Wiki Showcase: ARC Robots Part 2

I'm on vacation, so you'll have to forgive me for missing my posting schedule.  With the announcement of a coming playtest, I've been busy putting all sorts of things on my wiki, so sometimes I forget to pop onto the blog and give you an update.

I have three ARC robots available to you on the wiki.  I discussed some of the the theory previously, but some commonalities:

• All ARC robots are attractive in some capacity. These robots are as much fashion accessories as tools, so naturally a noble would want them to look good.
• All ARC robots can talk.  Similar to their being attractive, ARC robots need to interface with people more than they need to interface with other machines.
• All ARC robots are humanoid.  Similar to the above issues, ARC robots need to relate to humans, so they need humans to relate to them.  Thus, even when they look odd, they have an identifiable humanoid quality to them.  That said, they're always sculpted and one would never mistake an ARC robot for a human.

The Hobnob-Pattern Tech-Bot

ARC often uses fighters with an tech-bot slot.  Hobnobs fit into that slot and serve as the "co-pilot" on most fighters, with the ability to interface with the hyperdrive to navigate through space.  In addition to that role, the Hobnob is tasked with maintaining their fighter, and so excel and maintenance and repair.

The Hobnob is "cute," and has stubby legs to help facilitate this theme, but there's also a logic to it: by being small and "dwarf-like," Hobnobs can more easily fit into ducts and tunnels.  The downside is greatly reduced move (smaller robots should have a reduced move anyway) and an inability to really fight well while running.

In my head, I see Hobnobs as switching their hands out with their toolsets, rather than having a toolkit erupt from their chest as it seems to in Star Wars.  Thus, a Hobnob might be wielding a plasma torch instead of a hand, or a fire extinguisher or a set of wrenches. If it needs to switch to a hand, it withdraws the tools and its hand emerges.  This greatly reduced the point cost of its torch and created what I thought was an interesting image.

The Squire-Pattern Armory Aide Robot

When I was thinking about robots for the Alliance, I had to think a lot about what sorts of robots they would have.  Including a Tech-bot and a Medi-bot was obvious, but what else might they have? I hit on the idea of a "squire" robot pretty early on (and I could never come up with a more apt name for them).  ARC primarily concerns itself with nobles, and modern nobles concern themselves with the twin issues of fashion and war.  This reminds me of the typical fantasy gamer, who tries to wear armor at all times; in a D&D-style game, this makes sense, as there's little social pressure not to, but it "looks wrong" to have a fully armored knight going to a party.  Psi-Wars has more of a social focus and so it makes sense that a knight would want to switch out of his armor when attending a gala, but want to switch back into it as quick as possible.

Enter the Squire.  It can house a full set of armor, or a small wardrobe of dashing, fashionable clothes, and it excels at switching the character out between both.  This means you can go to your gala in your nice outfit, and when the inevitable assassins show up, your Squire-bot Iron-Mans you into your full diamondoid armor in mere seconds.

Everything else comes down to "What does the robot do the rest of the time?" Thus they make competent combatants and butlers to assist the noble in either role of gentleman or elite warrior.

The Nightingale-Pattern Medi-Bot

The last, obvious robot to include was a medical robot.  The Alliance wants to be seen as caring, and thus it seeks to provide medical assistance where possible. More cynically, though, it places a high value on its elite warriors, and doesn't want to discard them as soon as they're hurt.  Many of their vehicles sport emergency medical facilities, and one can almost make out how they see their vehicles and materiel operating: a space knight goes out (on a Charger, for example) on some quest, and gets injured.  He signals to his ship (such as a Regal-Pattern cruiser, which comes with extensive medical facilities), which dispatches a shuttle (such as a Prestige-Pattern shuttle) which itself dispatches a Sancutary-Pattern medivac vehicle.  The vehicle rushes to the wounded character and someone needs to provide triage, and then stabilize the character, put him on the medivac vehicle, get back to the shuttle, get to the cruiser, and then get him to the proper, mobile hospital.

That "someone" would be a medi-bot.  They could know all the details of the character in and out, and be passable doctors and thus excellent paramedics.

As with all ARC robots, they need to look attractive.  That, paired with the extensive imaging software in their head and the need to have a "mouth" for chemical sensors (though you can also use those chemical sensors on sensitive fingertips, allowing them to "taste with their hands), tends to make them look like children, as they have large heads and small mouths.