[Accepted] Combat Robotics

[Scheveningen]

Type (e.g. Planet, Faction, System): General historical overview

Founding/Settlement Date (if applicable):  Chronologically first initially developed by the Skrell in the 17th century. Initially developed by Humanity in the late 23rd century.

Region of Space: Present Alliance territory, Jargon Federation space.

Controlled by (if not a faction): N/A

Other Snapshot information: For as long as anyone can remember, anytime an innovation of technology has come from the proverbial woodwork has there also been attempts by various military industries to attempt to weaponize the new creation. Whether it be the wheel, the discovery of fire, all the way down to lasers and robotics, many things have been twisted and turned to fuel the humanoid need to create means of which to commit violence with in order to gain abstract forms of power or influence in their own social environments, or even to simply be prepared to defend their own way of life, whichever one's perspective is.

Robots, whether positronic or not, are no exception to this. Robots have been used in countless occasions and in varying forms and terminology to define their role and purpose in war, whether this be unmanned drones that answer to a humanoid controller's direct input or a more sophisticated learning interface that processes insurmountable amounts of potential outcomes and adjusts their preparations accordingly to suit almost all possible complications to a future scenario. The value of sending a robot in the place of a humanoid to do war cannot be understated, and when produced to a factory production amount, many biological lives are spared the need to fight for their own nation or community.

Due to numerous occasions of militarized robots creating specific complications, and the numerous treatises and agreements signed between the various nations of the known local galaxy, robots created for the sole purpose of directly killing or destroying have been unconditionally outlawed. It is considered a severe felony within the Jargon Federation, the Sol Alliance, the Eridani Corporate Federation, The Serene Republic of Elyra, The Izweski Nation, and the Republic of Biesel to produce, distribute, own, purchase or sell a robot whose purpose is of the strict pursuance of killing or committing acts of war in place of another biological entity. While the various states have differing punishments, ranging from institutionalized rehabilitation (such as in the Republic of Biesel) all the way to capital punishment (such as in the Jargon Federation).

The PRA and the Empire of Dominia have not co-signed this treaty. The former case is largely due to the on-going conflict on Adhomai tying up the bureaucratic nature of co-signing inter-factional agreements, and the latter case is due to combat robots already being a violation of one of many of Dominia's Edicts, of which they punish heavily for.

Long Description: The Jargon Federation's development of military technology during the 17th century was ultimately sparse, given their intrinsic lack of experience with war-fare compared to that of other species. The Skrell are still by-and-large the second-most advanced in the present timeline. [To explain, the Vaurca have been and are still the most advanced, the most relevant hives just cannot currently reproduce their technology, unlike the major contenders now.] While their development in AI technology did not come until the 20th century in CE, during the 17th century the Skrellian's most critically acclaimed military researchers were still dead-set on attempting to completely neutralize the need for Skrell servicemen to defend their own interests, and by complete accident also discovered a synthetic material known as delhkrin. Delhkrin is similar to the material silicon through its texture and appearance. Delhkrin was multi-purpose, it is an excellent sealant, an excellent heat insulator and also a conductor for electrical conductors [if you think this breaks physics, look up metallic vanadium dioxide]. Delhkrin was instrumental in developing easy, cheap and simple modularity for synthetics, and allowed produced units to become more cost-efficient than ever. A recurring theme in development of synthetic peacekeepers prior to the Skrell development of AI tech was coating any kind of robotic assembly with varying amounts of Delhkrin and seeing what stuck.

Ultimately, the projects were defunded, despite the excellent performance of the varying models of combat robots designed by the Jargon Federation military divisions. The reason for this was largely due to the lack of need for such robotic war-waging vessels at the given time, and governmental audits of the Jargon military divisions led to outcry about funds being wasted. The assets were eventually re-focused into more civilian use of synthetic forms. However, many of the remaining combat models (known as the Del-Kor) were shipped to underground bases for permanent storage. During the Third Incident, Glorsh-Omega apparently found the location of this base and immediately re-activated all of the combat models, merging all of their processes into the singularity. The facility was later repurposed into an outfitting camp for modernization of the Del-Kor designs, and then production of more militarized robotic units, specialized for varying purposes such as peacekeeping, riot suppression, assassination drone models, and so on. The cheapness of these synthetics made it easy for Glorsh-Omega to mass produce, project power and flex super hard on dissidents with superior and overwhelming force. After Glorsh-Omega supposedly committed self-kill, the remnants of the Skrell government destroyed the production facility, erased any known record of the original location of the facility, and scrapped any synthetics produced from it. They also heavily restricted the production, distribution, purchasing ans sales of Delhkrin to government-approved means only. The acquisition of Delhkrin was not a small generosity to be granted, as one would need to pass a very extensive background check and be of very particular positive value to the Jargon Federation to ever be granted access to such a restricted material.

The Alliance itself was rather late in developing sophisticated, unmanned combat robots that were capable of parsing simple verbal or terminal-input commands to engage in combat operations. This was largely due to the overall cheapness, at the time, of training individuals to simply be able to pilot infantry fighting vehicles and mechanized exosuits, while still allowing their pilots to be able to improvise when certain things didn't go according to plan. The human factor was rated more of a boon than a curse by the Alliance Military Council, and it took almost two hundred and fifty years before the AMC began to seriously consider and fund militarized robotics production.

Rather curiously distinct from Jargon combat robotics development, there was no McGuffin that made things far more convenient when producing synthetics. Combat robots were notoriously expensive, largely due to the Alliance's military R&D adding a rather hefty amount of complexity to their designs. When designing their proverbial weapon to end future internal wars, they chose to go the route of creating a flexible platform with a micromodular architecture, primarily to prioritize the ability to add certain quirks or varying specializations in their synthetics.

To make matters even worse, robotic production and development was divided into two series of robots: L-Series and K-Series.
The Laser-Series Robotics Platforms were generally specialized into aggressive, assault-oriented designs, strictly defined into the role of invasions and breaking even the most robust defense. There were many concerns regarding the integrity of the aggression inhibitors pertaining to the Laser-Series, as there were more than a few recorded accidents regarding preventable casualties that were caught in the line of fire.
The King-Series Robotics Platforms were specialized into defensive, disruption-heavy tactics. These robots were very expensive than Laser-Series platforms, but each local K-series unit worked in perfect tandem with one another to stall and tire out even the most relentless enemy. They utilized less-than-lethal measures of force to capture would-be invaders in order to be interrogated for information later to give to the L-Series for later assaults.

The motivation of this technology development, however, was not like the Jargon Federation's motivations. Conflict was very typical within the Alliance territories during the 2200s and 2300s, especially given the occurrence of the First Interstellar War. Prior to the war starting, military analysts rated the possibility of the Coalition of Colonies instigating an attack on the Alliance as substantially high, within the 78% percentile of likelihood. Ultimately, the Sol Alliance needed a means in which they could crush an insurrection far before it could start by possessing a large force of disposable military assets that could cause the attacking Coalition to take considerable physical and financial losses, all the while neutralizing any personnel losses on the Alliance's side entirely. The best case scenario they hoped for was to deter a conflict entirely by gradually beginning to deploy simple synthetic peacekeepers and military patrol units throughout Alliance and Coalition territory, creating pressure on the Coalition to simply not cause an issue.

However, there were many problems with this. The prediction that the Coalition would attack the Alliance first was certain in likelihood, but the matter of 'when' made matters rather complex. The AMC greatly overestimated the threat of the Coalition of Colonies and attempted to rush the development of combat robots out into general production. Likewise, they were extremely cocky once the figuratively bloodthirsty L-Series rolled out to ruthlessly quash local small insurrections and the buggy, slow and eventually defiant K-Series platforms began to seriously hamper the Alliance's image across the nation. The Coalition of Colonies eventually used this oppressiveness as a cassus belli and began to organize and launch offensives versus the Alliance, who were unexpectedly caught off guard by this attack, igniting the First Interstellar War.

The new combat robots were understandably as unprepared as their creators, unable to deal with the spirited Coalition forces waging a defensive guerrilla war. The combat robots were eventually recalled, and their development was re-invested in and taken far more seriously by the reformed AMC. They were uninvolved in the war for the next six years, until 2284. The L-Series and K-Series were deployed with a new cousin series, the T-Series. Unlike its two cousins, there is no official long term for it, it is merely referred to as the "T-Series Robotics Platform." Coalition propaganda at the time painted the T as meaning "Terror-Series", but the T-Series platforms were very rarely seen on the front line. Historical accounts regarding the T-Series units are contradictory, but declassified information from Alliance accounts regarding the series platform indicated that they were manufactured for their instrumental abilities in constructing forward military outposts and rendering several hostile environments far more habitable to deployed troops, quickly constructing habitable strongholds in the most dangerous of places. Coalition accounts recovered from that era claim T-Series units utilized biological weapons such as atmosphere-destroying weapons, gas, napalm and many other deadly means to render places uninhabitable. More neutral accounts claim the T-Series were irregular troops that filled roles neither the L-Series nor the K-Series held the platform flexibility to perform. Historians in the modern-day are still unable to decipher the truth on this specific matter, further exacerbated by the fact the T-Series of robotic platforms were retired by the end of the First Interstellar War, along with the L-Series and K-Series platforms.

Combat robot platforms were declared illegal by the Sol Alliance on the 10 year anniversary of the finalized construction of Unity City. As mentioned earlier, it is a capital offense for any entity to own, produce, distribute, purchase or sell any combat robot platform. While the law strictly states it is illegal for the Alliance themselves to do this, this law is constantly stretched even to the modern day, given the ease of being able to claim a combat platform is merely an unmanned drone, rather than a robot with more sophisticated artificial intelligence and advanced problem solving ability, such as the robots deployed during The First Interstellar War.

Combat robots were not considered illegal until recently in Tau Ceti when the Republic of Biesel finally co-signed the treaty forbidding the existence of combat robots earlier this year in 2461. NanoTrasen grudgingly complied to this change of legality, by disabling the ability to activate combat modules for their modular station-bound and home-bound platforms. Unbeknownst to almost everyone [except the relevant antagonists], though, NanoTrasen merely only added certain restrictions rather than removing the programming that enables their stationbounds to innately change between the now-illegal module. A purely human mistake, to be sure.

Edited May 31, 2019 by Zundy

[Zundy]

@kyres1Kinda synth lore. How do you feel about this?

[kyres1]

On 12/05/2019 at 05:43, Zundy said:

@kyres1Kinda synth lore. How do you feel about this?

Being added as we speak, albeit slowly.

[Zundy]

I'm gonna close and archive as accepted then.