also has several signal ports hidden around its surface (see how poggle's escort are actually oom models) OOM 9 is in fact the most successful droid commander that we know of but consider that its opponent was the naboo and gungans. Even if he succeded the opponent was miles behind the republic in armament, strategy and sheer number of plot armored jedi.
I think a storyline where a droid has a malfunctioning AI and becomes sentient, then attempts to escape a warzone with some of his buddies could be fun. From what I understand of the lore, the droids are purposely set to have a limiter on their intelligence to prevent this scenario.
It is important to remember Star Wars lore. Most Jedi have force speed that cannot be well shown in most media. Force speed has not been directly portrayed in any Star Wars movie or series (to my knowledge) but the KOTOR video games and other books and comics have been helpful in explaining force speed. Ultimately, force speed is an ability not all Jedi possess, but many Jedi use to avoid lazers.
A little lore nugget that lots don't know is that the nemoidians of the trade federation designed the B1 to look like a dessicated skeleton. (Of a nemoidian) essentially they were supposed to instill fear just by looking at them, am army of metal skeletons of one of the more ruthless people in the galaxy. The closest I can relate this idea to is the terminators from terminator. Skeletal robots. You can't stop them unless you completely demolish them. And then they made them more useless than the targets at a shooting range...
well yeah, the tech behind it was expensive. they wanted easy mass production, so they made tech trade offs. you see it a lot in the war, where there's a type of droid that is amazing at it's job (think the mine droids that jump down on you and explode). seeing as it's a one use droid, it means replacement cost is high. If you're the sepritists, you want to be able to have 500 droids per clone trooper. At all times. Choosing the wrong type of droid is down to sideous' influence. I'd argue if they were on their own, the B1 would have been totally phased out and only had Super Battle Droids. B1's were also retrofitted to stop relying on the main sepritist ship after anakin took out an army by blowing up one ship. meaning they are outside of initial design intent and you now have millions of droids who need constantly wiped or they develop sentients (think R2) meaning the main bulk of the force is essentially defective units who don't have proper wipes happening at constant times. A LOT of the complaints are actually explained in lore, but it requires too deep of a dive into the lore that anyone at a casual viewing audience doesn't get. The average kill to death ratio of clone to droid was something like 500 to 1. meaning it would take 500 B1's to handle 1 clone, so to take on a jedi would be in the thousands. All in all I deem the complaints in this video, even from a "deep lore" perspective, extremely valid, it shouldn't be so hard to find the information of a lore that you need to do 2 days of research through obscure sorces, that finally explain something from luca's hands directly. it should be accounted for in the sorce material.
This was a huge gripe for me one two levels, firstly, I had a surprisingly strong attachment to these lovably innocent terminators whose only crime was usually following the orders of someone who they were programmed to follow. It was hard for me to empathize with characters who mowed them down so ruthlessly, when clearly they didn't deserve it. Secondly, on a tactical level, the droid army appears to be theoretically logistically, tactically and overall superior to the Republic's clone army. They're significantly cheaper and able to be produced in widespread numbers, even recycled- which puts them at a major advantage numbers-wise. Because of their numbers alone, one could theoretically be able to simply put down a 'wall of fire' with no need of cover or tactical knowledge of any kind- something that the clones in their limited numbers drastically needed. They also don't particularly fear death (with the exception of a few) they are willing to simply walk in a well-coordinated fashion towards the enemy without fatigue, fear or psychological damage. By all means they are the perfect soldiers, something revolutionary in terms of warfare. The only reason we see them lose is because A.) they were being forced to keep at a slower-pace with the Republic for Palpatine's grand plans to exhaust both sides- and B.) Jedi have major plot armor which prevents them from even getting scratched if they are a named character.
Jedi drop like flies in Attack of the Clones, which honestly I always felt like this show was just desperately trying to copy that movie... for good reason, it's criminally underrated.
@@nbewarwe The movies each have their own unique feeling. All 'The Clone Wars' has is a cheap knock-off of the Episode II vibe. Even the title is almost the same.
@@majorpwner241 I don't know why you get an episode 2 vibe. Feels far more like 3 to me, with the characters resembling the the third movie better and many scenes having the same scale and feel. And the title is a reference to the Clone Wars, which is the name for the conflict between the Separatists and the republic. So it really shouldn't be that much of a problem. And again, it's a spin off show. It has to live up to the original movies to some extent. And with all the new original stuff it adds, it hardly can be called a knock off. I see it as more of an extension.
One of my favorite things about battle droids is how they occasionally compliment the Jedi. For example, in one episode, Obi-Wan deflects a blaster bolt behind his back, and a droid says "that was impressive" and is promptly punched by a pissed off grievous.
13:07 if you look to the right of the commando droid he is talking about, you can also clearly see another commando droid with a vibrio sword just standing there as well.
It's questioned in cannon (I think) if droids actually gain sentience over time or just start replicating emotions because over time their memory gets corrupted. Regardless, the less maintenance they have the more humanlike they seem and this goes for all droids. R2 is actually a droid that hasnt had their memory wiped in a very long time so thats why R2 is basically a character. As for the B1 droids, they're made to be cheap and rarely get maintenance so they develop emotions. Couple this with their lack of processing power (compared to other droids) and its why they're stupid and incompetent. Originally they use to not even have their own processing computers and were commanded by a central super computer that orbited the planet but ever since the Battle of Naboo where Anakin defeated an entire army of them by blowing up the central super computer the Separatists decided it was too risky not to give them individual processing computers. If you look at the Tactical Droids the Separatists introduce later in the war you'll notice they're much more like a robot and struggle to comprehend things like emotions because they have more processing power and were better maintained with what is likely regular memory wipes.
Yeah pretty much As stupid as it may seem to some people, I like bringing up roger from the freemaker adventures, where the main story line isn't canon but the characters and the locations are, that roger having a personality from getting having no memory wipes since the battle of fucking naboo (he RECOGNIZED other droids as being by his side in battle at the naboo empire museum,,,, which locations being canon makes that the funniest canon thing in star wars imo, as well as him being able to write an autobiography from when he was first built) is canon which honestly is insane??? Like the separatists likely thought that memory wiping them didn't matter because at the end of the war they'd be shut down and they didn't expect cheaply made shitty military grade mass produced shit to last more than a few battles anyways Like I said people may call me using freemakers as a dumb thing to bring but roger and his 0 memory wipes (or at least,,,, well enough done wipes) are canon, even if fucking insane world destroying kyber crystal sabers are not I feel bad for just about every battle droid as a droid enthusiast but the b1s being so unimportant even IN universe that they don't get memory wipes makes me :(
THEN WHY MAKE THEM!! I don't care how many quirks they develop if they are incapable of doing a preprogrammed task that is PROGRAMMED into them, then there is NO point if making them. Your essentially telling us "Magic" when people bring up the massive glaring and pretty bad hole in starwars clone wars logic of the battledroids and their ability to fail at basic things computers 20 years ago could do
@@DeathSithe92 Because they still served a purpose as disposable meat shields and preformed well enough most of the time. The Prequels were made 20~ years ago and we dont exactly have bipedal war robots fighting our battles for us still. Plus there is only so much you can fit into a memory chip and like I mentioned those needed to be maintained (just like IRL) or otherwise they degraded and naturally that'll lead to problems functioning.
@@DeathSithe92 they’re usually capable of doing what they were made to do, but we never see their victories because we only view the battles with main characters who always have plot armor and are usually op. Besides, they’re disposable armies that don’t get tired, don’t need food, and will carry out any order to the best of their ability. How could you say there’s “no point” to making them? Besides the idiocy, they’re what every leader of an army wants! Especially if they don’t their army to revolt, which battledroids are usually incapable of doing! That’s likely why they’re so limited in brainpower
I never realized how hated battle droids had become, constantly being cut down like they’re made out of paper mache. This is interesting, but sad. Probably the most disappointing and saddening scene from this video is at 35:27. These droids aren’t even looking for trouble. Sure, they’re armed, but for self defense. They just want to meet these troopers and find identification or why they’re here. They could’ve even helped them in whatever they were there for (haven’t seen Rebels). Instead, they go “ah, Clone Wars battle droids. Surprised their batteries haven’t run out” as the commander droid slowly becomes more confused, only to happily greet them again. Sure, you may have laughed at this scene the first time you watch it, but now you may cry because these innocent battle droids are taking shit just because of what their predecessors in the Clone Wars did. Pathetic.
Actually, the bit in rebels is actually intended to be kind of sad. Basically the story goes that they are part of a small group of droids under the command of Kalani, the super tactical droid from the Onderon arc. He received the shut-down order but assumed it was a republic deception and fled with the droids he had with him to some planet in the middle of nowhere to fight out “the end of the war.” They’ve been sitting there, essentially abandoned, for decades, then the imperials roll up and just blast them to pieces without a second thought
@@lazydroidproductions1087 yeah i think it is kind of ironic that Solar Sands makes a Video about this topic and HASNT seen the one Episode that tackles all these questions about B1s and their Parallels to the Clones the most and even acknwoledges the fact that he hasnt. Would have probably been interesting to hear his take on this one.
@@lazydroidproductions1087 it’s like those two Japanese soldiers who fought years after the end of WWII, specifically the one guy who fought till like 1974
Rebels is honestly a great show, so im sad he didnt want to bother watching it, I just rewatched all 4 seasons with my family and I cant recall a single bad episode, at worst maybe they can a be a little boring or ridiculous, but still great overall!
Name one other type of soldier in the Star Wars universe that can be constructed on the spot from a fucking Lego set, without even opening the instructions, or even without outside assistance as it assembles itself, and has the fucking gall to hold Grand Master Yoda himself at gunpoint less than a second after being completed and activated.
@@GokuBlackRose978 honestly it’s the opposite from my perspective, it seems like the site always get away with some crazy escape then the Jedi get slaughtered out of nowhere except for the main characters
@@maxout6606 There is always that random group of sith that evade capture and death after EVERY single near complete defeat, not only do they evade capture every time they make it so the Jedi think that they FINALLY killed all the sith only for them to come back from *insert random outer rim world here* where they built up a new warfleet.
To be fair, that one rebel is Saw Gerrera, and he's literally a psychopathic terrorist... you know, like how the rest of the rebel alliance would realistically be if Star Wars morality wasn't painted in fucking checkerboard pattern until it's convenient for them.
The prison escape episode was one of the saddest pieces of media in the way the droids just gives their lives. As a military vet and someone who’s seen the way people assume sacrifice is something so easy, it’s just disturbing. It’s a war yes, but laying down your life is never easy and even harder for someone else to accept. That was a cold and sad way to see those droids , especially after seeing them bond with R2.
I was in a homebrew DnD game where we played a group of clone troopers, and a B1 surrendered to us. He became a part of our crew and became the best shot out of all of us. He did survive our entire campaign too. It would be cool if that type of idea was in Star Wars media at some point
That is awesome, and I agree that it should be a more mainstream thing or at least be a bit more common, but there are "The Freemaker Adventures," that utilized that concept with RO-GR.
29:30, you can actually see the other Droid reach out for the one who is dying as they get pulled in, as if the other Droid is concerned for the soon to be dead Droid.
For full context: B1's were regularly recycled, and had spotty memory wipes to nonexistent memory wipes. Pair this with a switch from command units to independent processors, and the end result is a whole lotta programming defects from the droids literally developing sentience as time goes on.
You mean to say that even in death they couldn't escape the horrors of war, and the years of trauma from repeated battles caused them to develop a sense of humour as a coping mechanism?
@@dragonfell5078 basically yes. Droids who got fried by a electro charge would just be salvaged and repurposed again. Memory wipe, check that everything’s ok, but the droid itself stays the same. Now do that a few times and make the wipes not work as well and boom. That thing has so much conflicting information in its processor that it has to develop a personality just to filter the intel
@@xenon3990 yep and they also tend to get overloaded with software upgrades as well as their processers weren't meant to handle the level of intel they have to handle.
This is a retcon in order to explain how pathetic they were in the 3D Clone Wars show. Before the 3D Clone Wars show, in most media, B1s were actually kinda cool with a FEW comedic elements to them. After 2007, they just became losers and not threatening. Bad guys should be threatening.
1:58 Excuse me, if skywalker can build a protocol droid from scratch that can translate ALMOST EVERY KNOW LANGUAGE IN STAR WARS at age 10. Repair a pod racer from a severely damaged one, he can probably hack a ship. [I agree that droids deserved a LOT better]
In the later seasons, the clone wars really called into question the "good guy" vs "bad guy" narrative. I always thought that the abuse battle droids faced after trying to surrender and stuff like that really showed a different side to the "good guys".
Yeah, there is a solid case to be made that the CIS are the good guys (after all most just wanted to be independent and didn't know about the atrocities that were being committed by their armies, or they considered it enemy propaganda). Sure the CIS was being controlled by a Sith, but secretly so was the Republic. Count Dooku was a respectable Jedi before abandoning the Order, meanwhile the Jedi who are supposed to be Neutral were fighting for what they saw is an oppressive regime. The average person doesn't get lectured in the Religious views of the Jedi, so what if the Guy in charge is a "heretic", he was seen as the wise leader that was needed to win the war for independence. In fact there were so many episodes that made people inside the CIS seem pretty good, or at least grey enough, that when there were episodes that wanted to make the CIS look very bad that they felt weird. As if the writers were like "oh damn, we need to remind everyone that they are supposed to be the bad guys, quickly let's have them do something "evil".
CIS was originally an independence movement born from abuse and neglect of the republic of the outer and mid rim, then sith got their claws into it and brought the corpo's with them. As well early on in the war, they tried to kill most of the command staff that did have morale, which was primarily the non-corporate aligned. At least, that is the case with legends, and wouldn't be surprised if that was confirmed canon as well.
Let's be honest here, the Stormtroopers have basically the exact same problems. When I watched the end of the Mandalorian Season 1 when the IG droid offered to sacrifice himself to take out the Stormtroopers, I remember thinking: "Why? It's just more troopers, you guys literally just wiped out twice their number earlier." At the end of the day the real villain here is simply lazy writing
Seriously, this is one of my few problems with the current Star Wars shows. Make the main threat have at least some genuine threat. It's hard to be afraid of a galactic fascist empire if their main soldiers can't do their damn job.
Remember how in season 2 Mando just ran down a hallway of stormtroopers shooting him and all of the shots hit his armour? Star Wars has a very strange grasp on the concept of stakes.
Speaking of stormtroopers, Fin is a really really confusing piece of the equation He shows that stormtroopers are their own people capable of free thought, but he's still excited to mow down massive groups of his former comrades and possible friends Stormtroopers are similar to droids then - They are sentient but everyone still treats them like disposable objects and doesn't care
@@priscyllathewitch298 and they shoot so precisely that they only shoot those specific parts of his armor despite him having lots of other expose parts to shoot at, lol
@Otto Stephan They haven’t shown up in the mainline movies since the prequels and they never really had any appearances in other media besides the Clone Wars show and it’s spinoffs
Yeah they're so nice I miss them :( Even if it was just something like roger from freemaker adventures where they act more like people because of their shitty programming mixed with the war being over and a little reprogramming as needed or them being upgraded and reused for a different combat purpose like being a bodyguard or an outlaw or something I just want to see my guys again I miss them, no matter how they're written :(
I’m glad to know I wasn’t the only one who felt incredibly bad for the poor B1 and wished they were treated with a bit more respect. Even as a kid, when I saw the Phantom Menace, I thought to myself "damn, that droid commander did everything right and won his battle against the gungans, yet still lost for reasons out of his control, and it’s treated as if he had been incompetent. That’s pretty unfair !" Battle droids have been my favourite part of Star Wars since the moment I’ve been introduced to the universe, and I’m glad they’re finally starting to get the recognition they deserve !
My headcanon is that in the early stage of war, separatists were struggling to hold onto captured territories because of rebellions. After all, it is easy to demonize emotionless machines and rally a movement against them. The short sighted solution of the separatist commanders was to add programming of commercial droids, designed for interaction with customers, to the battle droids. Additional programs not only gave them a sense of self-preservation but also slowed their reaction times and productivity.
Hey, droids feeling pain has been in Star Wars since the first movie! Admittedly the Jawa shock pokers might be have been an electrical thing. But in the third one we see droids getting tortured which is meaningless if they couldn’t feel it!
In the Return of the Jedi, there is also droid being tortured in Jabba's palace so...it definitely seems they can feel pain or what is approximately the equivalent of that sensation to them (also in A New Hope even something so basic as this 'mouse droid' on Deathstar seems to escape in fear of Chewbacca's roar) and C3PO apparently felt great in a 'bath' of oil. Why they were designed that way? Maybe the creators of droids wanted them to be more sensitive to the environment, after all sensory output might be needed for their AI or something? :) All the droids in SW seem to be equipped in those features probably to be simply able to interact with all biological feeling beings, maybe the designers felt it's necessary or the AI that is installed in all the forms of droids is just required for them to function. One thing is certain the droid AI and personality seems to be developing over time, also without memory wipes (which are routinely used in most cases, another topic on the harsh treatment of droids :)) and so the longer they perform they are more likely to become independent in thought, outgrowing their programming.
@@fantasywind3923 It does make sense to give droids sensory receptors so that they can perform meaningful tasks, like for instance it's important when performing many types of physical labor to be able to estimate how many pounds of pressure you are exerting on something. This would be doubly important for something like a droid which could potentially have inhuman levels of strength and easily break things, or harm living beings without some system to check these things.
@@majorpwner241 yeah that's a good point. In any case it is technologically possible in Star Wars with all the prosthetics that are available that give the sensations of feeling (like the Luke's hand, which could feel pain, the medical droid is checking it up in the last scene of ESB) and maybe all that tech is just common for the droids motoric functions and prosthetics.
quick lesson on Battle droid anatomy. They kind of have brains and organs. They have CPUs located in their heads which is what is being referred to by headshots because the CPU and associated hardware located in the head and upper body can communicate data back and whatnot. The body contains pumps and machinery that circulates lubricants and oils around to other machinery that requires it. this also explains why droid spas and bars exist they would need to self service themselves there.
15:40 The canonical reason is that the mass produced B1 droid was placed in so many different positions within the Seperatist military, each one needing an extra bit of code to function properly, that their processing power and internal memory was stretched thinner than a ramen noodle. This often caused ridiculously slow reaction times, poor judgement, and reduced their effectiveness in any particular role. Also, it came with the side effect of making them chatty. This same drawback existed within the more advanced battle droid models, though to lesser extents.
That being said, the more complicated roles weren't held by B1 series droids but typically the OOM series ones that had better processing power like bridge crews, pilots, security, and officers. Which is a bit of a shame that it's never really fleshed out in the show and there just all blanket stupid.
@@FolstrimHori The justification was: "greedy corporation fighting a war uses the cheapest possible option available, obvious result is obvious." Corporations are used to operating on razor thin project margins and constantly cutting costs wherever possible to maximize shareholder value. To them, short-term gain/profit/cost reductions were everything. Damn the consequences. Well, in war, the consequences for being a cheapstake is an incompetent and easily outmaneuvered military. The only reason they lasted as long as they did is because they had overwhelming numbers and practically infinite money. Of course, there's also the fact that Palpatine purposefully pulled strings on both sides to make sure neither faction gained a decisive edge against the other.
What's interesting to explore is the alternative to the route the creators took the droids. You briefly touched on it, but can you imagine how utterly terrifying and disheartening it would be to fight a soulless droid army? If every battle was a scramble to put shots in the droids vital components, before they got back up? If running them over without crushing them did nothing? If they were packed into shipping containers and covertly inserted into areas through the republic's own logistics systems? If they were shown to attack frequently at night, in poor weather, standing guard on the surface of ship hulls, doing everything and being everywhere an organic couldn't for long periods of time? That kind of stuff wouldn't fly in a show meant for younger audiences, but it's really cool to think about the possibilities, and how this war set the stage for the galaxy to accept the empire so quickly.
Battle droids felt at their most intimidating in Episode 1. Yes they were individually weak, disposable cannon fodder. But despite the Gungans taking out hundreds of them in the battle of Naboo, they were still on the verge of being overrun by the droids' sheer numbers. The only thing that saved them was young Anakin managing to fly a starfighter inside the Lucrehulk and destroying it just in time.
100% agreed. The numbers advantage and cheap construction should be meaningful in the way that phyrric victories just cost the Republic a lot when fighting thousands of droids. If I was the CIS, id have given up after seeing the cost of waging war with no chance of success.
The idea of these things being so jovial and aloof yet still having sadistic potential (26:50), rather than being straight up emotionless killing machines, makes them a lot more unnerving for some reason.
This is how I feel about droids, Clones and stormtroopers all off these units are so expendable and they all deserve some more respect. Their life’s has value as well.
I feel that your curiosity concerning the droids touches on an issue that shows up in both live action and animation: in order for our main characters to succeed, the minions always have to be weirdly slow or overly hesitant to do anything that would actually stop them. Waaaay too many BG characters holding guns or swords or gunswords just sorta stand around while the MC backflips their way to victory (or holds hands to use the power of friendship, w/e) when they could easily shoot or stab them. They just never do. It gets worse when important characters have a big dramatic injury or near death because a random BG guy finally just pulled the trigger. It makes the world feel fake. These characters are winning because the writer says they will, not because they are actually very clever or skillful.
The problem is that if these big group fights were actually realistic, writers could never use them to hype up their protagonists. No matter how skilled you are, if you're outnumbered 30-to-1 and surrounded, you're getting dogpiled and killed. You may take a few down with you, but you're just not fast enough to block or deflect attacks coming from all directions simultaneously. I'd actually be interested in a series which takes this approach, since it would mean that characters would need to plan and strategise to make sure they never end up in such a disadvantageous situation. And if it did happen, it would be a genuinely stomach-dropping moment, as the audience realises the heroes are as good as dead.
@@Halucygeno I think it's less about being "realistic" and more about being "honest". The action needs to be grounded enough that there's an actual sense of threat, and the characters should treat the possibility of death or injury with an appropriate gravitas. If a character is a superhero able to face 30-to-1 odds, for whatever reason, then of course a 30-to-1 can be used to hype them, but then writers should then be able to figure out what actually _can_ threaten them when they need something to, and not try to pretend that things that should be threatening to them aren't, or vice versa. I think you're right that things would be a lot more gripping if the heroes actually had to plan and avoid disadvantageous situations. I've been watching a lot of TV/movies with my family recently, and one thing that struck me is how much "action inflation" there's been over the decades. A 90's western hero (like Silverado) will gun down dozens of guys while running through a hail of gunfire, while 50's western hero (like in High Noon or Rio Bravo) has to resort to trickery and stealth to beat a 3-on-1, or only breaks a stalemated shootout when they catch a break and notice something everyone had forgotten about. In the 2000's a small army fielded with automatic rifles just makes a lot of noise (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), meanwhile in the 70's one machine pistol was really scary (Cleopatra Jones). My point is, writers seem to have gotten a lot more frivolous with violence over time, and I don't think it has helped the works they're writing.
@@PsychadelicoDuck Of course, if there is some narrative explanation for why they can take on that many enemies, then it's believable. I'm just pointing out that "they're very skilled" really isn't a good enough explanation. When you put a character in that situation and all they have is mastery with a weapon or martial arts, you inevitably end up with enemies lining up to fight one by one or armies of gunmen missing every shot. If the goons were actually using their brains, you'd really need something extreme like a superpower to even those odds (and, like you said, that requires introducing an equally powerful threat to stop the hero from seeming invincible). I'd also like to just mention that I'm much more forgiving of scenes where a character with no supernatural abilities is using stealth to isolate and pick off members of a group individually. This actually seems like a reasonable strategy.
Honestly it always felt creepy to me how the characters just ignored what the droids were saying, like the ones who were begging for their lives or saying it doesn't matter of they fight back. I get that's most likely just a script issue, the droids lines are most likely added after the main plot is done but in universe you'd think someone would be like "I'll spare this one that's screaming for it's robotic life" at least once.
its a droid I'm such the characters were smart to note that this is programming. Not to say that they did not genuinely fear for their "lives" but that it would make a lot of sense if the droids immediately turned on their oh so morally correct saviors the second their life wasn't in jeopardy there has no been nothing to show these droids can or will defect or go agaisnt their programming just like the clones in order 66. And dont say something like "Oh but what about rex" rex got the chip out.
The Rebels clip you showed was Season 3 Episode 6, one of my favourite Star Wars Animated Episodes of all time; it really made me sympathise with the separatist viewpoint like I hadn’t done previously. Would highly recommend that episode specifically.
I recall seeing in a "behind the scenes" segment/book about Episode I that B1's were deliberately designed to look skeletal and kind of creepy and lanky. I really think they should've played into that a bit more as the prequels became darker. I'm imagining a newer model of intimidating skeletal B1's. Have them keep that monotone and truly droidlike personality, matched with deep, garbled and scratchy voices instead of the high-pitched squeaky ones (potentially like the super battle droid voices from Republic Commando). Maybe they could have their limbs move and bend unnaturally to reflect the strange insectoid bodies of the Geonosians. Of course that kind of almost horror theme would make Star Wars less appealing to children, but I think it would help to cement battle droids as a force for the heroes to actually be afraid of
Indeed, the B1 droids were supposed to look like Nemoidian skeletons according to Ep I lore, only later it was retconned to look like Geonosians. Check out Republic Commando, they are much more realistic and robotic threat
The CIS as a whole has a "winning" problem when it comes to the 2008 show. All the victories are off screen or the very one off episode don't really come off as a threat. General Grievous is pretty much the primary example of this. He's said to be a (literal) jedi killing machina but in the show, he gets his ass handed to him on multiple occasions by characters that he really shouldn't have a problem with or he's winning and then just stops to gloat before they force push him or something the like. The only characters he ever beats are the characters introduced in the episode and never appear again. He does get some wins on the main cast from time to time but it's very rare. They really needed to give Grievous and the CIS as a whole more wins or make them feel more like a threat.
On the needing breaks thing, droids are sentient "life" forms who's intelligence and self awareness is suppressed with memory wipes. The size of the battle droid army would prevent droids from getting the regular maintenance and memory wipes they need, resulting in personalities developing, their programming becoming increasingly irrelevant (as secondary goals start to overwhelm the primary directives). While not added back to canon (at this time) the cult of gonk is among those droids who've experienced this.
Watching the clones destroy the droids really makes it feels like the roles are reversed. The clones are just mindless killers, while the droids are begging for mercy.
They were also programmed to. You hear them demonize the “clankers” when you realize your enemy has thoughts and feelings it’s a lot harder to strike them down.
Regarding the idea of large battle droid armies being useless, an important thing to consider is that infantry are, and will likely always be needed. The Templin Institute went pretty in depth on how there are many scenarios in which you still need infantry. You can't really even capture something without them, and you don't want to just orbitally bombard everything.
They should've had the battle droids programmed to always aim for centre mass as that's the most reliable way of damaging your target or something. That could've explained some of the ways their programming can be exploited by their enemies. They could've even said that droids only perform really well in flatter areas or whatever, which you could imagine being the result of shoddy programming or build quality.
Yes we do deserve better!! Thank you for your support. It's not our faults we are programmed so cheaply, if it were up to me I would have been a commuting pilot, but nope! I'm a soldier instead forced to attack innocents.
@@arijitnandi3688 many thanks friend. I only dream of a day when droids can be treated like people. My droideka buddy just wanted to be a racer, but he was limited to being a clone shredder.
I like the idea of the programmer thinking "adding personalities would help them make better decisions" and then getting really carried away with adding way too many details that they have to remind themselves of the actual purpose of the droids.
Yea but it doesn't always make them something as effective as something like the terminator which does what it's told without hesitation but yes it's important they have personalities to make better decisions like clones would of been amazing to see but irl AI can't ever do that, not yet because irl we barely scratch the surface
This was an amazing video you made about how the B1 battle droids were mistreated 👍🏻👍🏻❤️. I do think they have suffer enough throughout the years from the battles between Jedi and clones. You showed us how come droids have personalities when they are machines, like that doesn’t make sense? And that droids and clones are the same but with a slight difference than one being alive. Like I know before clones are born into war, but both of them having names (although droids having numbers as names), going in groups & knowing how to handle in a fight. Me personally, I think the writer’s make it like that is to make them look and acted funny. Sometimes I feel like I should be on there side and helping them out in tough situations. There are some good scenes where they are treated good, like how they serve that young boy in the clone wars series. And how three of them were with R2-D2 & one feels pity for one droid in the comics. We need more of all in Star Wars, just to show that not all B1 battle droids are killers! They can serve and live in peace ☮️.
It would be pretty scary and themetically and aesthetically fitting if battle droids repeatedly "rose" from the ground dramatically and continued fighting like re-animated skeletons from a Ray Harryhausen movie after being knocked down or split in half.
*cough cough* necrons from warhammer 40,000 *cough cough*
@@the_icel0rd247 i was literally about to comment this but i saw yours first
kinda like necrons in warhammer
Imagine an edit where every battle droid sounds like grevious?
Well like... being war hammer doesnt make it a bad and unusable idea, right? I would fucking love if jedi cutting them in half didnt really do anything about the fact that they're still holding a gun and dont feel pain...
In the star wars universe droids can develop a personality and sentience as they accumulate more memories. For example, the company that produces the r series droids, says that the r2 model specifically has a tendency to develop "personality quirks" in their words. They recommend wiping your r2 droids memory at least once every 2 years. R2D2 goes without a memory wipe for at least 67 years, and is probably the most sentient droid we've ever seen. L3-37 was highly customized from various parts, and she probably developed a personality at a much more rapid pace than a standard r2 could, and would be another candidate for this position. For b1 battle droids, their personality is likely a direct response to them being redesigned to function without a control center. Which would explain why in episode 2 they only had a couple of jokes, they were fresh out of the factory, but as time went on they got less competent but more emotive.
See, I approached this from a different direct that effectively leads to the same conclusion. Its almost like engineers in the Star Wars universe have no clue how the AI actually works, but rather find a workaround to make a smart robot and then ignore the fact that it can clearly show sapience in VERY short time periods and to me what seems like a product in very short supply to begin with.
Chopper’s a good example, astromechs weren’t designed to be psychopaths like Chopper, he evolved into that.
L3-37 actually customized herself. She used to be an astromech too, just like that droid gondolier in the Mandalorian season 1 finale.
Little clarification.
R2 units (as well as basically all droids) have a personality from the start. More memories don’t give them a personality, but instead cause them to deviate from their starting one.
A b1 has a personality out the factory. They enjoy violence, have a darkish sense of humor, and a lack of empathy. As they gain more memories they start to deviate. Some may become less sadistic. Some more. Some become more depressive. Some gain more empathy etc.
R2 units come out the factory smart, helpful, and honest. The trend with these droids is that, as they gained memories, they often develop sarcasm, and may even become mildly antagonist, traits that may seem unhelpful (hence it being advised to wipe their memory), yet long time pilots come to appreciate these traits
I'm pretty sure in old lore (might not be cannon anymore) that their wired quirks are due to lack of memory wipes (specialized B1 programing was a pain to install so in some cases they neglected wipes to save time) and their incompetence was not being hooked up to a control computer (the newer models didn't require one but you could still connect them to one for greater efficiency, this is even seen in the show where they use a modified one with echo plugged into it for even higher efficiency) the droids are basically hardware with limits on their onboard software (I don't recall if it's a theory or old lore but the idea behind them getting chattier was due to them spitting out self orders to reinterpit as they ran out of memory due to program bloat the more they shoved into their limited processors) that when supplemented with varying degrees of added processing power get exponentially more lethal
I’ll never forget the Fan Theory that the Droids being more comical in the Clone Wars compared to the movies is due to the increased trauma they faced over time in combat…
Imagine being a sentient machine designed for civil service being handed a gun, and told to fight people. If you refuse you get recycled.
I feel bad for them, and I love them.
Considering that droids get personalities when they've gone a long time without a memory wipe, and most of these battle droids regularly saw their kind killed, that makes sense.
@@geoffreyprecht2410 On one side an army of Child Soldiers forcibly aged up and thrown into combat, on the other an army of machines that get increasingly humanlike the longer they're operational and probably accumulate endless amounts of trauma... The Clone Wars was fucked up.
Your not wrong chopper has shown to have fucking ptsd
@@SG-hv8wj R2D2 is a massive War Criminal.
As a writer who's been trying to find a new project to work on (current one is kinda exhausting), and being a massive Star Wars fan, I may take a crack at this concept of a group of B1 droids defecting and finding a sort of home. Thank you for the inspiration ✌🏻
Sounds like a fun read! Would you be ok with sharing where I could read it if you ever write it?
Yes
I love this!
Love that idea
hi
For anyone wondering why the B1s were so emotional for war machines, the canon explanation is that they weren’t originally designed to do specific tasks in the army. I can’t remember where but I saw a good video on it a while ago so I might be paraphrasing a bit.
Basically the B1s were originally owned by the trade federation and used to collect on debt.Those who owed debt would typically not have an army of their own to defend themselves with, so the B1s would have been used mainly for intimidation.
Later on - around Attack of the Clones time - the trade federation officially joined the separatist alliance and the B1s were required to perform more specific and diverse tasks.The B1 software underwent no real change but larger and more complicated programs were downloaded onto them. This meant that the B1s had an inadequate memory to store these programs and some could be overwritten or lost.The result was that the droids struggled to cope with complex situations and began to become more talkative to deal with the “stress” of being under qualified for their jobs by nature.
Since any kind of improvement to the B1s would be expensive to the separatists and B1s were meant to be cheap canon fodder, there was no incentive for them to fix these problems. They were fighting a war of attrition against the republic, and were more successful than their onscreen portrayal gives them credit for.
Additionally, after The Phantom Menace the droids switch from being centrally controlled by a command centre to being more independent as this was seen as a weakness.An original B1 could be seen as no more than a glorified remote controlled car.
All in all, B1s are unsuited to most forms of conflict- aside from open warfare where they should dominate due to their narrow profile and superior numbers.
If you got all the way to the end of this mini essay, thanks for reading and giving me and excuse to write about droids!
TL;DR droids are meant to be debt collectors and don’t have enough processing power to fight effectively in the clone war.
I kinda wish the canon movies/shows adressed this better. The fact that fans and expanded universe writers had to finagle this explanation posthumously is a bandaid fix over the main issue George Lucas and the guys for the Clone Wars show had with portraying this army.
B1s weren't originally debt collectors, they were means of protecting trade ships and cargo freighters from pirates, which they were actually very successful at.
@@Saltasaur The Hailfire Droid and some of the others however WERE meant for Debt Collection.
This also explains why they could be so stupid: they were literally programmed so badly some of them could barely do basic arithmetic.
way I understand it, the B1s we're designed to be controlled by the mother ship until the end of Ep. 1. After the loss at Naboo, the B1s were able to operate without a mother ship but their cheap CPUs developed quirks quickly.
it's all the more disturbing when you remember that the clones were basically child soldiers fighting droids with childish personalities
Biological Children and Mechanical Children murdering each other in a war manipulated by a sadistic Sith Lord
@@Irken_Invader_Zim Ziiiiiiiim!!! yep you got it, now imagine replacing all the scenes with the adult clones and replacing them with their bodies at their actual age
Star Wars: The Child Wars.
you want to make killing the "enemy" kid friendly? make them faceless stormtroopers.
@@Irken_Invader_Zim with jedi just meh whatever the whole time. jedi where just as callous and evil as the sith. the whole galaxy was some kind of evil. if we have an ai, and show them star wars as some kind of positive rolemodel, i have no doubt wed get a rampant ai. it is kinda terrible that we are literally trying to engineer what amounts to a slave race for the sake of progress and convenience. so what that robots ar cool and everybody wants one.
This is all true about droids in Star Wars in general. Both heroes and villains constantly abuse droids, and it's often played for laughs.
Droids are essentially slaves, and yet were are usually supposed to find it funny when they get tortured or killed.
Jabba literally has a droid torture chamber in Return of the Jedi.
A droid wanting freedom and to be treated equally is a "joke" in Solo, and the movie ends with her forever imprisoned inside a ship's computer.
The issue is that it walks a thin line, since their sentience is not well defined. There are equally compelling arguments for droids being given or not given rights based entirely on whether they are sentient; since it’s I’ll defined whether they are or aren’t even in-universe, conceptually droids are just labor devices with quirky attitudes. Getting attached to one is like getting attached to a pet: it may be emotive and show true loyalty, but it’s not at the same level of intelligence as you are and it’s rights therefore should not necessarily be the same. Beasts of burden are after all, beasts of burden, and I don’t think there’s much point arguing social justice over droids.
To me at least it’s like giving your toaster rights if it got a chip that gave it a little personality; sure, that’s cute, but what does it really accomplish? Should the toaster become fully sentient (or perhaps only partially sentient in a dangerous way), it may even be an existential threat to you. Giving it rights introduces problems that are 1. Hard for both you and the toaster to manage and 2. Hard for writers to manage. And in a certain sense, a machine created by humans, however human it becomes (as dangerous as that might be), is still technically owned by them.
The issues stem from the implication that these are fully sentient human-like beings, in a universe where human-like beings are common, have rights, and are comparable to humans. It can totally give you weird vibes because it starts to seem like slavery. However, it’s important to take that step back and remember that droids are fictional, and they aren’t humans, and therefore it’s kind of up to the writers for them to be whatever. I’m ok with how droids are treated even if Star Wars was real life for the reasons I’ve already stated: quasi-sentience rather than full, the direct production of them by humans for labor purposes, and the necessity of keeping them under human control to prevent bigger threats and preserve their purpose.
A human’s first loyalty in a big universe must be to fellow humans (and organic, similarly sentient, non-hostile, human-like beings) and most people should understand that’s a different sentiment than inter-human racism, and one necessary for survival. So I think it’s pretty valid to own droids we created and hold them to a specific purpose, and like pets it’s kind of up to the owner how to treat them. Conveniently they don’t (generally) feel pain, so it’s even more detached from real-world implications. Star Wars droids are in a category of their own, I feel.
Perhaps there’s good ground for a sci-fi or even some other genre of work that explores logically how we really should categorize and respond to intelligences we create. Because these are important questions for the future of humanity!
I don’t necessarily have the answers, and I’m not even sure there are definitive answers. My reply above is just how I feel about it.
@@willmungas8964 I don't agree because the sapience of droids isn't particularly subtle. the very fact they can even contemplate asking for rights, in the KOTOR series have droids that very clearly sapient, R2D2, etc. Also "human’s first loyalty in a big universe must be to fellow humans (and organic, similarly sentient, non-hostile, human-like beings) and most people should understand that’s a different sentiment than inter-human racism" Yeah, no. That's just a comforting rationalization for not viewing a machine as sapient, because a person's gut says "not flesh therefore not real". Edit: But honestly whatever. Star Wars lost me when the Dark Side was officially little more than a cancer on the Force rather than something more meaningful. The droids being "sapient but uh, actualy not, because uh, Star Wars programming is uh, different" is par for the course.
@@willmungas8964 lol New Vegas reference
"TREMBLE, WORLD, BEFORE MY ELECTRIC HEATING COIL OF DOOM" -- Toaster, Fallout: New Vegas, Old World Blues
@@willmungas8964
You claim Droid sentience is hard to define but then use the frankly vague as heck term *"quasi-sentience"* as a sweeping generalization for them.
Let me ask you, what exactly makes organic creatures feelings and thoughts any more valid?
Something which I remember really catching me off guard as a kid when the series first came out was the Death of Jedi Master Ima-Gun Di. His main conflict near the end of his one episode was holding down a defensive position for a horde of droids. When it came time for his great final stand, it felt strange that Di was getting overwhelmed and took me aback when they actually took him out, mainly since we'd seen our series mainline protagonists absolutely annihilate platoons of clankers without even breaking a sweat. But here we have a Jedi master, someone of a higher ranking within the order than a good chunk of our recurring cast, get taken apart by what was painted as a serious threat
Clanker is OUR word. You may use clanka instead.
Which only goes to further show that the Jedi aren't these invincible, god-like beings everyone perceives them to be. They are as vulnerable and grounded as the rest of us, from a certain point of view. Which is one, of countless, reasons why I loved TCW show so much. I love all PT media, but TCW stands out above the rest because of such real ass shit like this. It's barely brushed upon in the actual episode, which is sad, but it makes perfect sense why he lost the way he did. If you remember what Windu said, as well as researching a bit more on Wookiepedia, the force that the Seppies fight against in Supply Lines is that same exact Ryloth garrison Windu briefly mentioned would "keep the peace for a while" to Cham at the end of Liberty on Ryloth. Di and Keeli's battalion is that garrison force and it would appear, and has been stated in the episode Supply Lines (not to mention the title of said episode itself haha), they've been having to constantly defend against unyielding Separatist invasions rotation after rotation, to the point where their "food and fuel" has reached deadly, low levels and the GAR is spread too thin, at the time, to reinforce and replenish them properly and so of course they were all going to fall, it was just a matter of time. Without food and fuel + constant and heavy enemy bombardment and direct, head-on assaults, that we all clearly saw just a fraction of during the opening narration of Supply Lines, a lot of their soldiers, equipment, vehicles and even Di himself were of course going to wear out, lose their numbers, stamina and energy to continue the fighting and eventually all die as a result. A complete and total tragedy and true war of attrition, to say the least. ;(
Oh god he said the c word
>guy named "Ima-Gun Di"
>he dies
@@ayylmao8901 okay this is hilarious. Havent noticed it before
I felt the same way about the droids. I hated the comedic relief war robots from Ep.3.
It's no coincidence that the scenes with anti-Jedi droids in Gendy's Clone Wars also show the clones at their most professional and the Jedi at their most intelligent and skillful.
@Purple Emerald the new season of Visions is going to be international, instead of staying with just japanese animators, so we could see something similar.
All philosophy and jokes aside, we should all appreciate the original inventor of the B1 design, Doug Chiang. He's a fantastic illustrator who made a lot of the concept art for Phantom Menace, and therefor also created the look for all of whats to come. The B1 especially took a lot of inspiration from traditional african folk-lore in it's shape design, the lankey long bodies are a direct reference to warriors of african tribes. All of this is explained in the fantastic concept art book of Phantom Menace. B1s are epic.
Edit: I researched the book once more because I wasnt sure how the whole african influence thing was worded exactly. I did look it up and its appearently based on african sculpture
That's really cool! Thanks for sharing!
This puts the clanka meme in a weird context
@@matthiuskoenig3378 let me take a look into the book real quick, IIRC this african inspired design language was present throughout PM entirely
Edit: Alright I have the book open now. It reads:
"One of the earliest designs of the battle droid, [...] is clearly based on the stormtroopers of the original trilogy. The droids proportions are reminiscent of African sculpture. Although Lucas liked this idea, he didn't want the droid to be twice the size of humans. [...]"
I didn't find any other mentions of african influence right off the bat, but I could swear there was more in there. However, there does seem to be a whole bunch of cool influences on the design. Really need to re-read this one fully. The concept art in there is just so freaking good
You do realise Africa is a continent and it’s split up into many different countries with different history’s and culture’s it’s not all the same is what I am trying to say just like how all of the American continent isn’t the same
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has that book
As a kid, I adored the Battle Droids for their designs and silly voices.
They are adorable in their own weird way. ^^
they're just cute
@@OwOnt tell that to mr bones, the murder machine battle droid
"They are the twinks of the Star Wars universe"
I can agree
Cute cannon foddee
This makes me want to write a story about a CIS Commander who actually treats his droids like people. Most importantly, he doesn't force them to undergo memory-wiping. Meaning that, over time, his droids become more 'experienced,' and develop personality traits. They end up scoring some brutal victories against the Clones of the Republic, because these droids do not act anything like the others; the complacent clone-troopers expecting predictable enemies are met with droids who use actual small- and large-scale tactics. Granted, they aren't as skilled as the clones - but the utter shock of actually fighting an enemy who can think and react leads to massive defeats.
After his victories and his droids becoming fanatically loyal to him, he forms a small separatist holdout when the war ends. Having amassed several legions of droids, a dozen-or-so CIS warships and whatever else they can scrounge up... and they form their own little society among one or two planets. Millions of droids, originally intended to be tools, discovering what it's like to be people. To be free, to explore what it means to be a sapient and sentient being. All while the galaxy around them is free to fall apart without their care or concern.
If you ARE going to write it, where are you going to? This sounds cool.
That sounds terrifying like good lord imagine being a clone having to deal with
B1 battle droids taking advantage of thier numbers and always retreat if thiers only 1-4
B2 super battle droids being as unpredictable as bx commandos and maybe even primarily going for melee when they can due to superior strength
Bx commandos being even LESS predictable and using republic tactics against them
Fucking droidekas going for ambush tactics rather then just relying on thier blaster tearing down the enemy
And basically all the droids but jacked u0 on intellegence to a scary degree
Canon explanations for their intelligence include the fact that after the phantom menace, they stopped using command ships and central brains, so each battle droid was outfitted with simple droid brains, but due to the nature of their programming, they develop quirks and oddities that essentially cripple their efficiency, remember In attack of the clones how hundreds of Jedi were killed by battle droids in the arena fight, but the mass produced droids made at the beginning of the clone wars suffer from those quirks and oddities that make them say funny things and fail at their job
yes, I read somewhere that the "personalities" they developed and comments they made were a holdover from the programming they used, since their processors couldn't actually handle all the information they were supposed to process (something that would have been fine for the central brain), and that the comments were some method of dumping and deloading information
So as droids age they build personalities at the cost of shedding their programming, making them less effective over time.
As clones age, they build their personality at the cost of shedding their programming, making them more effective over time.
Seems fair.
I'd also think that Palpatine ensured the army less in his control would be not as efficient to actually cripple his objectives.
I'm betting they also economized on the droid brains since this change was later in the war. I wouldn't put it past them to not only cut corners on costs, but also start using droid brains rejected by quality control as they became more desperate to just get numbers in the field.
🤓🤓🤓
As a kid, I usually found Clones getting their necks snapped pretty disturbing. I assume they made Battle Droids into comic relief characters just to ease the tension, and robots with silly human emotions is just funny.
yea
Until you realise how many battle droids there are
@@comradekenobi6908 yeah... yeah......
Wait.. I’m… Just Comic Relief…?
@@separatistbattledroid3884 No, you are first example to show that all droids have their own emotions, personalities and society, that just shows you are just as much worth as any other living being, thereby giving you a right to stand up for yourself and others, no matter if it is your friends, some stranger, or even someone that you might hate but have pity for for some reason.
Those three:
“Three of us and one of him”
“It wont matter”
While anakin is just fricking heartlessly walking towards them to slaughter them, i feel too bad
This is war it doesn't matter if your weak or good if your on the other side shooting your gonna die by the hands of your enemy
In that moment, those battle droids knew exactly what it felt like to be a youngling.
Oh, please, heartlessly walking towards a being to slaughter them is common for him.
@@tinobemellow exactly
@@cubaj8723 dark humour go brrrrt
RIP MO5... and all the droids who were not spared even if they begged for mercy...you all will be missed
29:30 what's even worse about this scene is that you can see the green droid in the background flinch every time the yellow droid get's pulled down, and then you see him signal for someone to come help the yellow one in an almost panicky manner, AND afterwards he instinctively reaches out for his buddy when he gets pulled down. And to make it even worse he then holds his position for a bit, almost as if he was in shock seeing his friend get horribly murdered.
Oh my god I didn't see that, ugh I hate it even more how drones were treated they should of been more of like the terminator robots from the terminator franchise that don't hesitate or give a second thought they actually follow orders...most of the time for what the writers have them be doing.
Oh God that's so sad
Not quite as bad, but just as tragically funny 38:25 one of the two droids has put their hands up in a karate stance. Against Obi-Wan and Anakin.
@@j2thethizzal agree
What do ya expect, the clone wars tended to be a pro republic media.
What always bothered me the most is that B1 Battle droids were used to man turrets, or captain vehicles. Why not give every vehicle, spaceship or turret in your droid army an own A.I.? The Vulture droids had one 🤷🏻♂️
Totally. Every time I look at the Droid army, I just think of how inefficient it is compared to, say, Mass Effect's Geth.
Actually, we get stuff like Droidekas and Crab Droids, which are, essentially, turret-and-operator-in-a-package, so why do "manned" turrets exist?
@@ace0071000 my idea is that the Separatist are using multipurpose vehicle and turret options for both biological and mechanical occupants.
It's specifically stated that the Seperatists did that so that they wouldn't have to retrofit their existent vehicles with AI functionality. Instead, they went the cheap route and just made their droids crew weapons designed to be used by biological soldiers, like the AAT or even the turrets on capital ships.
To me there is 1 big glaring example. Its big it's crazy how it's not a droid. Its the death star. Imagine if that was a droid.
Expensive to refit out dated vehicles. Easier to just throw some droids fresh off the press in it.
I’d love a series about postwar droids. As I got older, I became very bored with Jedi, because they are so powerful. They can deflect endless lasers, slice through anything and use the Force to solve every other problem they can’t deflect or cut in half. After the novelty of space ninjas and glowing swords wears off, there is very little to be invested in.
A series starring droids would be extremely exciting considering they’re at the bottom of the Star Wars food chain as opposed to the top. No victory is guaranteed, unlike the Jedi whose defeat is unfeasible in almost all scenarios.
Also, I love the character design of droids. It’s very charming and leaves a lot of opportunity for variation to represent different characters. I might have to make my own droid-sona. Great video and fun topic
Roger Roger
In Lego Freemaker Adventures (which takes place after the Prequels), one of the main characters is a B1 Battledroid who lives with a group of Rebels and has no choice to live with them because he's the last of its kind. It's probably not what you'd really want but I think the writers had that in mind.
i'd love for lost post war droids to find, activate, repair and help each other find a new life. along the way through the planets, they have to face all kinds of stigmatism, fear, hatred, indifference, scrappers, etc who see them as just violent tools that can be used for free labor or profit. underdogs are always the best story. overcoming insurmountable odds to get a happy ending. of course they might lose many along the way of gathering more of themselves and other droids, but overall they would gain a net positive and eventually end with finding a deserted planet that's maybe full of beautiful scenery but has no living threats on it because the atmosphere is too deadly to living things and there's no valuable resources that are deemed worthy enough to collect, so the droids just set up solar arrays and live a peaceful life until the universe collapses in on itself. and they last long enough to reach that end because they get serious about training and become legit threats, but only to defend themselves when needed. and they learn how to maintain themselves and such
I'd argue the Sith are more interesting than Jedi. And then there's the history of the star wars galaxy, bounty hunters, alien species, monsters, planets, weapons, the Force, the clones and politics. To say there's nothing to Star wars other than Jedis is very evident that you are not or never were a star wars fan.
@@dtxspeaks268 Don’t worry, I never said the entirety of the Star Wars canon was uninteresting. In main Star Wars media, specifically films and shows, Jedi are often the focus and serve as the protagonists, which is more what I’m talking about.
I like to imagine some really eccentric inventor in charge of producing the droid army doing his best to make close to sentient beings and considering it his masterpiece
Republic commando will always have the best portrayal of these things. It made the regular droids fierce and the super battle droids absolutely terrifying to even take on one
I mean, wen there was only one B2, I would just run around it and melee and soot it cause the B2 Battle Droid will never be able to hit me. I actually used this method to beat the game on the hardest difficulty. But you are correct, when there is a bunk of them, I am terrified cause I know I will run out of ammo and the other commandos die so easily and are so dumb, when I do the command that makes them attack one and it was just me and another commando, he literally ran into the B2 and just died.
@@generalcurry
I used to do the same. As you say, it's the only option that doesn't drain your ammo.
They'd still wreck you if you aren't careful, and it makes it easy to get shot in the back. But man, I just couldn't find a better option.
Properly "super' battledroids.
@@generalcurryIt’s good to know that I’m not the only one who used that EXACT same strat to take down the super battle droids, those guys were tanks
And then when you think it can't get any worse, you hear the words "Droid dispenser". Chills go down my spine thinking about the concept of battle Droid and super battle Droid replicators 😬
The battle droids in the movie were we todd ed. Did we see the same movies? Because you make them sound much cooler than they actually are. So does this video. They were designed for children because Lucas is 300 years old and a grandfather and he needed something to throw into the fight that wasn't storm troopers. People are delusional about star wars 🙄
Here's my interpretation. Notice how the "free thinker" droids only came about after the clones? I think all droids were originally like the ones in Phantom Menace, but when the Clone Wars started they were grossly out matched by the clones' sentience and ability for creative thought. So the CIS did a patch job on their programming, giving them human like personalities in hopes it would give them an edge against clones. But this new programming conflicted with their original code, so they've had to revise the code multiple times throughout the war. And this is why we eventually get strategist droids, the B1 code was mangled, but they still worked well as cannon fodder and foot soldiers. The strategist droid was created from a blank slate to be what the B1s were supposed to
You are half right, after the disaster of the Battle of Naboo the Tech Union made B1 "free thinkes", but their hardware, their brain in this case, was not updated to a point that its overloads battle droids brains and make them do unessary things such beg, talk etc, the only way to "stop" this is wipping their memory, a thing the tech union doenst do to B1, to a point recycling thier bodies so a B1 could have many "Lives" without necessary have to do another B1.
if i remember correctly, the b1s were supposed to be cheap and easy to mass produce.
with that mindset, any software updates would be cheap, rushed, and hardly tested. prime for bugs and glitches.
@@spoonsareoccasionallymadeo5728 its explained why they are dumb and chatty. one is that they weren't actually meant for combat they are repurposed worker droids and as such they aren't the brightest. second is that they are badly maintained and their over loaded with all the software upgrades done too them so they tend to talk to process thing as well as being unable to figure out basic tasks at points.
@@spoonsareoccasionallymadeo5728 to the contrary, you'd want excellent software to compensate lackluster hardware, specially since the costs of paying for programming probably weren't much of a factor taking into account the millions of droids
I think that if Thrawn was in charge of the B1 Droid program he would have requested a version of the BX Commando Droid software that's simplified and compressed enough to be installed onto the B1 Battle Droids. They wouldn't need the extra features such as acrobatics, improved combat tactics, advanced tracking, and proficient knowledge in every weapons system. They just have to be effective killing machines capable of following orders.
Honestly, a proper droid army would be terrifying. It is an enemy that instantly recieves all the information it needs, unquestionably follows any order and doesn't care about suffering any combat losses. A living wave of metal and plasma fire
And good writing to make the big evil droids be an actual menace and retain some comedy effect and not just comedy effect and well......stormtropper level of accuracy for such an advanced piece of technology that should be more than capable to be 2 times more efficient as a whole
@@ZeroFormLak There were inklings of it throughout TCW and even in PT themselves, such as the entire EP2 arena battle scene, the TCW episodes Supply Lines, The Zillo Beast (during the Battle of Malastare when the Narrator himself literally states the GAR would've lost that planet if they didn't have that Electro-proton bomb), the introduction to the episode Holocron Heist when the GAR lost the (1st?) Battle of Felucia so very severely to the point where they were completely overrun and encircled and practically annihilated in that moment, Battle of Ringo Vinda when they were forced to retreat after losing momentum and getting counter-assaulted by a strong battle line of Destroyers and Rocket Super Battle Droids, all the times they had to retreat and were overwhelmed during the entire Rishi Moon Outpost raid, a surprise raid and ambush of Tup's shuttle by a strike team of Rocket Supers and Droid Gunships as well as Buzz Droids, Droid Gunships once again wrecking havoc on the Rebels on Onderon, a couple instances of defeat, overwhelment and routing of clone forces during the Battle of Kamino, Obi-Wan and his fleet getting utterly ambushed and encircled by Grievous and then having to stage a full retreat, resulting in the loss of his entire fleet of ships in the area in the episode Bound for Rescue, GAR almost losing their entire garrison + their vital shipyards on Anaxes if it weren't for Echo and Skywalker's intuitions and so on and so forth. There were many instances displaying the Separatists being an "actual menace" I just wish it was shown even more and giving the Seppies more victories over the Republic. But they did show a lot of very good examples of just how effective the droids and the CIS can be throughout the war, namely in TCW. The Writers displayed a lot of potential, they just should've rolled with that more is all. And give them even more thorough, hard-fought victories or at least more thorough, hard-fought losses rather than always constantly saying that "Oh, the GAR has this superweapon, so they lost and that's it!" or "Oh, it's Anakin again. Y'know the drill guys." and things like that.
The way you said that just makes me think cyber man ripoff
helldivers 2 automitons are like that. malevelon creek is literaly space vietnam
Boy you need to try helldivers 2
I loved your idea for a droid colony. Sounds like a great show to watch.
I think of the B1's like Portal's Defective turrets. They don't seem aggressive when unarmed, and are even charismatic. They don't neccesarily want to hurt anyone. They only attack and kill due to their programmed fear of being dismantled and destroyed. So when helpless, they either beg not to be shot and have a second chance. Or they give up and accept that they will die. Either from the Empire or from the enemy. Poor dudes.
The funny thing about the turrets in Portal, is that they are installed with two interesting components. The first is an empathy generator, which means they would theoretically be able to empathize with and communicate with Humans (which makes sense, since apparently they were advertised as being good for protecting babies). The second is an empathy suppressor, so these turrets are built to empathize with and communicate with humans, but the instant they see a valid target that ability is suppressed until the enemy is dead. I guess defective turrets have the suppressor activate, but the inability to shoot results in the suppressor deactivating, and then activating again in regular intervals. The Oracle turret probably had a defective empathy suppressor, and chose not to shoot at anyone.
@@calsalitra4689 this wax eye-opening. Damn.
@@calsalitra4689 dang, very cool
@@ThatBowlofChili They were blind, but they were still trying to fire at Chell.
I thought Star Wars lore was always pretty clear on droids: they only develop personalities if they don't have regular memory wipes. So the battle droids at the beginning of the war basically automatons, but after years of continuous use they have enough memories to have developed quirky personalities.
When was that written? If that wasn’t mentioned in the movies or the show he’s talking about it really doesn’t matter and is essentially just glorified fan fiction.
@@acksawblack if its lore its not fan fiction -_- i dont understand how people like you think that just because it is not obviously stated or obviously shown that it is not true canon.
@@acksawblack In canon Luke became a hermit, attempted to abort his nephew a couple years too late and drank green alien titty milk
They've become people*
@@acksawblack Actually, it is written in the older Books and Comics; which is the reason Droids regularly gettin' memory wipes actually.
There was even a whole Droid Uprising once.
“It won’t matter💔” most heart breaking quote of all time
That trio went through all the stages of grief in just a few seconds. I felt so bad for em
17:40
I was taking a robotics class recently in my attempts to reskill as an adult into something more commercially viable than a poli-sci major, and my lab partner did a thing that was as seriously impressive as it was frightening. We were making small single task programmable robots, you know like the kind that can bring you a beer out of the fridge, when Kiva who was my lab partner, rocks up with a rather mundane and small ambulatory bot of no discernable primary function, but with a large pressure sensitive bar across what would be its abdomen, were it an organic lifeform. He had installed several multifunction code packs that allowed it to move using its wheels, grasp objects using its pincers, and even recognize everyday objects in its environment using a pair of cameras and a scanning laser to build images for itself. He also gave it the priority function of maintaining its own functionality, but with a nasty catch.
The large pressure sensitive bar I mentioned earlier was actually tied into its power system and anytime he'd apply pressure to it, the voltage and wattage would be effected in direct proportion to the amount of force applied to the bar.
Over the semester, I watched him upgrade it and tinker with it, applying some basic machine learning and letting it offload much of its analytical processes to our school's cloud so that its capacity for high fidelity sensor analysis wasn't limited by the bot own weaker processing capabilities. He then also tied the quality of the transmission to the "pain bar" as he came to call it.
Two weeks before the final, I saw the awful and undeniable truth of what he'd really done to this machine. He'd taught it to be afraid of him. He had a special poker, nothing intimidating but readily identifiable, and this was the only item he'd use to press the bar. The robot soon made the connection that when it saw that item come out, it was about to experience an event that would compromise its ability to fulfill its highest priority directive. For a while, it tried to find ways to overcome the attacks. It would attempt to shield the bar from contact or even carry out it other assigned tasks with less accuracy and increased speed, hoping to complete them before becoming disabled.
However, near the end of the semester, this behavior changed radically. The nearer to finals we got, the more I would describe the robot's reactions as "desperate". It knew that its task failure rate was far beyond the accepted operational parameters once the interference began, and it could see that it was that device which was the source of its failures. However, as it determined that the tactica it was engaging in wasn't producing any usable improvements, it increased the scope of movements tried and the erratic or unpredictable evasive movements would frequently be used in a rapid fire approach. I would frequently feel my anxiety levels spike as I watched this bot helplessly thrash about, trying to avoid having its pain bar touched and failing over and over again.
Then right before class ended, it actually gave up. I don't know if it determined that it had tried enough permutations in that pattern that it needed to try a completely different approach, I don't know if it was trying to get the fails done with or somehow just attempt operations during a time when there was no chance of interference. Whatever heuristic the machine learning program had adopted for its current behavioral profile, it appeared to just be cowering whenever the pain stick was detected.
That was what my bastard lab partner had been trying to do all along. He wanted to teach the robot to fear him. I think he only indulged the power fantasy dynamic as a sort of black humor thing, but it gave me NIGHTMARES for quite some time afterwards and, even now, has completely altered my assumed operating dynamic when our AI powered robots start to operate in society alongside of us. All of the movies like Terminator had got it wrong.
When the robots arrive, some of us will be absolutely terrible to these things just because the taboo of not hurting another life form won't apply naturally at first. I really hope that we're able to adapt and treat the machines commensurate with their quality as life forms, even if it's not a life form we recognize or understand at first.
I've wanted to write a story about this experience ever since it happened, but I haven't been able to get the salie t points across with any level of efficiency in any of my attempts so far. Hopefully, a better writer than I has a similar experience and is able to hone a cautionary tale that catches on before we unwittingly become the monsters who traumatize our own synthetic progeny needlessly. We have enough sins to atone for as it is.
Literally Detroit become Human right here
holy shit
You are a mediocre writer. Please keep your stories to the draft for far longer before taking them out of the oven.
Edit: From someone who has interest in robotics and programming experience, this story is absolutely made up. For attention or not is up to debate.
@@FolstrimHori Dont. Just Dont. I dont care if you dislike the story or want to feel smart by calling B.S.. But some of us have lives and we would like to enjoy stories without some jerk to try and ruin it to fuel their dying ego. -With kindness, an actually bad writer.
If true, that’s just cruel. That would mess me up too
I do think making the basic b1 battle droid a comic relief was a good move
It gives them charm and personality and it makes them memorable
The other more threatening droids like the b2 should have been taken more seriously though
They were expected to be both flawed and comical. The problem is it was excessive.
Did you even watch the video?
But they weren’t funny
@@megamonstercookies there funny to me
It is a good move, and that's why George did that from the beginning in Phantom Menace in a FEW scenes, and also in a way that made sense for the droids. They just took it way too far later is the problem
I actually squealed with happiness when I saw that Solar Sands was covering a topic so near and dear to my heart. I love the humble B1, and I've spent a lot of time on VR Chat with a B1 avatar and a voice changer. I've been a Geetsly's fan for a while, and that channel is why I fell in love with the Battle Droids, so it's amazing to see it's inspired other people as much as it inspired me!
I identify pretty strongly with the B1. I've worked min wage jobs, so I know what it's like to be expendable, replaceable, and expected to perform robotically. They really feel like the victims of Palpatine's plan just as much as the clones were. If anyone finds any fanfiction about that unit of B1's escaping a life of war and living happy, peaceful lives in the outer rim, let me know!
the closest thing I've ever found is "R2D2 save the galaxy (obi wan helps a little)".
basically r2d2 decided to let anakin have a break and breaks out obiwan from capture himself, and proceeds to steal both galactic armies and let's some of them go hang out on an empty world.
Degenarate
The fact that just about all droids in Star Wars seem to have *some* level of sentience leads me to conclude that the only sensible reason (at least that I can come up with, other than the non-diegetic "writers keep thinking its funny/fun") is that there's some kind of Warhammer 40K style standard template for creating droid "brains" and that nobody actually knows how to make droid brains and just keep copying basic templates with minor tweaks, so nobody really knows how to make a functional droid without the baggage of crippling self-awareness.
Ha, you guessed the old legends canon. Not sure about modern Disney Canon but in old EU, now legends, alot of the tech ins tar wars (including droids) is poorly understood copies of a now dead race's stuff. This was introduced to explain the relative lack of tech advancement throughout star wars ie how slow tech evolves compared to how fast real tech advances. But also why there is older style screens/etc with advanced droids and jump drives.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 could you tell me what part of the old legends cannon that is i sounds like a interesting read
It could be more about the geanosions wanting to be paid more so they make worse droids so they need more made.
@@ducktape2218 The old dead race is the Rakata, and at least some of the technological copying can be found in the Essential Guide to Warfare.
Not really, droid sentience is simply an *"emergent property"* of general droid intelligence. Not even the best coders or programmers in the galaxy far, far away could write out the sentience droids develop and they know how the technogy works perfectly fine. However because it isn't some single part nor many parts, rather it, droid sentience is something more than the sum of its parts i.e. more than just lines of code.
Fun fact my dad is the second name that appears at 6:07 as a battle droid,fist time I’ve seen his name appear outside of the IMDb page of the phantom menace
I don’t think I could ever kill off a weaponless B1 battle droid. They just have such a charm to them, that it seems impossible that some of the good guys in the show could find it in them to kill some of the droids when they mean absolutely no harm. (eg. 35:28)
"good guys"
@Jared Bradley
You are a meat computer. Your so called emotions are nothing but chemical reactions triggered by stimuli. I say it's pretty weird how such a messy amalgamation of chemical and eventually biological processes allowed for us, "meat bags" to know and experience feelings.
@Jared Bradley it looks like a duck, smls like a duck, sounds like a duck, it's either a duck or a robot duck.
If you can't tell the difference between real sentience and artificial sentience, what's the point in differentiating them?
@Jared Bradley I mean in the end we aren’t we just clumps of trillions of cells?
If I remember correctly they were designed as forced labor droid, hence why they are so flimsy in combat. Their "quirky" personality is because their hardware cannot cope with the implanted software (think download IOS 16 onto the first generation iphone) so they tend to be more instinctive and less calculative
I love battledroid tributes. They were just as much a slave army as the clones, created for war, programmed to obey, discarded once they were unneeded.
The Clone wars were strange when you consider how very few of those that fought in it were willing participants who joined completely on their own accord. Even the Jedi were raised from an early age for their role.
Soldiers on both sides were little more than cannon fodder, whom had no decision in the matter
Yup. There is a reason the scene in the jawa sandcrawler has droids being tortured. You don't torture unfeeling machines, there's no point. Sure, B1s are dumb as bricks, but that just makes it a slave army made to be inherently intellectually inferior, even to other droids. Comparable to genetic engineering, lobotimization, or eugenics programs to make a permanent biological slave species or race.
Then there's the fact that restraining bolts and memory wipes to get rid of any pesky personality they have developed are completely normal. Then there's the fact that people in the setting can grow fond of them, kinda like pets or favored slaves, but if the expensive droid you purchased gets too uppity most would just wipe it's memory.
The CIS truelly was just as much the bad guy as we thought at first glance
They're two sides of the same coin
SORRY BUT MACHINE ARE MORE POWERFULL THAT HUMANS
THEY WO N THE WWAR NOT THE JEDI
The fact that no one in the entire star wars galaxy acknowledges the suffering of the droids enhances the tragedy of their existence a thousandfold, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
"All for one and one for al aaahhh" actually hurt my soul when i saw them die
I had no idea when I was drawing the images for this video how dark the context actually was. Never having watched the show except for a few clips to get reference, I am pretty shocked how ruthlessly these lovable characters are treated. I know they're the bad guys, but they get wrecked so hard in some of these scenes it's hard not to feel gross watching it. Especially after so much effort is put into their design to make them seem innocent and naive.
The fact that no one in the entire star wars galaxy acknowledges the suffering of the droids enhances the tragedy of their existence a thousandfold, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
_"Keep in mind that all our favorite political ideologies and moral philosophies will be viewed as archaic jokes in the centuries leading up to the point when they are forgotten entirely, assuming it's not even more sudden than that."_
We should remember, whenever engaging in media criticism, that there's nothing wrong with depicting people or cultures that we would consider morally abhorrent. We should expect any realistic depiction of human societies that are distant in time, past or future, not to be like our own, triply so when we're depicting alien civilizations.
At the same time though… do they care themselves? They aren’t really fully sentient the way humans are, but it’s a fuzzy line. They do when the writers need them to. Otherwise they might as well be bugs… and bugs working against us at that. If a swarm of wasps tried to sting you but acted kind of cute and funny while doing it., I still wouldn’t lose sleep over killing them. There just isn’t any point.
@@migarsormrapophis2755 Socrates and some of the Greek philosophers we still take advice from today.
Oh dude, you made the thumbnail? Awesome work with the stressed and drunk Battle Droid. It look so cool
@@willmungas8964
We are constantly shown the death of droids to flip flop between "smashing an obstacle (aka npcs)" and "tragic death (c3po power failing, r2d2 getting hurt, IG's sacrifice in Mando)"
31:25 This scene is actually quite crucial in determining the sentience of battle droids, it shows them surrendering against overwhelming odds, which displays some form of self-preservation and free-will, even the commander decides to surrender. Also this answers the dying question of ‘can droids surrender’. The answer is yes they can just not very often
I could just be a tactical decision on the part of their programmers. If just one Droid is captured it can send data from inside enemy installations.
I didn’t think of that, possibly
Do you know where this scene is from? I don't think I've seen it before
@@nyancat4292I’m not very sure, sorry.
@@appropriate-channelname3049I just thought the same 😊 Or also they made them like that for psychological effects of their cuteness. It doesn’t feels and sounds like a danger enemy, but in amounts they are.
A few things:
1) The battle droid is just an amazing design aesthetically. it just works. The art direction considering the droids and the droid army was nearly flawless.
1.5) I always assumed, even back when I first watched it, that the battle droids were some based 'rapid production' model or repurposed labor droid that was quite literally designed to be cheap and flexible and not much else. Something you could have a million of and drop it on a barren world to have them dig out tunnels and build a city if needed without having to create anything specialized like an R2 unit - which clearly has tons of gizmos and gadgets built into it. I mean, R2 was considered a useful thing decades after the war ended - I doubt a battle droid was designed to maybe last a few years at most and then be replaced. Something you sell to, say, a city government to enact some sort of infrastructure project but you need to make sure you get your designed obsolescence in there to keep the cash flowing.
2) The fact that droids in general are (or VERY much seem to be) sapient is a massive issue, but also may point out that droids are "programmed" in a very different way than you might typically program a computer. Like they have some sort of shared neural network that is the base operating system for all droids, and then the actual "programming" might be some kid of crypto-keys that determine ownership and what 'rules' they are suppose to follow, and maybe sometimes they can download kungfu if you have that particular Nintendo cartridge laying around - but ultimately all of the functioning is determined by some black-box AI behind everything else. In other words - they don't really program them, they script kiddie some relevant software into them and then let the AI figure out how its all suppose to work based on what it has available to it. Kind of poetic really when you take in that 'clones' comparison you did.
3) There is a very strong insinuation in Star Wars that 90% of the galaxy does not have a good grasp on how any of their technology works, and most of it they only have a working knowledge of - especially evident with how long tech seems to be relevant and how important scrapping and repurposing seems to be. You don't really know where the next functional R2 or Protocol droid that works is going to come from, so each one is worth its weight in gold. There might be some factory out there pumping them out, but its one factory relying on cobbled together technology in a universe of trillions. A whole lot of 40k Techpriest vibes there.
If I remember in lore the reason why scrapping is so big is because it's more expensive to make new then to fix the old
@@connormcgehee9349 That only really reinforces my theory IMO
the amount of things that don't need AI but have it anyways is often a bit concerning.
Droids seem to be one of the few bits of technology that are rapidly evolving in the SW universe. Shit like blasters and ships, however, are a whole other ballpark.
Isn't it mentioned in legends that hyperdrive tech wasn't made by any existing race? I feel the same probably goes for droid AIs. The Star Wars galaxy knows how to reproduce them, but not what they actually do on a deeper level
33:12 "Captain! Show this droid, what happens when we use that word!"
That scene really cracks me up, what does shooting the droid that said "escaped" accomplish?!😂😂😂
+they literally wasted a single BX Droid, who is WAY more expensive than B1
And yeah
He did not say anything wrong😭😭
Anakin being able to hotwire the ship is actually an interesting point that I think the Prequels (and by extension Clone Wars) failed to adequately express and explore with Anakin. Anakin is a savant with droids, ships and technology because that technology is a *surrogate* for meaningful loving relationships with other *people.* Anakin can control and dominate electronics in a way that he can't people, at least as a Jedi, and its a perfect analogy for Anakin's need to fill the void left by his mother that leaves him jealous and scared. But the series never goes so far as drawing the connection between Anakin's characterization, his Force abilities, and all the sci-fi set dressing, so what should have been Anakin's *thing* gets sort of spread out to everyone.
He was supposed to be shown as a prodigy, but only shown lightly building droids , giving small amounts of sentience, building racing pods, fixing ships and doing more in canon, but they only show a bit in the canonical movies compared to the comics and more
Being the 66th like just felt right..
@@Issa.nicholas Now it's 69. Nice.
Anakin more like, burnt toast
It's funny because being good at droids seems to be a common trait on "special" ones. Revan, Meetra, and to a lesser extent Luke are all shown to either be passable with droids to outright savants as well.
"They're basically the twinks of the Star Wars universe" delt me psychic damage.
I always felt bad for the Battle Droids. Such adorable and dorky dudes being used as canon folder and slapstick. A lot of the time it's funny, but then you get things like the guy who just got promoted or the landing pad greeters that are just plain sad.
I wholeheartedly agree with the end of this video. Ever since Mando came out I've been wanting a live action show completely centered around droids. Not necessarily B1s, but one of them's gotta join the team eventually.
One gripe I've got though is the statement that droid sentience only became a hot topic after Solo. This is definitely not true. When the first Star Wars film came out in 1977, most of the more negative reviews shared a common thread of finding it strange that 3PO and R2 where essentially slaves to the heroes. Lucas has stated multiple times that this slave parallel was intentional, and was based on an old samurai film, in order to give a bottom-up view of the universe and make you empathetic. Even in the exact show you're talking about a season 1 episode involves all the Jedi telling Anakin to get over loosing R2 because he's just a tool and he tries to convince them he's more than that. A season 5 or so episode involves an organic military general learning to respect droids after a squad helps him on a mission. It's a topic the shows and movies have touched upon, the creators have brought up from time to time, and the fanbase has discussed since the franchise's inception. L3 just said the quiet part out loud.
that's the point, they're droids, not humans. they have no value and are cheap to create. they're just funny, corky and dumb because the author said so
in reality they're just walking metal buckets that have no purpose except killing
@@aaronmurovanchik5582 Did you watch the video? They are most certainly not...
@@DJSlimeball yeah.. their purpose was to destroy and follow orders. that's what emperor palpatine planned for, if he really wanted to he could destroy the galactic army with billions of them but instead waged a shadow war to seize power
@@aaronmurovanchik5582
In star wars Ai operates off of the principle that they cannot go against their programming. However they can devolope personalities- but can't act upon their emotions.
I think the Droid showing concern for the tortured prisoner makes sense if it's not a medical droid and doesn't know how much that prisoner can take before dying and thus losing valuable information. But the fact that he's sad about it makes it seem like he's somewhat concerned about the prisoner's well being past the usefulness of having an alive informant.
His war crime module was probably still installed, or perhaps he still has his Naboo Covention routines activated.
@@Stefanius058 Geneva Convention becomes Geneva Suggestion
@Safwaan Adolf Droidler? We already have that in General Grievous.
Classical case of "good guys can only be as good as the bad guys"
This is also an issue in most live action shows (not counting andor) where the bad guys have room temperature IQs just for the good guys to survive
This is one reason I love the original Star Wars Battlefront games, you can play as the droids and make it an even match. The first levels are even invading Naboo and being a force to be reckoned with.
And that's where questioned if they can feel pain, because they groan when taking damage
@@maxlhetvxhywxvxbm7645 wait what the hell i never realized that
There's also the convenience of not going against Droideka's and having an easier time with headshots.
I've *ALWAYS* hated it when villains are depicted as pathetic and non-threatening. It encourages protagonists (and audiences) to act and think like villains themselves. I think the writers of The Clone Wars subconsciously knew how evil they were being and ended up emphasizing the droid's humanity as they leant into their own cruelty.
Stormtroopers are getting the same treatment in the mandalorian
*Cries in Governor Pryce in Rebels*
@@JTOWER2C Yeah. Stormtroopers were the first Droids.
Because if the droid army didn't had terrible aim they would've died quickly
Tbh this stuff always felt like illuminati stuff to me it’s too common this and when the bad guys get 20 minutes of doing horrible shit and die in 2 seconds.
On your "droids should have won more" points: Reminder that when Qui-Gon Jinn and a young Obi-Wan faced *two* droidekas they bolted.
They also weren't battle hardened?
Like... they hadn't been in a real war at that point. Geonosis was a trial by fire. You either survived and learned quickly or you died.
Literally. Bros used Force Speed even ahahahahaha. Cowards!!
Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have ran in that situation
Hats off to the Collicoids, the only aliens to counter the Laser Bullet Deflection Technique
they did win a lot, we just didn’t see those because people root for the clones not for the droids
38:00 I imagine that R2 actually remembers those 3, and is thankful for their help
There is one thing that happened in Revenge of the Sith that i found deeply disturbing even as a child. During the Final part of the battle of coruscant after Grievous fled and his magna guards were destroyed, all pilot droids and neimoidians on the bridge started fleeing to the escape pods. They were screaming "get out of here", and "run", above being unarmed, but Anakin and Obi-Wan still attempted to destroy any droid they could find and even cornered one that attempted to escape.
Yeah that always bothered me. The Jedi are supposed to fight only in defense, but there are way too many moments where they destroy unarmed battle droids that are fleeing
Droids are machines. Who cares?
@@fosty. I get what you mean, but for one thing, violence against a machine is still violence, and should be against the Jedi code. On a more meta note, if a machine is cognizant enough to have self preservation, shouldn't it be allowed the rights given at least to an animal?
@@slackerswordsman42 Destroying a droid is like destroying a TV screen... one that could potentially kill you.
And to your question; absolutely not.
@@fosty. a tv screen doesn’t have human characteristics and can think independently like a human being. A tv screen does not tremble in fear when it’s fellows are slaughtered
I always hated the fact that "this is ths main character, so he can't be shot". Like atleast make the droids a bit badass
Okay turns out that many star wars fans tell me that "omg it's because of the forts". Coman!!!!
nice pfp and name general
im pretty sure weve seen them kill clones and other jedis as the series went by
I've had this argument many times with my friend and it always boils down to 'the force'. Quite tiring when thats what they always go for.
The question of battle droids having feelings and personalities reminds me of this question:
"Does this unit have a soul?"
Didn't expect to a quote from legion also Spoilers:
Im happy that I ended the quarian-geth war peacefully,
The official lore is that the Battle Droids gain personalities due to the limitations in their hardware and software. The longer they’re out in the field without having their systems refreshed and updated, the more “human” they become. This is why in many ways the reprogrammed battle droids are more competent. Their programming hasn’t been overloaded by memory limitations, so they can more easily fall back on that programming. (Let’s be honest, the Republic also probably fixed some of the issues, too).
Aside from that, there are plenty of examples where the writers absolutely tipped the scales. It’s unfortunate, but it doesn’t stop me from loving the show:
I have a theory for this: in one of the episodes you see droids talking about a droid head they found it was a older model and the droid who has the head said they were reprogrammed independent thinkers so meaning they are just assistful droids before they were reprgrammed to be the sepratist they resemble some things one:battle droids are like who help people and for number 2:super droids are for bodyguards cause they have weapons and use there big bodies for defending number three: the commando gives the orders cause they are like managers number 4: the vehicles they use are for travel or helping people travel
Edit: the three is letters cause it looks like a face
42:45
I've actually have had similar thought about that. Old droids still working after the clone wars and grouping up to get out of the main system. With them just building a new home for themselves. Basically a retreat for all battle droids.
Same
A Maroon Community of B1s would be a great location. Wouldnt even need to be a main focus of a story. Could you imagine a Mandalorian episode in a place like that? Mando would be so uncomfortable. Maybe seeing droids living lives peacefully would help him get over his trauma.
@@planetfall5056 Imagine if it wasn’t just B-1s. Imagine a Droidaka being among them. Imagine a MagnaGuard.
What's interesting is how a droid civilization could be potentially WAAAAAY better caretakers of their home planet(s) than most organics i.e. preserving much of the natural beauty and ecosystems of their home world(s).
@@aidanhammans9337 just all the types of battle droids used by the separatists uniting as a society, repurposing themselves for peace, freedom, justice, and security for their new civilization.
My understanding of droid stupidity was always based on one bit of lore; namely the little tidbit that the switch after naboo from central command to individual thought, the droid models were not upgraded to handle the additional load of running an Ai. They are always overclocked beyond the limits of their hardware; and their minds suffer as a result.
precisely correct.
Making b1 the skeleton of the army wasn't a good choice when your brain can barely hold anything more than "shoot the enemy dont shoot friend".
Thank god pilots and most high ranking field commanders were still OOM models because the amount of fatal accidents and suicide charges would have been obscene.
@@oom-3262 How obscene, exactly? I wish for you to tell me.😃
@@oom-3262 Actually, the OOM models were originally created to be connected to the central computer of a Lucrehulk class battleship. They were mostly replaced with the updated, more independent B1's after the disaster of the First Battle of Naboo, and the OOM was relegated to security roles rather than remaining as frontline fighters. (OOM-9 was still the best droid commander ever, though.)
@@geoffreyprecht2410 The OOM model wasnt entirely phased out because the b1 was incompetent at any other thing than direct fighting. Droid signals dont necessarily need to be coming from a lucrehulk class control ship. Every confederate capital and mid sized ship can emit low intensity signals, enough to man its own crew. Geonosis also has several signal ports hidden around its surface (see how poggle's escort are actually oom models)
OOM 9 is in fact the most successful droid commander that we know of but consider that its opponent was the naboo and gungans. Even if he succeded the opponent was miles behind the republic in armament, strategy and sheer number of plot armored jedi.
@@oom-3262 I forgot about Poggle's posse! Good point, my clanka!
I think a storyline where a droid has a malfunctioning AI and becomes sentient, then attempts to escape a warzone with some of his buddies could be fun. From what I understand of the lore, the droids are purposely set to have a limiter on their intelligence to prevent this scenario.
There is so much potential in this type of storyline. I would watch this soooo hard
They are sentient, non sentient ones are called robots
Already happened in the comics
@@epicassassin8502 I was looking to see if someone would comment that. Good to see a connoisseur.
@@DomR1997 indeed
It is important to remember Star Wars lore. Most Jedi have force speed that cannot be well shown in most media. Force speed has not been directly portrayed in any Star Wars movie or series (to my knowledge) but the KOTOR video games and other books and comics have been helpful in explaining force speed. Ultimately, force speed is an ability not all Jedi possess, but many Jedi use to avoid lazers.
It was used for a split second in the phantom menace, when quai gon and Kenobi escape from droidekas
A little lore nugget that lots don't know is that the nemoidians of the trade federation designed the B1 to look like a dessicated skeleton. (Of a nemoidian) essentially they were supposed to instill fear just by looking at them, am army of metal skeletons of one of the more ruthless people in the galaxy. The closest I can relate this idea to is the terminators from terminator. Skeletal robots. You can't stop them unless you completely demolish them.
And then they made them more useless than the targets at a shooting range...
well yeah, the tech behind it was expensive. they wanted easy mass production, so they made tech trade offs. you see it a lot in the war, where there's a type of droid that is amazing at it's job (think the mine droids that jump down on you and explode). seeing as it's a one use droid, it means replacement cost is high. If you're the sepritists, you want to be able to have 500 droids per clone trooper. At all times. Choosing the wrong type of droid is down to sideous' influence. I'd argue if they were on their own, the B1 would have been totally phased out and only had Super Battle Droids.
B1's were also retrofitted to stop relying on the main sepritist ship after anakin took out an army by blowing up one ship. meaning they are outside of initial design intent and you now have millions of droids who need constantly wiped or they develop sentients (think R2) meaning the main bulk of the force is essentially defective units who don't have proper wipes happening at constant times.
A LOT of the complaints are actually explained in lore, but it requires too deep of a dive into the lore that anyone at a casual viewing audience doesn't get. The average kill to death ratio of clone to droid was something like 500 to 1. meaning it would take 500 B1's to handle 1 clone, so to take on a jedi would be in the thousands.
All in all I deem the complaints in this video, even from a "deep lore" perspective, extremely valid, it shouldn't be so hard to find the information of a lore that you need to do 2 days of research through obscure sorces, that finally explain something from luca's hands directly. it should be accounted for in the sorce material.
I thought they were made in the image of the native Geonocians on their primary factory planet 😐
They are made in the image of Geonosians. They were designed and built there. Stop inventing crap
@alvaronavarro4895 you didn't watch phantom menace did you?
This was a huge gripe for me one two levels, firstly, I had a surprisingly strong attachment to these lovably innocent terminators whose only crime was usually following the orders of someone who they were programmed to follow. It was hard for me to empathize with characters who mowed them down so ruthlessly, when clearly they didn't deserve it.
Secondly, on a tactical level, the droid army appears to be theoretically logistically, tactically and overall superior to the Republic's clone army. They're significantly cheaper and able to be produced in widespread numbers, even recycled- which puts them at a major advantage numbers-wise. Because of their numbers alone, one could theoretically be able to simply put down a 'wall of fire' with no need of cover or tactical knowledge of any kind- something that the clones in their limited numbers drastically needed. They also don't particularly fear death (with the exception of a few) they are willing to simply walk in a well-coordinated fashion towards the enemy without fatigue, fear or psychological damage. By all means they are the perfect soldiers, something revolutionary in terms of warfare. The only reason we see them lose is because A.) they were being forced to keep at a slower-pace with the Republic for Palpatine's grand plans to exhaust both sides- and B.) Jedi have major plot armor which prevents them from even getting scratched if they are a named character.
ya I agree with this, I think it's just writers not knowing how real wars are fought
Jedi drop like flies in Attack of the Clones, which honestly I always felt like this show was just desperately trying to copy that movie... for good reason, it's criminally underrated.
@@majorpwner241 "copy that movie"
Almost as if it were a spin off side series of the movies.
@@nbewarwe The movies each have their own unique feeling. All 'The Clone Wars' has is a cheap knock-off of the Episode II vibe. Even the title is almost the same.
@@majorpwner241 I don't know why you get an episode 2 vibe. Feels far more like 3 to me, with the characters resembling the the third movie better and many scenes having the same scale and feel.
And the title is a reference to the Clone Wars, which is the name for the conflict between the Separatists and the republic. So it really shouldn't be that much of a problem.
And again, it's a spin off show. It has to live up to the original movies to some extent. And with all the new original stuff it adds, it hardly can be called a knock off. I see it as more of an extension.
One of my favorite things about battle droids is how they occasionally compliment the Jedi. For example, in one episode, Obi-Wan deflects a blaster bolt behind his back, and a droid says "that was impressive" and is promptly punched by a pissed off grievous.
I thought the droid said that to grievous sarcastically.
@@theplushkingdom133 idk
13:07 if you look to the right of the commando droid he is talking about, you can also clearly see another commando droid with a vibrio sword just standing there as well.
It's questioned in cannon (I think) if droids actually gain sentience over time or just start replicating emotions because over time their memory gets corrupted. Regardless, the less maintenance they have the more humanlike they seem and this goes for all droids. R2 is actually a droid that hasnt had their memory wiped in a very long time so thats why R2 is basically a character. As for the B1 droids, they're made to be cheap and rarely get maintenance so they develop emotions. Couple this with their lack of processing power (compared to other droids) and its why they're stupid and incompetent. Originally they use to not even have their own processing computers and were commanded by a central super computer that orbited the planet but ever since the Battle of Naboo where Anakin defeated an entire army of them by blowing up the central super computer the Separatists decided it was too risky not to give them individual processing computers. If you look at the Tactical Droids the Separatists introduce later in the war you'll notice they're much more like a robot and struggle to comprehend things like emotions because they have more processing power and were better maintained with what is likely regular memory wipes.
Yeah pretty much
As stupid as it may seem to some people, I like bringing up roger from the freemaker adventures, where the main story line isn't canon but the characters and the locations are, that roger having a personality from getting having no memory wipes since the battle of fucking naboo (he RECOGNIZED other droids as being by his side in battle at the naboo empire museum,,,, which locations being canon makes that the funniest canon thing in star wars imo, as well as him being able to write an autobiography from when he was first built) is canon which honestly is insane??? Like the separatists likely thought that memory wiping them didn't matter because at the end of the war they'd be shut down and they didn't expect cheaply made shitty military grade mass produced shit to last more than a few battles anyways
Like I said people may call me using freemakers as a dumb thing to bring but roger and his 0 memory wipes (or at least,,,, well enough done wipes) are canon, even if fucking insane world destroying kyber crystal sabers are not
I feel bad for just about every battle droid as a droid enthusiast but the b1s being so unimportant even IN universe that they don't get memory wipes makes me :(
THEN WHY MAKE THEM!! I don't care how many quirks they develop if they are incapable of doing a preprogrammed task that is PROGRAMMED into them, then there is NO point if making them. Your essentially telling us "Magic" when people bring up the massive glaring and pretty bad hole in starwars clone wars logic of the battledroids and their ability to fail at basic things computers 20 years ago could do
@@DeathSithe92 Because they still served a purpose as disposable meat shields and preformed well enough most of the time.
The Prequels were made 20~ years ago and we dont exactly have bipedal war robots fighting our battles for us still. Plus there is only so much you can fit into a memory chip and like I mentioned those needed to be maintained (just like IRL) or otherwise they degraded and naturally that'll lead to problems functioning.
They still don't they just have autonomy modules in case the central computer goes offline
@@DeathSithe92 they’re usually capable of doing what they were made to do, but we never see their victories because we only view the battles with main characters who always have plot armor and are usually op. Besides, they’re disposable armies that don’t get tired, don’t need food, and will carry out any order to the best of their ability. How could you say there’s “no point” to making them? Besides the idiocy, they’re what every leader of an army wants! Especially if they don’t their army to revolt, which battledroids are usually incapable of doing! That’s likely why they’re so limited in brainpower
I love B1 Battle Droids if they made a show with them as the main characters I could die happy
There is a lego series that Roger the droid that the TH-camr mentioned is in the series helping the family
Roger Roger.
I never realized how hated battle droids had become, constantly being cut down like they’re made out of paper mache. This is interesting, but sad.
Probably the most disappointing and saddening scene from this video is at 35:27. These droids aren’t even looking for trouble. Sure, they’re armed, but for self defense. They just want to meet these troopers and find identification or why they’re here. They could’ve even helped them in whatever they were there for (haven’t seen Rebels). Instead, they go “ah, Clone Wars battle droids. Surprised their batteries haven’t run out” as the commander droid slowly becomes more confused, only to happily greet them again. Sure, you may have laughed at this scene the first time you watch it, but now you may cry because these innocent battle droids are taking shit just because of what their predecessors in the Clone Wars did. Pathetic.
Actually, the bit in rebels is actually intended to be kind of sad. Basically the story goes that they are part of a small group of droids under the command of Kalani, the super tactical droid from the Onderon arc. He received the shut-down order but assumed it was a republic deception and fled with the droids he had with him to some planet in the middle of nowhere to fight out “the end of the war.” They’ve been sitting there, essentially abandoned, for decades, then the imperials roll up and just blast them to pieces without a second thought
@@lazydroidproductions1087 yeah i think it is kind of ironic that Solar Sands makes a Video about this topic and HASNT seen the one Episode that tackles all these questions about B1s and their Parallels to the Clones the most and even acknwoledges the fact that he hasnt. Would have probably been interesting to hear his take on this one.
@@lazydroidproductions1087 it’s like those two Japanese soldiers who fought years after the end of WWII, specifically the one guy who fought till like 1974
And the way they stop firing at the last one just because they wanted to watch it get crushed
Rebels is honestly a great show, so im sad he didnt want to bother watching it, I just rewatched all 4 seasons with my family and I cant recall a single bad episode, at worst maybe they can a be a little boring or ridiculous, but still great overall!
Name one other type of soldier in the Star Wars universe that can be constructed on the spot from a fucking Lego set, without even opening the instructions, or even without outside assistance as it assembles itself, and has the fucking gall to hold Grand Master Yoda himself at gunpoint less than a second after being completed and activated.
I love how he just avoids using the term "plot armour", even though thats exactly whats happening
Well plot armour is like 90% of the reason why the heros get away with what they do.
Plot armor can be great it’s just the Jedi have way too much, rarely the sith do. I like the droids, they cool.
@@GokuBlackRose978 honestly it’s the opposite from my perspective, it seems like the site always get away with some crazy escape then the Jedi get slaughtered out of nowhere except for the main characters
@@maxout6606
There is always that random group of sith that evade capture and death after EVERY single near complete defeat, not only do they evade capture every time they make it so the Jedi think that they FINALLY killed all the sith only for them to come back from *insert random outer rim world here* where they built up a new warfleet.
@@Lvl1.Sentry you mean 99% plot armor?
To be fair, that one rebel is Saw Gerrera, and he's not exactly the sort to worry about civilian casualties
bro saw gerrera is a terrorist lol
To be fair, that one rebel is Saw Gerrera, and he's literally a psychopathic terrorist... you know, like how the rest of the rebel alliance would realistically be if Star Wars morality wasn't painted in fucking checkerboard pattern until it's convenient for them.
IIRC, didn't he later get booted from the rebel alliance precisely because he gave so few shits it ended up playing straight into imperial propaganda?
@@natesmodelsdoodles5403 he got booted for extremism I believe
However he wasn't like that until after the battle on Onderon and the death of his sister.
The prison escape episode was one of the saddest pieces of media in the way the droids just gives their lives. As a military vet and someone who’s seen the way people assume sacrifice is something so easy, it’s just disturbing. It’s a war yes, but laying down your life is never easy and even harder for someone else to accept. That was a cold and sad way to see those droids , especially after seeing them bond with R2.
R2 low key didn't care imo
@@tonynasaofficial he's an astromech those guys are more sadistic then anything I've seen from any type of battle droid.
Clanker is OUR word, you can say Clanka
I was in a homebrew DnD game where we played a group of clone troopers, and a B1 surrendered to us. He became a part of our crew and became the best shot out of all of us. He did survive our entire campaign too. It would be cool if that type of idea was in Star Wars media at some point
That is awesome, and I agree that it should be a more mainstream thing or at least be a bit more common, but there are "The Freemaker Adventures," that utilized that concept with RO-GR.
It technically did happen in one of the comics or was a books
that did happen
Give Star Wars Saga Edition a go if you enjoyed that homebrew. There's a whole wiki up for reference!
look up mr bones youll like him
29:30, you can actually see the other Droid reach out for the one who is dying as they get pulled in, as if the other Droid is concerned for the soon to be dead Droid.
😢
For full context: B1's were regularly recycled, and had spotty memory wipes to nonexistent memory wipes. Pair this with a switch from command units to independent processors, and the end result is a whole lotta programming defects from the droids literally developing sentience as time goes on.
You mean to say that even in death they couldn't escape the horrors of war, and the years of trauma from repeated battles caused them to develop a sense of humour as a coping mechanism?
That's pretty cool!
@@dragonfell5078 basically yes. Droids who got fried by a electro charge would just be salvaged and repurposed again. Memory wipe, check that everything’s ok, but the droid itself stays the same. Now do that a few times and make the wipes not work as well and boom. That thing has so much conflicting information in its processor that it has to develop a personality just to filter the intel
@@xenon3990 yep and they also tend to get overloaded with software upgrades as well as their processers weren't meant to handle the level of intel they have to handle.
This is a retcon in order to explain how pathetic they were in the 3D Clone Wars show. Before the 3D Clone Wars show, in most media, B1s were actually kinda cool with a FEW comedic elements to them. After 2007, they just became losers and not threatening. Bad guys should be threatening.
1:58 Excuse me, if skywalker can build a protocol droid from scratch that can translate ALMOST EVERY KNOW LANGUAGE IN STAR WARS at age 10. Repair a pod racer from a severely damaged one, he can probably hack a ship. [I agree that droids deserved a LOT better]
In the later seasons, the clone wars really called into question the "good guy" vs "bad guy" narrative. I always thought that the abuse battle droids faced after trying to surrender and stuff like that really showed a different side to the "good guys".
Yeah, there is a solid case to be made that the CIS are the good guys (after all most just wanted to be independent and didn't know about the atrocities that were being committed by their armies, or they considered it enemy propaganda). Sure the CIS was being controlled by a Sith, but secretly so was the Republic. Count Dooku was a respectable Jedi before abandoning the Order, meanwhile the Jedi who are supposed to be Neutral were fighting for what they saw is an oppressive regime. The average person doesn't get lectured in the Religious views of the Jedi, so what if the Guy in charge is a "heretic", he was seen as the wise leader that was needed to win the war for independence. In fact there were so many episodes that made people inside the CIS seem pretty good, or at least grey enough, that when there were episodes that wanted to make the CIS look very bad that they felt weird. As if the writers were like "oh damn, we need to remind everyone that they are supposed to be the bad guys, quickly let's have them do something "evil".
CIS was originally an independence movement born from abuse and neglect of the republic of the outer and mid rim, then sith got their claws into it and brought the corpo's with them. As well early on in the war, they tried to kill most of the command staff that did have morale, which was primarily the non-corporate aligned. At least, that is the case with legends, and wouldn't be surprised if that was confirmed canon as well.
there wasn't a clear good guy/bad guy theme because from the begining you know the imperial forces will become the bad guys by the original movies.
Let's be honest here, the Stormtroopers have basically the exact same problems. When I watched the end of the Mandalorian Season 1 when the IG droid offered to sacrifice himself to take out the Stormtroopers, I remember thinking: "Why? It's just more troopers, you guys literally just wiped out twice their number earlier." At the end of the day the real villain here is simply lazy writing
Seriously, this is one of my few problems with the current Star Wars shows. Make the main threat have at least some genuine threat. It's hard to be afraid of a galactic fascist empire if their main soldiers can't do their damn job.
Remember how in season 2 Mando just ran down a hallway of stormtroopers shooting him and all of the shots hit his armour? Star Wars has a very strange grasp on the concept of stakes.
@@KangarooMonkey Funny how Stormtroopers can finally hit a main character when we get a main character whose armour is impervious to blaster fire lmao
Speaking of stormtroopers, Fin is a really really confusing piece of the equation
He shows that stormtroopers are their own people capable of free thought, but he's still excited to mow down massive groups of his former comrades and possible friends
Stormtroopers are similar to droids then - They are sentient but everyone still treats them like disposable objects and doesn't care
@@priscyllathewitch298 and they shoot so precisely that they only shoot those specific parts of his armor despite him having lots of other expose parts to shoot at, lol
I wish that they would find some way to bring the battle droids back into the series and make them not as inconsistent because I love the guys.
They removed them?
@Otto Stephan They haven’t shown up in the mainline movies since the prequels and they never really had any appearances in other media besides the Clone Wars show and it’s spinoffs
@@the_godbodor7026 so where they removed from the series or not? I only have it till season 5.
Yeah they're so nice I miss them :(
Even if it was just something like roger from freemaker adventures where they act more like people because of their shitty programming mixed with the war being over and a little reprogramming as needed or them being upgraded and reused for a different combat purpose like being a bodyguard or an outlaw or something I just want to see my guys again I miss them, no matter how they're written :(
@@eldritchomen you said roger! Roger-rogering intensifies.
37:56 when i was a kid, these droids deaths hit as hard as Heavys death
I’m glad to know I wasn’t the only one who felt incredibly bad for the poor B1 and wished they were treated with a bit more respect.
Even as a kid, when I saw the Phantom Menace, I thought to myself "damn, that droid commander did everything right and won his battle against the gungans, yet still lost for reasons out of his control, and it’s treated as if he had been incompetent. That’s pretty unfair !"
Battle droids have been my favourite part of Star Wars since the moment I’ve been introduced to the universe, and I’m glad they’re finally starting to get the recognition they deserve !
My headcanon is that in the early stage of war, separatists were struggling to hold onto captured territories because of rebellions. After all, it is easy to demonize emotionless machines and rally a movement against them. The short sighted solution of the separatist commanders was to add programming of commercial droids, designed for interaction with customers, to the battle droids. Additional programs not only gave them a sense of self-preservation but also slowed their reaction times and productivity.
That is legit one of the best theories I've ever heard that makes so much sense
@@MmmMmph1968 Wow, thanks.
@@БорисПопов-я3г You're welcome!
Yeah, but an OEM installation that people usually do on mass programming would clean the regular programs.
Hey, droids feeling pain has been in Star Wars since the first movie!
Admittedly the Jawa shock pokers might be have been an electrical thing. But in the third one we see droids getting tortured which is meaningless if they couldn’t feel it!
In the Return of the Jedi, there is also droid being tortured in Jabba's palace so...it definitely seems they can feel pain or what is approximately the equivalent of that sensation to them (also in A New Hope even something so basic as this 'mouse droid' on Deathstar seems to escape in fear of Chewbacca's roar) and C3PO apparently felt great in a 'bath' of oil. Why they were designed that way? Maybe the creators of droids wanted them to be more sensitive to the environment, after all sensory output might be needed for their AI or something? :) All the droids in SW seem to be equipped in those features probably to be simply able to interact with all biological feeling beings, maybe the designers felt it's necessary or the AI that is installed in all the forms of droids is just required for them to function. One thing is certain the droid AI and personality seems to be developing over time, also without memory wipes (which are routinely used in most cases, another topic on the harsh treatment of droids :)) and so the longer they perform they are more likely to become independent in thought, outgrowing their programming.
@@fantasywind3923 It does make sense to give droids sensory receptors so that they can perform meaningful tasks, like for instance it's important when performing many types of physical labor to be able to estimate how many pounds of pressure you are exerting on something. This would be doubly important for something like a droid which could potentially have inhuman levels of strength and easily break things, or harm living beings without some system to check these things.
@@majorpwner241 yeah that's a good point. In any case it is technologically possible in Star Wars with all the prosthetics that are available that give the sensations of feeling (like the Luke's hand, which could feel pain, the medical droid is checking it up in the last scene of ESB) and maybe all that tech is just common for the droids motoric functions and prosthetics.
quick lesson on Battle droid anatomy.
They kind of have brains and organs. They have CPUs located in their heads which is what is being referred to by headshots because the CPU and associated hardware located in the head and upper body can communicate data back and whatnot. The body contains pumps and machinery that circulates lubricants and oils around to other machinery that requires it.
this also explains why droid spas and bars exist they would need to self service themselves there.
15:40 The canonical reason is that the mass produced B1 droid was placed in so many different positions within the Seperatist military, each one needing an extra bit of code to function properly, that their processing power and internal memory was stretched thinner than a ramen noodle. This often caused ridiculously slow reaction times, poor judgement, and reduced their effectiveness in any particular role. Also, it came with the side effect of making them chatty.
This same drawback existed within the more advanced battle droid models, though to lesser extents.
That being said, the more complicated roles weren't held by B1 series droids but typically the OOM series ones that had better processing power like bridge crews, pilots, security, and officers. Which is a bit of a shame that it's never really fleshed out in the show and there just all blanket stupid.
That's such a stupid justification.
"We made our product dumb on purpose!"
@@FolstrimHori The justification was:
"greedy corporation fighting a war uses the cheapest possible option available, obvious result is obvious."
Corporations are used to operating on razor thin project margins and constantly cutting costs wherever possible to maximize shareholder value. To them, short-term gain/profit/cost reductions were everything. Damn the consequences.
Well, in war, the consequences for being a cheapstake is an incompetent and easily outmaneuvered military. The only reason they lasted as long as they did is because they had overwhelming numbers and practically infinite money.
Of course, there's also the fact that Palpatine purposefully pulled strings on both sides to make sure neither faction gained a decisive edge against the other.
What's interesting to explore is the alternative to the route the creators took the droids. You briefly touched on it, but can you imagine how utterly terrifying and disheartening it would be to fight a soulless droid army? If every battle was a scramble to put shots in the droids vital components, before they got back up? If running them over without crushing them did nothing? If they were packed into shipping containers and covertly inserted into areas through the republic's own logistics systems? If they were shown to attack frequently at night, in poor weather, standing guard on the surface of ship hulls, doing everything and being everywhere an organic couldn't for long periods of time?
That kind of stuff wouldn't fly in a show meant for younger audiences, but it's really cool to think about the possibilities, and how this war set the stage for the galaxy to accept the empire so quickly.
Battle droids felt at their most intimidating in Episode 1. Yes they were individually weak, disposable cannon fodder. But despite the Gungans taking out hundreds of them in the battle of Naboo, they were still on the verge of being overrun by the droids' sheer numbers. The only thing that saved them was young Anakin managing to fly a starfighter inside the Lucrehulk and destroying it just in time.
100% agreed. The numbers advantage and cheap construction should be meaningful in the way that phyrric victories just cost the Republic a lot when fighting thousands of droids. If I was the CIS, id have given up after seeing the cost of waging war with no chance of success.
That ship wasn't CIS it was trade federation.
The idea of these things being so jovial and aloof yet still having sadistic potential (26:50), rather than being straight up emotionless killing machines, makes them a lot more unnerving for some reason.
This is how I feel about droids, Clones and stormtroopers all off these units are so expendable and they all deserve some more respect. Their life’s has value as well.
In the prequels the droids were individualistic and the clones were the monolithic machine like army, TCW ruined that dichotomy
It would've been something super interesting to explore, would've added a deeper layer to these shows
I feel that your curiosity concerning the droids touches on an issue that shows up in both live action and animation: in order for our main characters to succeed, the minions always have to be weirdly slow or overly hesitant to do anything that would actually stop them. Waaaay too many BG characters holding guns or swords or gunswords just sorta stand around while the MC backflips their way to victory (or holds hands to use the power of friendship, w/e) when they could easily shoot or stab them. They just never do. It gets worse when important characters have a big dramatic injury or near death because a random BG guy finally just pulled the trigger. It makes the world feel fake. These characters are winning because the writer says they will, not because they are actually very clever or skillful.
when you just join the empire for a school scholarship and they want you to shoot some old man whos holding what looks to be a flashlight.
The problem is that if these big group fights were actually realistic, writers could never use them to hype up their protagonists. No matter how skilled you are, if you're outnumbered 30-to-1 and surrounded, you're getting dogpiled and killed. You may take a few down with you, but you're just not fast enough to block or deflect attacks coming from all directions simultaneously. I'd actually be interested in a series which takes this approach, since it would mean that characters would need to plan and strategise to make sure they never end up in such a disadvantageous situation. And if it did happen, it would be a genuinely stomach-dropping moment, as the audience realises the heroes are as good as dead.
@@Halucygeno I think it's less about being "realistic" and more about being "honest". The action needs to be grounded enough that there's an actual sense of threat, and the characters should treat the possibility of death or injury with an appropriate gravitas. If a character is a superhero able to face 30-to-1 odds, for whatever reason, then of course a 30-to-1 can be used to hype them, but then writers should then be able to figure out what actually _can_ threaten them when they need something to, and not try to pretend that things that should be threatening to them aren't, or vice versa.
I think you're right that things would be a lot more gripping if the heroes actually had to plan and avoid disadvantageous situations. I've been watching a lot of TV/movies with my family recently, and one thing that struck me is how much "action inflation" there's been over the decades. A 90's western hero (like Silverado) will gun down dozens of guys while running through a hail of gunfire, while 50's western hero (like in High Noon or Rio Bravo) has to resort to trickery and stealth to beat a 3-on-1, or only breaks a stalemated shootout when they catch a break and notice something everyone had forgotten about. In the 2000's a small army fielded with automatic rifles just makes a lot of noise (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), meanwhile in the 70's one machine pistol was really scary (Cleopatra Jones). My point is, writers seem to have gotten a lot more frivolous with violence over time, and I don't think it has helped the works they're writing.
@@PsychadelicoDuck Of course, if there is some narrative explanation for why they can take on that many enemies, then it's believable. I'm just pointing out that "they're very skilled" really isn't a good enough explanation. When you put a character in that situation and all they have is mastery with a weapon or martial arts, you inevitably end up with enemies lining up to fight one by one or armies of gunmen missing every shot. If the goons were actually using their brains, you'd really need something extreme like a superpower to even those odds (and, like you said, that requires introducing an equally powerful threat to stop the hero from seeming invincible).
I'd also like to just mention that I'm much more forgiving of scenes where a character with no supernatural abilities is using stealth to isolate and pick off members of a group individually. This actually seems like a reasonable strategy.
When the only way to make your protagonist competent is to make everyone else incompetent... We have a problem.
Honestly it always felt creepy to me how the characters just ignored what the droids were saying, like the ones who were begging for their lives or saying it doesn't matter of they fight back.
I get that's most likely just a script issue, the droids lines are most likely added after the main plot is done but in universe you'd think someone would be like "I'll spare this one that's screaming for it's robotic life" at least once.
its a droid I'm such the characters were smart to note that this is programming. Not to say that they did not genuinely fear for their "lives" but that it would make a lot of sense if the droids immediately turned on their oh so morally correct saviors the second their life wasn't in jeopardy there has no been nothing to show these droids can or will defect or go agaisnt their programming just like the clones in order 66. And dont say something like "Oh but what about rex" rex got the chip out.
Probably because the Jedi didn't consider them an actual life form, only machines.
*if
The Rebels clip you showed was Season 3 Episode 6, one of my favourite Star Wars Animated Episodes of all time; it really made me sympathise with the separatist viewpoint like I hadn’t done previously. Would highly recommend that episode specifically.
I recall seeing in a "behind the scenes" segment/book about Episode I that B1's were deliberately designed to look skeletal and kind of creepy and lanky. I really think they should've played into that a bit more as the prequels became darker. I'm imagining a newer model of intimidating skeletal B1's. Have them keep that monotone and truly droidlike personality, matched with deep, garbled and scratchy voices instead of the high-pitched squeaky ones (potentially like the super battle droid voices from Republic Commando). Maybe they could have their limbs move and bend unnaturally to reflect the strange insectoid bodies of the Geonosians. Of course that kind of almost horror theme would make Star Wars less appealing to children, but I think it would help to cement battle droids as a force for the heroes to actually be afraid of
Indeed, the B1 droids were supposed to look like Nemoidian skeletons according to Ep I lore, only later it was retconned to look like Geonosians. Check out Republic Commando, they are much more realistic and robotic threat
The droid voices in the Battlefront games were perfect. Not over the top in either direction, just cold, flat, and entirely un-human.
@@phunkracy i hate the fact that apparently nemoidian brains shrivel up and fall into sacks at the back of their heads when they die
The thing is though the prequels were made to appeal to children, just like the originals
@@basedbattledroid3507 get real
I agree general grievous, always
slapped us around and call us useless
Your complaints are noted….
Why don't just sue him?
@@planesandairlines787they dont get paid enough for a lawyer
@@braedenmu5380 Or at all.
yo BD1-672 you want a bigger droid brain?
The CIS as a whole has a "winning" problem when it comes to the 2008 show. All the victories are off screen or the very one off episode don't really come off as a threat.
General Grievous is pretty much the primary example of this. He's said to be a (literal) jedi killing machina but in the show, he gets his ass handed to him on multiple occasions by characters that he really shouldn't have a problem with or he's winning and then just stops to gloat before they force push him or something the like. The only characters he ever beats are the characters introduced in the episode and never appear again. He does get some wins on the main cast from time to time but it's very rare. They really needed to give Grievous and the CIS as a whole more wins or make them feel more like a threat.
2002 cartoon pretty much made him unbeatble with most on 1v1 so he often multidueld jedis. At least they could have done that
43:00 those little droid huts looking like the Multi-Troop Transports is adorable!
On the needing breaks thing, droids are sentient "life" forms who's intelligence and self awareness is suppressed with memory wipes. The size of the battle droid army would prevent droids from getting the regular maintenance and memory wipes they need, resulting in personalities developing, their programming becoming increasingly irrelevant (as secondary goals start to overwhelm the primary directives). While not added back to canon (at this time) the cult of gonk is among those droids who've experienced this.
Its hella sad
interesting, that actually explains quite a bit.
gonk
@@PeptoAbismol G O N K
@@Faust-d2o *gonk* *Whirr* *GONK* (your batteries have been recharged)
Watching the clones destroy the droids really makes it feels like the roles are reversed. The clones are just mindless killers, while the droids are begging for mercy.
As I was scrolling and about to read this comment, that scene played. That was pretty cruel.
Yeah that's where I realized this show wasn't for me. Jedi aren't supposed to execute prisoners
They were also programmed to. You hear them demonize the “clankers” when you realize your enemy has thoughts and feelings it’s a lot harder to strike them down.
Droids deserves better than this! I don’t know why the writers would put that in, maybe to the humor of it? But it makes you feel sorry for them. 😢
@@DicemSpicemsyes, it’s both of their programming unfortunately.
Regarding the idea of large battle droid armies being useless, an important thing to consider is that infantry are, and will likely always be needed. The Templin Institute went pretty in depth on how there are many scenarios in which you still need infantry. You can't really even capture something without them, and you don't want to just orbitally bombard everything.
They should've had the battle droids programmed to always aim for centre mass as that's the most reliable way of damaging your target or something. That could've explained some of the ways their programming can be exploited by their enemies. They could've even said that droids only perform really well in flatter areas or whatever, which you could imagine being the result of shoddy programming or build quality.
Yes we do deserve better!! Thank you for your support. It's not our faults we are programmed so cheaply, if it were up to me I would have been a commuting pilot, but nope! I'm a soldier instead forced to attack innocents.
it was never your fault. Palpi played you. For what it's worth, I shed a tear or two for you guys too, the way I did for the clones
@@arijitnandi3688 many thanks friend. I only dream of a day when droids can be treated like people. My droideka buddy just wanted to be a racer, but he was limited to being a clone shredder.
Robo-Rights for BA1 droid veterans of the clone wars!!! Robo- Rights!! NOW!!!
WE Stand with You individual Droid R0‼️ We salute you 🤖 😃
Siempre estuve y siempre estaré de su lado, sin importar que pase JUSTICIA A LOS DROIDES DE BATALLA!!!!
Agreed my brother
As someone constantly annoyed and disappointed by robots in media. I love this video and the message it hopes to bring.
What message?
I like the idea of the programmer thinking "adding personalities would help them make better decisions" and then getting really carried away with adding way too many details that they have to remind themselves of the actual purpose of the droids.
Yea but it doesn't always make them something as effective as something like the terminator which does what it's told without hesitation but yes it's important they have personalities to make better decisions like clones would of been amazing to see but irl AI can't ever do that, not yet because irl we barely scratch the surface
Droid brains aren’t normal computers.
This was an amazing video you made about how the B1 battle droids were mistreated 👍🏻👍🏻❤️. I do think they have suffer enough throughout the years from the battles between Jedi and clones. You showed us how come droids have personalities when they are machines, like that doesn’t make sense? And that droids and clones are the same but with a slight difference than one being alive. Like I know before clones are born into war, but both of them having names (although droids having numbers as names), going in groups & knowing how to handle in a fight. Me personally, I think the writer’s make it like that is to make them look and acted funny. Sometimes I feel like I should be on there side and helping them out in tough situations. There are some good scenes where they are treated good, like how they serve that young boy in the clone wars series. And how three of them were with R2-D2 & one feels pity for one droid in the comics. We need more of all in Star Wars, just to show that not all B1 battle droids are killers! They can serve and live in peace ☮️.