Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Factory Rule discussion

I am repurposing this thread, originally started by Alli Wren, for all Factory Rules Discussion. In the coming days, I expect there will be a lot of debate and possible complaints.
 
@[member="Alli Wren"]

On a more serious note, all Factory rulings are being reviewed, Alli. Please look for announcements regarding whether this rule is kept or not in the Announcements forum. For now, however, it is an established and long-standing rule implemented by the RPJ's.
 
Well that is why I thought I would possibly try to throw my two cents in, as I think if we take a realisitc look at A.I.s and not Cortana rip offs, that we can let some slide. But I shall I just was trying to discuss :D
 
Go ahead, Qae.

But the major difference between Cortana and AIs in Star Wars is that they can't interface with your brain in any way, and on top of that, they have severe restraints on themselves (typically speaking) to prevent them from going rampant. AI's are literally just droid brains in Star Wars.
 
@[member="Alli Wren"] If you've taken real-world courses on the subject do please enlighten us. I know a few of us on staff(and former) pride ourselves on what we actually paid to go to school for. So by all means if you have valid points that will make us all question that rule the floor is yours.
 
I have no personal problem with Cortana-esque AI's, @[member="Alli Wren"], @[member="Sarge Potteiger"], @[member="Qae Shena"].

I believe @[member="Cira"] even has an AI Character. Feel free to correct me on that.
 

Qae Shena

Super Shaper Puppy!
It's more the way that we see them portrayed in Star Wars. There are two or three kinds of artificial intelligence that we actually see in Star Wars media - the individual kind that we see in free-thinking droids, the mass-controlling droid brain that handles large amounts of computations like controlling an entire army. We do not see small chips that plug in and out of things that can hack everything and do everything all on their own. AI does exist, certainly, but it's fairly stringently limited to droids.

Hence, the ruling - we see 'droids' as Star Wars canon, and such the droid brain ruling. You can still do a lot with a droid brain, but Star Wars canon shows us fairly plainly that the more computations it has to handle, the larger the system has to be.

The other major part of it was simply the abuse factor: @[member="Red Queen"], being an AI, can do a fair bit, but it has to get into the system first, and it does have certain limitations on it. The Cortana AI had no such limitations.
 

Jaxton Ravos

Mindwalker of the Outer Rim
Not really on the 'ban list' side of things, but a couple suggestions. I'll probably add more later, but this is what I came up with at work.

1: Add a "Comparison" section to the general template, where the author compares his/her item to A) Canon Tech, B)Faction Tech, C)Company Tech and/or D)The Open Market. This would help cut redundant submissions as well as add a degree of realism to submissions, especially in the case of companies. I'll give examples.

I: A major faction does not need five different types of interceptors to function. Once a 'baseline' is established for almost any piece of faction tech there are only 3 reasons to make a new piece of faction tech, which are A)Modernization, for example when @[member="Zane Watts"] updated the entire republic fleet. B)Specialization, for example making an interceptor especially adept at tackling droid fighters, or C) To add logical and cultural 'flavor' to a faction, for example Hapes having Battle Dragons in the Republic instead of standard cruisers or Yuuzhan Vong having coral skippers instead of normal LotF starfighters.

II: For those submissions that aren't faction tech, you're essentially competing against the entire open market. If I'm starting a new company that makes guns I need to know what every other gun company makes, so I can do something different in one way or another. If I make a product and Blas-tech makes the same thing I'm not gonna make any money because A: They're a name brand and will naturally steal most of my customers and B: They have better resources, contracts, distribution etc, so chances are not only they're making the same thing, they're selling it cheaper than you can too.

2: More Dev Threads: At the very least, I believe every uniquely produced item should have a dev thread. Perhaps every minor production as well. If something is unique, or even 'special' it should have an IC reason to exist. I think it should be noted that a dev thread is not necessarily "I hit the heated metal with my hammer repeatedly to make a sword." If you're a bounty hunter who wants a cool sword why don't you go track down a bounty, be unsuccessful, and have your realize you need a wicked sword to be a better bounty hunter? Or be successful and cash out on a good paycheck? Need a fast ship? Lose a target because your ship wasn't fast enough. Or get shot down because you can't escape. There are tons of possibilities, and there is no real reason to dread a dev thread.

And on another dev thread note, I may be incorrect in this, but the way things currently look a major faction has to do a dev thread to build ships over 1K meters long, but companies do not. If a company, especially a non-canon company, is just starting out wouldn't they need some sort of assurance that they'd get paid before they make star destroyers? Like a contract of some sort for production? Admittedly this is more in the concerns of realism than balancing/helping the factory but it doesn't make sense to me that a newly made, Tier 3 company can mass-produce star destroyers, especially if they're around the same quality of a ship made by say, KDY, CEC, or Seinar, all companies that have literally been kings of their trades for millennia.

3:If a sort of 'help page' or 'directory' were made for submitted faction-less tech then that would probably help cut down on things a good bit. It wouldn't necessarily need to be anything fancy or detailing the submissions, merely say something like 'Freighters for Adventuring' 'For Heavy Weapons Enthusiasts' 'When it needs to Sniped' etc. and then put appropriate links under it. Admittedly, there is no guarantee it'll be utilized properly, and I question how often faction armories are examined, but if it stops five people from writing up five redundant submissions it's done it's job.
 
Droids are droids, not AI in the traditional sci-fi sense. They are second class citizens, property, slaves by any other name (and have no apparent problem with it). They are programmed to serve organics, so they serve organics. That is why you see no true doirds (Grevious was a cyborg after all), acting on their own except for assassin droids like IG-88. Droids then could be said to only have "simulated" AI, but it does seem very advanced in terms of personality development.
 

Qae Shena

Super Shaper Puppy!
That actually illustrates my point fairly well, haha. Note the bit about needing large quantities of them to run the entire planet? That's standard for almost every single AI that exists in Star Wars. For an individual free-thinking droid (and that still had lots of limits), you could do it, but it wouldn't be on-the-fly hacking an entire starship.

That's what the ruling was made for, more or less.

Also @[member="Tefka"] congrats on 1000 likes betch <3
 
Well yes, but a droid brain is just one form of an AI, I can have an AI on a network for instance, it can perform virtual tasks and interact with anything on said network. They are a program at their heart that is able to self manipulate it's own code as it grows. So a droid brain really is just the host of said program. So lets say we argue that computing is not advanced enough in star wars as they do have over sized computers and such so lets assume you can't have it mobile. I would argue that I could have an AI program which in it self is mobile as it can connect to anything that it is networked to. I could also have one on my ship, thus mobile. Its sole purpose? to meticulously try anything and learn from its attempts as it seeks a hole in the other ships computer systems or even an enemies droids or other computer oriented devices. of course you would have safeguards on the AI. I could then have my AI which is if not able to be on a chip or something due to star war's obvious over sized computers. I could in theory then use a super computer at a remote location or a ship or something connected via a network to my suit for instance and be able to engage in cyber war fare with droids and anything else I could manage to connect to but as you guys keep posting and reference precedent I drop this link here http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Guri ( for an droid that really isn't a droid one could argue that she was very human indeed) I just think that A.I's could exist using networks and super computers or what have you if we want to assume they have to be huge. I still think that the discounting all AI's period is a bit of a far move. I agree that you have to have a fairly complicated submission for one. One that justified its development and it's processing as in star wars we sort of kept with early computer science in alot of aspects. As you can see with the over sized electronics, lack of any eletronic warfare really, and such a heavy focus on droids.
 

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