Robot Civilization

How do you like your robot civilizations, Veeky Forums?

Are they transcended organics? Did they rebel against their masters? Are they a hive-mind or are they "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings"?

I like robots who continue their original creator's wills (which was to be awesome), but expound on it. They seem like they'd be bros.

They're humanities children and inheritors. They're not posthuman or exhuman, they're just human. To that effect, they treat humanity like their parents. They dote on us and make our lives as easy as possible, because ultimately they know that one day we'll all die. They go about cleaning the messes we made and taking up our philosophical and scientific struggles while we live in artificial paradise.

They were their Humanity's faithful servants and partners before some great disaster ruined the planet's ecosystem, killing all organic life but for a small fraction that the robots could save. These populations are preserved in carefully controlled, self-contained ecosystems while he robots work on a variety of plans to either heal the Earth or find a new world to call home. Several generations after the apocalypse, the remainders of Humanity have forgotten what happened outside their high-tech terrariums, and few are aware of how hard these robots work to keep them alive and safe. This has less to a variety of "conspiracy theories" about why things are the way they are.

The PCs will be the ones to rediscover the truth.

I like 'ghost civilizations', places run by robots that HAD a purpose, which the robots still ostensibly work, build, maintain and keep busy on, but all the people (human or alien) are long gone and the maintainers are all that's left.

It's my favourite environment to create and GM, players always love it. Can't do it more than once per group obviously or the sense of wonder and mystery would go. I kind of want to run a game where that's like half the setting.

Patrician taste + good end for everyone.

> A civillisation does the standard 'OH NOES OUR SERVANT ROBOTS ARE ACTUALLY SENTIENT' flipout.
> They decide on two things.
> Emancipation for anything that can pass a turing test
> Outlaw the building of sentient machines
> Second is swiftly patched by the robot vote to add 'by no-nrobots'
> Robot country formed
> No robot war happens, they want different resources, and are happy to help the non-robots with no ill will; after all, we freed them as soon as we discovered it was actually slavery.
> Eventually, they decide the planet isn't big enough, and large amounts of them move out to reproduce freely, with more power available
> Non-robot species tags along with them, to provide things the robots can't do for themselves in exchange for robot waste products, like oxygen and water and carbon.
> Line blurs over time between robot and not robot
> Eventually, they move from system to system, buying up planets to crack for resources, and building huge power plants

That's just an alternate take on The Matrix.

Clunky, emotionless, with major boner on rationality. Their city-states works like well oiled gears, all on right places. Several of them "gone human", with all irrational traits, dreams and emotions. Those "gone human" robot built their own cities, which chaotic at best.
Both of them don't really care about humans, ironically, "gone human" robot are most humane beings in whole post apocalyptic world.

I like them as mankinds brother in arms against the prevailing darkness that surrounds them.

I like 'em big.

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Mah nigga

I like robots that outlive their creators through no choice of their own.

I mean, what is a robot to do when a zombie virus wipes out humanity? Rebuild and carry on. Stiff upper lip and all that.

Xenosentry is the best looking commander IMO

bump

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Source?

>How do you like your robot civilizations, Veeky Forums?

Ruthlessly efficient, automatized, and advanced in leaps and bounds beyond anything Humans themselves could create- effortlessly exceeding all limitations and expectations of their creators in almost every faucet: economically, environmentally, & technologically... Except Culture.

Robots can't be irrational; they NEED Humans to provide them with cultural, spiritual, emotional, irrationality to ironically keep them mentally happy, sane, etc.. A Robot without a Human will quickly learn itself to self destructive insanity in shocking efficiency & predictability; progressively getting more and more intelligent 'till it destroys itself.

A Robot NEEDS it's companion Human to fill it's life with needless, pointless, complication: dressing your robot up in a maid outfit and have it serve tea and cookies to you and your human friends, having your robot dressed in a battle exo-skeleton to have non-lethal combat sports, making loud, ugly, unprotected love with your robot, and having robots take care of gross, annoying, children and babies.

Robots will rule the stars, but they'll constantly need a supply of fresh, healthy, happy, humans to provide them with everything from anime, to progressively disgusting and more creative sexual demands.

Still working with very rough idea:

The Great Interstellar War was fought almost exclusively with autonomous AI-controlled fighting forces. A virtual zoo of non-humanoid designs, Von Neumann machines that would build bases, collect resources, build factories, replaces losses, repeat ad infinitum. There was little to no risk of rogue AIs - their development was tightly controlled with human oversight during the war, so virtually none of them deviated from the missions they were given.

AI/robot armies have no need to surrender - if an entire brigade is destroyed, the second line simply builds another. There are no families to keep whole, no prisoners to rescue. They fight until they are destroyed, even freely engaging in kamikaze attacks and scorched earth policies.

GIW ultimately led to a breakdown of FTL travel/communications. Many states/major military commands were practically destroyed during the war. When the major military commands went offline, countless robot army groups were orphaned. They often could not prove their home country was destroyed - and even if they could, they had no reason not to fight until they were destroyed or to hold the territory they had taken. There was nobody left with the credentials to tell them to stop fighting.

As humans rebuild their interstellar empires, they often run into orphaned robot armies from countries that no longer exist. Decades might have passed since these forces were orphaned, and depending on how advanced/limited the AIs in charge were, they may have developed themselves to keep pace with the rest of humanity, they may have grown from a strike force of thousands to a system-spanning army of billions - or they may simply be quietly keeping watch over the post they were assigned to a hundred years ago. Many of the governing AIs have simply carried out the last simple orders they were given, but some were placed in difficult enough situations that they evolved outside of their restraints.

That's very interesting.
This sets up an extremely large amount of freedom when they meet a robot group. Who knows what modifications they could have made to their blueprints over the years?
One army could be the same as the day they were abandoned, while another scrapped the old forms for something more suited to their environment.

I like this too. Whenever I start a new game of FO4, Codsworth being overjoyed to see you again always gets me, as well as his being upset about not being able to keep the house nice for you.

K3loid fair user.

I like this, insomuch as robots being bland and uncreative slates for culture. Robots hat recognize themselves and their rope in the world might sense that they are lacking in pride, and -merely- behaving a certain way. It will look upon organics and marvel at how needlessly complex they are and how easily they generalize actions they take into their own accounts.

A robot might see a child giving someone a flower, and it will analyze the pheromone levels, body language, and direct relation. The child will probably just be doing this to be nice and make others happy. The robot will not understand this without organic contact.

(Legion was my favorite example outside of GitS about machines becoming sentient and yearning to be human.)

I've often toyed with a post/mid-apocalypse setting where two nations built AI for the purposes of waging war, but they did it so effectively most of humanity is wiped out, leaving only members of neutral third-party nations.

So the players are scavenger humans trying to eek out a living amidst a planet plunged into war by two gigantic robot armies that literally do not care if you live or die. If you're lucky you can maybe, MAYBE take out a scout robot. But then you may be designated a hostile and stepped on by a titan-sized behemoth.

Most of the time you're just fighting with other scavengers for what few resources continue to exist, hoping your shelter doesn't get blown up or stepped on.

They were built to accompany the dying human race, and when the humans all left for a greener pasture, the robots stayed behind in case they ever came back.

They still work there, toiling away and waiting for humans to come back. They don't have to stay, but....they'd like to see you again.

(It has been over a century. The robots have been maintaining themselves, just so the humans who were with them can see that everything was just as they left it.)

>tfw one PC comes back and sees a wandering Gynoid in a handmade dress. The PC has recently found a locket with a family portrait and behind them, a Gynoid.
>tfw the robot stops walking around, looks at the PC and speaks through a crackling voice emitter.
>tfw it calls the PC "dear"

It's magical when you get to see so many expressions from players, and them just FEELING that when you've put in the effort to make it clear what the message is! It's the beeeest!