at the risk of drawing bitter wrath and a long grudge from moscovin...

is the autonom rule needed, or could robots just have expendable?

_________________
My shifting projects

It's a worthy discussion. To understand the autonom rule, you need to understand the motivation behind it which was to capture the feel of the old robot units. Some people wanted to make them fearless which is actually not too far off. However, with the Trade Consortium list relying heavily upon robots and drones and such, we didn't want a list that was going to be mostly fearless.

Expendable also has the drawback of not affecting anything if the formation is 100% expendable. Since most of the robot formations are 100% robots, there wouldn't be any benefit unless we changed expendable; and if we did that we might as well make a new rule anyway.

The autonom rule is going to affect three+ lists (Squats, Trade Consortium, Skitarii, something else?) and so far it is well coordinated across those lists. I dare say it has been a long time since we've had a special rule hammered out so quickly across different army lists.

So to me the only debatable question is really whether or not we want robots to play differently than regular units.

_________________
author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

ahhh - did not realise it had made it into the skittari list, nor that it was aimed at the feel of the old robots.

I'd been looking at expendable for the trade consortium ideas i have, purely becuase you could have a tough formation with a single squat controller unit, but once the controller is killed the formation become disorganized very quickly.

less like the old robots rule and more like the modern servitor 'mindlock' rule.

Perhaps there is a place for both - for intelliigent autonoms and expendable drones?

_________________
My shifting projects

I like robots ... I got a bunch of them ... IIRC we liked the old SM1 rules for them ...

_________________
Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

I like certain aspects of the control angle as well, but the feedback I got from my initial playtest group was that they wanted the formations and stats of the robots to be as close to SM1 as feasible. Originally the robots formations were 5 Robots -that was it.

The Trade Consortium will probably have mixed formations of Robots and Squats, but the Autonom rule itself needs to reach beyond one formation type (or one list for that matter). If we use the Expendable rule, they will never operate the way you are envisioning in a pure Robot formation.

What other suggestion would you have?

_________________
author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

that was it. I didn't know about the SM rules, so assumed it was just a boost to a otherwise fragile formation in the main Squats List, with a view to givng robots psuedo stubbon as a design theme in the consortium list.

the two rules are designed to do completely different things, it's more a bonus the expendable rule can be made to work like that. Maybe for the Skittari servitors?

_________________
My shifting projects

I'm not sure how to handle the Skitarii other than to say I prefer the idea of a universal autonom rule (or other rule or no rule at all). IMO all robots should behave similarly.

Maddoctor, what is it about the current autonom rule that you don't like? Let's start with that. Maybe we missed something.

_________________
author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

Agreed ...

_________________
Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

whut? no, i meant it for the servitor units that Vaaish is thinking about introducing, not for the skittari robots.

There is nothing about the current rule i dislike, i was just thinking about ways to represent controlled drone type units. This was origionally how i saw the drones in the consortium list working, before i actually sat down and read the squat list thoroughly.

you know those ideas that seem so good you just want to make them fit somewhere?

To make this very clear, I withdraw all objections to autonom. It has a clearly defined purpose and succeeds at it.

_________________
My shifting projects

I have always been a great fan of the Legio Cybernetica. While historically their robots were basically controlled drones i always saw the possibility of two extensions-- 1) large drone robots ( using Dystopian wars freedom class and John Henry class flying robots) and 2) specialist units of intelligent autonoms) . Unfortunately the Legio fell out of favour with the GW fluff magicans and robots started being credited to other army groups. WD #104 contains a great article on Imperial Robots. Robot firmware routines were often patterned after living creatures. Also robot wetware is held in a small slice of bioplastic about the size of a credit card. These are often removed from dead robots as many believe they hold the soul and courage of the robot. Also the Legio adepts have not been adverse to dismantling Dreadnought suits - sometimes even killing the pilot in the process - when making battlefield repairs. Therefore the concept of acquired learing is quite possible for a robot ( hence intelligent autonoms). While i understand the benefit of a universal autonom rule , i would like to see other possibilities for the Legio in the future.

I'd planned on implementing Servitor units just like the Praetorians. No special rules needed.

_________________
-Vaaish

i've replied in the skittari roadmap thread. makes sense to keep it in one place.

_________________
My shifting projects

Sigh

Now what have i said? looks worried.

_________________
My shifting projects

@ Lylekelm - SPEAK! Don't sigh. Maddoctor brought up this topic and -while he may be satisfied- others may not be. Contrary to the original worry that bringing this up would incur my wrath (not sure how I got that reputation) I'd like to get opinions on the autonom rule and potentially for a drone rule. I think that distinguishing the two concepts as two separate rules isn't necessarily a bad idea, as long as there are a sufficient number of units for the rules to apply to.

_________________
author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.