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Old 01-10-2019, 09:57 AM   #11
Phantasm
 
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Default Re: Clone Army Or Droid Army?

I don't agree with the "everything wearing dreadnaught battlesuits" claim. The bean-counters funding the war are already paying for millions if not billions of droids, and thousands to millions of clones/bioroids, plus the weapons, ships, dropships, and ammo.

Military budgets are not infinite, even at TL11.

To save some money in the treasury, particularly when it comes to making sure replacements can be procured in a timely manner, battlesuits are more likely to be reserved for elite units, the equivalent of today's SEALs. It's more likely to have the average meatsack grunt wearing non-powered armor, likely a clamshell over monocrys (the latter for shrapnel than anything else) and a separate combat helmet; droids just get built with as much armor plating as they can stand.
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Last edited by Phantasm; 02-25-2019 at 05:46 PM.
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Old 01-10-2019, 10:00 AM   #12
David Johnston2
 
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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post

A TL11 military may consist of augmented 'human' officers giving orders to combat bioroid NCOs, who control squads of NAI combat androids. Since everything will likely be wearing Dreadnought Battlesuits on the battlefield, .
Not bloody likely. The great thing about droid troops is that they're totally expendable. So why put them in expensive and only moderately effective Dreadnought suits?
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Old 01-10-2019, 10:06 AM   #13
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At TL11 which is preferable, an army of genetically augmented Clones, or one of Droids?
The game world matters. In comics, genetically augmented armies if metahumans with TL11 gear can wreak havok (think Shi’Ar Imperial Guard, of whom some of the subguardians are augmented clones).
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Old 01-10-2019, 10:23 AM   #14
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Default Re: Clone Army Or Droid Army?

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At TL11 which is preferable, an army of genetically augmented Clones, or one of Droids?
How it looks depends on the setting. I expect that there would be both, but that the ratio would favor the bots.

Most droids would be of lower quality so as to be easily replaced and therefore disposable. Think of actually effective versions of the basic battle droid in the Clone Wars. There would also be a lot (swarms even) of smaller, disposable flying bots. Then there'd be better bots (more armor, better weapons, etc.) to support those and so on. Flying bots are where meat just cannot compete - especially with size.

But why biologicals? Assuming that there's an assembly line process for making them en masse, then they, too, are somewhat expendable. Biologicals do best at dealing with other biologicals. Unless there's a total war scenario where civilians simply don't matter, having some amount of empathy is useful in protecting civilians from being needlessly killed.

One other consideration is how intelligent the bots can be. If AIs tend to go rogue, then bots will be a lot less intelligent to prevent them from rising up against their masters. (Biologicals can have short lifespans to prevent the same thing from them.)
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Old 01-10-2019, 11:27 AM   #15
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Droids. They can be produced more quickly and they're made out of more durable materials. Inorganic is better for every purpose unless you take a pessimistic view of the capabilities of artificial intelligence.
It's not so clear that TL11 droids can't be built out of organic materials. And it's hard to imagine anybody after the invention of machine guns thinking a horde of naked animals is a serious attack force, so presumably the biological stuff will be provided some sort of equipment. Given that TL11 is well past the point where stuff like neural interfaces blurs the lines between "gear", "cyborg with interchangeable parts" and "robot with option to replace one computer with biosapient in a pod", that's potentially a continuum too.

You can say that if you have the capability to build robots at all, actual clones always lose out in production *speed*, because it will always take much longer to grow an organism from a cell or cutting than to build something in a factory. But many fictional "clones" are clearly not cloned from anything, and being faster isn't necessarily cheaper, so if you are not in a hurry....

You're going to need tighter definitions of the words to say very much.
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Old 01-10-2019, 12:28 PM   #16
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Not bloody likely. The great thing about droid troops is that they're totally expendable. So why put them in expensive and only moderately effective Dreadnought suits?
Because the combat android will then have an effective ST 50, allowing them to treat Rainbow Laser Cannons as rifles? Or they could dual wield Rainbow Gatling Lasers as if they were pistols? Anyway, what else would you give them to make them indistinguishable from their biological superiors during a conflict?
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Old 01-10-2019, 12:59 PM   #17
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Because the combat android will then have an effective ST 50, allowing them to treat Rainbow Laser Cannons as rifles? Or they could dual wield Rainbow Gatling Lasers as if they were pistols? Anyway, what else would you give them to make them indistinguishable from their biological superiors during a conflict?
Why would they need to be indistinguishable? If you're worried about protecting the officers from snipers, you probably aren't worrying enough if that's your solution. Ultratech snipers can be...cheaper and more disposable. An emplaced clutch of networked Dinosaur Laser servomounts controlled by one or more NAIs doesn't need to spot the officer, they just shoot everybody...
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Old 01-10-2019, 02:16 PM   #18
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Because the combat android will then have an effective ST 50, allowing them to treat Rainbow Laser Cannons as rifles?
You can do that without a suit. The difference between a battlesuit and a robot is that a robot is controlled by a brain contained in a box, a battlesuit is controlled by a brain contained in flesh and blood (which then gets put into a box, most likely).
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Old 01-10-2019, 02:49 PM   #19
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Default Re: Clone Army Or Droid Army?

An underplayed feature of droids is storage. When your conflict is over you pack up the viable droids and ship them home to wait until you end up in another fight. Clones continue to function but no longer have a purpose in your society. The ones that don't die are sentient creatures who were only raised for war that end up dumped into a society they'll have to adapt to, likely while dealing with PTSD or crippling injuries.
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Old 01-10-2019, 02:53 PM   #20
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An underplayed feature of droids is storage. When your conflict is over you pack up the viable droids and ship them home to wait until you end up in another fight. Clones continue to function but no longer have a purpose in your society. The ones that don't die are sentient creatures who were only raised for war that end up dumped into a society they'll have to adapt to, likely while dealing with PTSD or crippling injuries.
At TL11, especially a TL11 where you can manufacture bioroids, you might be able to put the clones in cold (metaphorical or literal) storage as well.

It seems unlikely that you'd suddenly conclude that, contrary to their treatment to date, your clone troops have human rights and should be handled as citizens...
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