New Essential Guide to Droids

I note that Jude Watson appears to have made much use of TNEGTD in Last of the Jedi #5. Among many several other droids obviously culled from this book, a BRT supercomputer figures heavily into the plot. Great stuff!

This:

>This is the homing droid, star of the Droids series from Marvel's Star Comics imprint...Incorporated into the overall design was the only other depiction of the Falcon's homing beacon, from "Darklighter" in Star Wars Empire. (The Star Comics homing droid, therefore, carried and planted the Darklighter homing beacon.)<

Surely deserves some kind of medal. Bridging two seemingly disparate visual sources with two wildly different styles together like that? Now that's what I call great continuity...

Oh, by the way, I loved the Octuptarra pet reference--that's from Visionaries, the Wat Tambor story, is it not?

TC

 

I don't know why, but I like these little mentions of independent droids forming their own societies and doing their own thing. Speaking of that, it's too bad that there doesn't seem to be any mention of M4-78 in the book.

Anyone else think Reginald Barkbone sounds like the name of a Nosaurian?

 

This is written in-universe right? It would be cool to see Luke and the others reading the Essential Guides.

 

Which brings up the age-old debate: were battledroids programmed with sentience, or did they develop it later? Were the mantas even sentient, or did they have the intelligence of most social animals (dogs, dolphins, etc.)?

I wonder if the rogue mantas somehow detatched from the central command signal and hence were unaffected when Vader shut it down.

Anyway, I like the reference too. Wouldn't it be neat to see rogue groups of sentient droid starships privateering the spacelanes or crab droids eking out an animalistic existance?

Or Tynnan.

 

Isn't that enough? Holiday Special, Glove of Darth Vader, and so on are fine having an influence on continuity, but that doesn't mean we have to take them at face value. I generally like Therefore I Am, but the notion that the Emperor wasn't even really the big threat at Endor has always been hard for me to accept.

 

If it came down to it, Palpatine could take the IG-Star. Kyp was able to use the force to purge the computer on the Sun Crusher when Lando took it over remotely. Sith are cool like that.

 

>Isn't that enough? Holiday Special, Glove of Darth Vader, and so on are fine having an influence on continuity, but that doesn't mean we have to take them at face value.<

How are they not being taken at face value?

TC

 

speaking of all the NEGTD references in LOTJ 5, it mentions "new" security droids with double laser cannons. B4 battle droids? E6 Barons?

 

I don't believe there ever was a B4 model, unless you count those prototypes Gizor Dellso was working on.

It would be nice to know why Balmorra stopped manufacturing the SD war droid line.

 

Darth Maul knew mechu-deru, and Darth Vader did a lot of mechu-deru-like stuff (I don't know if he actually knew the specific Sith art), so it seems quite possible that Palpatine had teh 5ith-l33tness. (It hurt my brain to type that. I'll never do it again.) And Kyp's Sithly hacking skill didn't seem to require any formal education beyond what Exar Kun could tell him in a few days.

Long story short, I doubt IG-88 was much of a threat to Palpatine.

 

I always took the windows shattering in Padme's apartment and Palpy's office to be the result of the folks doing the shattering to be using The Force to get that effect. Surely Obi-wan and Mace Windu can get some "steel glass" to shatter like that? I can't imagine why Palpatine's private office wouldn't have transparisteel protection.

The RotS novelization explains the Invisible Hand's porthole shattering, by stating thatg it had been hit previously by a starfighter's laser bolts and had been severely weakened prior to Grievous sticking it with a force pike.

 

I really like that.

There's The Crusader from SW Gamer #10 for example, a droid frigate that fled when it's developers tried to take it apart. It still roams the spacelanes, stopping pirate attacks and rescuing stranded crews.

I just imagined droid activists buying and repairing old droids starfighters and releasing them into freedom in some remote space droid preserve.


Kam

 

>>>There's The Crusader from SW Gamer #10 for example, a droid frigate that fled when it's developers tried to take it apart. It still roams the spacelanes, stopping pirate attacks and rescuing stranded crews. <<<

I'm glad someone else remembers The Crusader.

I once suggested a retcon tying it in with the Iron Knights (with them being the hypothetical "friends" mentioned in the Gamer article.)

 

Just thought of this-- is there anything in NEGTD about either the Republic Commando or Hero of Cartao B-2 variants?

 

What about the new advanced battle droid of Rogue Planet? It got some sort of designation, but don't think it was B2. I want to say E-something.

 

the Rogue Planet droid were E5, whichis why I suggested the new droids in LOTJ 5 be dubbed E6

 

Wonder where the E5 fits into the B1-B2-etc scheme.

 

I think it's something like: Hunter/Killer droid (seen in Stark Hyperspace War); B1; E4 baron droid; E5 (logical progression); B2; B3 ultra; then hopefully E6 will get canonized.

 

When he is defrosted, there is a reference to "ten billion individual images that compromised a lifespan into any kind of coherent selective order". When advanced information theory is applied to things like the human brain, each memory is treated as a second long (hence why the processing power of the human brain is described in hertz instead of FLOPS despite the fact that hertz is based of arcitecture, not raw power which is FLOPS). 1*1^10 seconds is 316 earth years.

Since it's an obscure reference, and that interpration is very technical for a rather artistic description, its pretty easy to dismiss. But its still there.

The fact that the novel's description of him, and his actions, flaty contradict the movies? He is talked about having fingers, and palms, and a couple of other things that are wrong if you look at him. It was pretty clear that KJA was thinking of a different droid when he wrote that story.

 

As a guy whose training and specialty is based in power generation (specifically I'm a nuclear tech on a USN carrier) I'll tell you flat out that fossil fuels can't match nuclear power. And nuclear power can't match annihilation, which is what Star Wars ships use.

One possibility is that the slaves are feeding in fuel rods - the great heep doesn't care if the slaves dies of radiation afterall. And there is nothing that says that the Silentium and Abominatiors must be able to match or top the rest of the galaxy. The idea that old races are far more advanced then modern folk is hooey to me.

Also, WRT transparisteel and the IH, the ROTS novel explains that the bridge got hit by a blast from a fighter prior to that. So it took a kiloton level shot and survived, but it was suficiently damaged that the staff exploding took it out.

 

I've been waiting for a retcon for this for a long time. Nice.

In the game Super Star Wars, a spider-like droid enemy similar to the BT-16 and the TS-Arach shows up defending the Death Star's detention block. Later, it reappears in Super Empire Strikes Back invading Echo Base. This droid could possibly be one of the BT-16 variants.

In a rather amazing coincidence, a droid visually similar to the RIC-series appears in the beginning of X-wing Rogue Squadron: The Phantom Affair. It performs the same function, too: pulling the repulsor sled of the wounded Wes Janson.

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I found another nitpicky problem while rereading some of the entries. In the LOM entry, it is said that IA released the series sometime after the Clone Wars. However, a LOM-series droid shows up in the [i]Jango Fett: Open Seasons[/i] frame story, set approximately 10 years [i]before[/i] the Clone Wars. It is owned by Count Dooku, and somehow assists with the torture and/or observation of the captured Mandalorian Silas.

This could be retconned, though, by saying that IA did its market tests circa 30 BBY and decided to release the final product around 15 or so years BBY. [face_thinking]

 

Heh. I was playing around in Yoda Stories, and found a rather amusing side-quest where Luke must find a motivator for an old EV-series droid. Evidently, something had damaged it or taken it out (probably with good reason ) and had left the 'bot rusting in the forest. Luke finds the motivator and puts it back in... and the droid runs off, dropping a Stormtrooper ID. Has the Skywalker created a monster?

 

On KJA's IG-88 story; might it have all been a dream going on in IG-88's processor? It's too ridiculous to have actually happened.

 

What, so IG-88 suddenly wakes up in the shower?

IG-88: I dream, therefore I am.

I like it

 

Or its a simulation a computer program that think's its IG-88 on the Second Death Star.