No Rayguns, But Plenty of Robutts!

Forgot to make an update yesterday, so today will be a double one, debuting R.U.R with the Forward Commander and the R-66 'Taipan'

The République would really like to field an entirely robotic force one day, to leave such dirty and violent work to their creations and spare their citizens the risk and damage, but as true AI has continuously failed to materialize that dream is still out of reach. For now, the great distances involved in space combat and the risk of local jamming mean that on site coordinators are still necessary. Throughout hundreds of years of development and refinement, the République has created adaptive programming for virtually every conceivable situation, the trouble is that sifting through it all to find the most appropriate one can be time consuming and drastically reduce their units combat effectiveness minute to minute. The Forward Commanders job is to streamline those decisions, they may not always chose the absolutely optimal program, but they will chose a ‘good enough’ one and prevent executive gridlock in the bots. They also preform highly complex actions that combat units may not be suitable for likes of.

As often the only human combatant on their side of the field, these Forward Commanders often become the face of the enemy for their opponents. Duo, or tri-colour, armoured uniforms, large bubble helmets made entirely of transparent metalica, chunky and durable electronics gear and tablets to issue digital orders on the fly. Forward Commanders wear somewhat bulky, but clean, armour reflecting their purpose to stand behind a wall of walking metal and issue orders, only engaging as a last resort. While they do carry light armament, it rarely comes off their belt, hand instead being taken up with their command tablets and other high tech observation gear such as scanning binoculars. The République imposes rigorous standards on the limited human personal they allow out into the field, so all are generally in excellent physical and metal shape, though experience in personal hands on combat tends to be limited, even for veterans.

In the République, robots are everywhere, and they do everything. They wash you house, they grow your crops, they police your cities, and when the time comes, they fight your wars. The R-66 has had hundreds of iterations over the decades, but its core form has been consistent for quite a long time. While the R-66 (or Tai, Taipan, ect, named for it’s shape and deadliness) does have it’s effectiveness boosted by a human commander, like all R.U.R. models, it is fairly unique in its untethered effectiveness.

While there have been many claims over the centuries of this group or that researcher cracking the code to true sapient AI, further examination has born none of them out. Even if such a thing were discovered, the R-66 is probably as close to that at the République would be willing to go. Independent target acquisition, manoeuvrability through complex landscapes, the ability to issue verbal (pre-made) orders and alerts, the R-66 can, and has on several occasions, trick the inattentive and uninformed into thinking it was a fully autonomous being. It’s this level of ‘personality’ that has given the R-66 a prominent position in République media of all stripes, from films to video games. Usually these depictions are positive, with the R-66 in a lead-supporting role to a human officer. Like with all other government robots, depictions of them getting hack never seem to get very popular.

While some off-worlders picture a Naga-like body configuration (Humanoid torso with a snake-like lower half) when they first hear about the R-66, this is not the case, the core body is far more serpentine than that. Measured at roughly 3.5 meters from tip to tail, the R-66’s main mode of locomotion is slithering or coiling, though it can climb surprising well. The robots weaponry and manipulators are fully integrated into it’s body, making disarming without destruction almost impossible, folding out and away as needed. The bots head has a distinctive irregular diamond shape, and contains sensory equipment, though not the main CPU, the main body is made of fairly thick segments connected by flexible couplers, to provide a good level of armour without sacrificing mobility. The segments are actually interchangeable, though only with the assistance of a tech, allowing for specialized loadouts for specific missions. A general, anti-pirate loadout will include things such as: multiple low calibre automatic weapons (capable of firing lethal and rubber ammunition), no less than three manipulator appendages, micro-missile launcher (usually concealed in protruding spines, as well as simple ramming and constriction, putting its bodies bulk to use.