Topic: Unmanned vehicle vs. Robot

[pyrotech]

My Harp Sci-Fi setting is somewhat lower tech than the Tintamar setting and lacks the advanced AIs from that setting.  So instead of completely autonomous robots it still uses partially autonomous unmanned vehicles.  These are piloted remotely but can conduct common functions on their own. 

I have been updating my game statistics to use the mechanics in Sci-Fi Xtreme but have run into some questions on these unmanned vehicles.  They are controlled more like a vehicle, so should probably have an init modifier, maneuver modifier, and piloting skill associated to them.  But they are more of a scale of the robots for hits, armor, and similar stats than the vehicle stats.  So what would be best way to model these be?

I've been toying around with the idea of giving the vechicles robots stats for the physical ones (St, Co, Ag, Qu) but with vehicle stats for the mental/social ones (SD, RE, In, Pr).  Then giving them a very limited skill set and the robotic talents that make sense to their function.  But also give them the vehicle init, man, and weaponry modifiers.  Thus their controls would be like a vehicle, but their hits, armor, and other traits would be more like a robot.

I haven't finished reading the sections on AIs and downloaded sentience, so maybe that section may give me some other ideas.

What do people think of this?  Is there a better way for me to handle this?

Thanks,

Pyrotech

[Marc R]

Do you mean like remote controlled vehicles with people and cargo in them, or more like predetor drone scale?

[pyrotech]

The two that I have already identified are a Unmanned Air Vehicle similar to a predetor (but smaller and capable of surveillance/recon, air to air, and air to ground attack depending on loadout), and a Unmanned Ground Vehicle used as a heavy weapon support package and high danger combatant.  I have also considered an Unmanned Submersible Vehicle, but that is for more specialty applications.  The UAV is somewhat larger than a man but not by much, and the UGV is roughly the size of a man but on tracks and includes a gripper similar to a human hand for opening doors and the like.

So these will all be remotely controlled with too little payload to carry a human pilot.

The same setting does include some higher tech aliens that have true AI's but even their technology still requires a lot of weight and volume to get even Chimpanzee/Dolphin levels of intelligence.  A man sized robot from them will be smart enough to carry out autonomous missions with simple improvisation - but complex social interactions and dynamic and complicated missions require offboard processor assistance.

-Pyrotech

[Marc R]

Remote control would seem to just make these vehicles the pilot is not in, make EW a key factor, and jamming a problem.

Not robots, since they're not autonomous. . .and I'd likely impose a penalty on the pilot/driver skills, based on how good the interface is.

If you're driving your thing with one tiny low rez porthole camera using a playstation controller, you're going to be eating a large penalty to your skills driving it.

If you have a full VR simulator set up, perhaps no penalty

(If the remote control pilot is head plugging to remote drive the vehicle, I'd look into the downloading personas rules in SFX, perhaps use some house ruled variant of those)

[pyrotech]

If I consider them vehicles, could I then just note that due to their scale they are treated as "personel" rather than "vehicles" for weapon damage?  Or would it be better to simply give them incredibly low hits and armor at the regular vehicle scale?

The setting does have extremely good full immersion VR that could be used - but I'm not sure that a military organization would really want a field operator that completely immersed.  Perhaps they could overlay actual surrounding senses (probably excluding vision) and pilots could use combat perception checks to notice important things happening near their body while controlling the vehicle.

-Pyrotech

[Marc R]

I was thinking more like one of those full cockpit flight simulators the airlines or air-force use, not necessarily immersion VR, but a full set of screens showing all directions, well laid out and exact controls. . .like the suitcase sized field controller for a predator drone with one 6" screen a joystick and a throttle vs the trailer sized control points with multiple screens, full instrumentation, weather reports, communications links, etc.

I'd say anything less than a full out control station should be a penalty, perhaps a very high penalty if you're doing something like controlling a drone you can see with your eyes, but with no instrumentation links to it (like a cheap model plane).

As to the damage thresholds, if you want it weaker than a vehicle, you can use a robot body as the template, give it a given level of armor and hits and such, using the personal scale damage rules for attacking robots (the malfunction tables and all that).

I do see what you're getting at, in that a car sized drone taking damage as a vehicle might be rather tough actually, and you want something more person scaled and not so hard to destroy?

[pyrotech]

Yes my biggest concern is smaller "vehicles".  Things in the 3 meter and smaller and/or 300 kg and lighter categories.  These are too small for serious structure and armor but may still be considered vehicles.  Against something like this a light anti-vehicular weapon should devastate the target, and personal scale weapons should be moderately effective. 

I'm actually a pretty big fan of the damage scaling rules in Sci-Fi Xtreme, but my unmanned robots/vehicles sit in a grey area for those.

Thanks for the feedback!

Pyrotech

[NicholasHMCaldwell]

What I just posted in the other thread applies here. Look to things like the gravitic bike and the gravcar for analogues.  No more than 5 Structural Hits.

Best wishes,
Nicholas