RA-7 PROTOCOL DROID (ISB Rebuild)

[shootingwomprats]

Another conversion from FFG's Cyphers and Masks. Please comment and make suggestions.

[Naaman]

This may not matter, but I had a question about the droid's data capacity:

How much data can the droid's memory hold? And does it discard information that is a certain age when it reaches capacity to make room for more data?

This could be an issue if, for example, when combing a paticular droid's data banks, the intelligence operative misses some data by weeks or days or hours because it was erased to make room for more.

I assume that there could be an uplink to an ISB databse whereby the droid "dumps" old data there to make room for new, but then there is always the possibility of being out of range for communication with the imperial holonet.

On a related note, as a means to conserve memory, perhaps the droid only "saves" certain recordings that meet a predetermined set of criteria, and dumps "unimportant" data when its memory is full. Alternatively, it uploads "important" data to a primary database and "unimportant" data to an archival database.

In this case (which is the main point of this post), is it possible to "trick" the droid (whether intentionally or not) into miscategorizing certain types of information, making their discovery by intelligence operatives less likely?

[shootingwomprats]

[Naaman]

Sorry. Let me shed more light.

In the "intelligence industry" there are certain categories of information, among them misinformation and dis-information. Counter intelligence is also something to be considered.

Supposing that you had a paranoid enough character or that you had a character who caught onto the droid's spying, do you see as a possibility the droid's programming being exploited to the advantage of the character in question such that the droid's handler either believes he has collected valuable intel (but actually hasn't) or is unable to sort through the information because the droid has been tricked into recording a bunch of random nonsense day to day things (supposing, for example, that the droid's mark used specific language to prompt the recording of worthless data and using other kinds of coded language which bypasses the droid's "alert" algorithm when wanting to pass sensitive information in the droid's presence)?

[Dredwulf60]

Am I missing something, or does it seem a little silly to have a 'spy' droid design.

I know SWR was just going by the established info, but it seems ridiculous to me.

It would be like saying that 'All spies wear tuxedos like James Bond all the time.' When you see one how could you not at least suspect a spy...even if other people DO wear tuxedos.

I put it up there with establishing that Bothans are a 'spying' species.

*shakes head*

[Mamatried]

[CRMcNeill]

The impression I get is that not all of them are spy droids. Note that the write-up says that they were sold back to the Imperial military at fire-sale prices, with the ISB (Surveillance Branch, presumably) modifying a sizeable portion of that stock into spy droids for internal security use. So it's not that all of the droids are spies, but a lot of them are, and they are indistinguishable from the non-spy variants that serve normal protocol functions.

So the question then becomes, how widely known is it that the spy droid variant exists? Is it an open secret among the Imperial military, or is it dismissed as a conspiracy theory of the tinfoil hat variety ("Don't pay any attention to that loon; he thinks the droids are spying on us")?
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[CRMcNeill]

[Naaman]

I missed all this coversation somehow.

Anyway, I make no claim as to having any clue what a droid's memory capacity might be.

I only know that things have limits and some droids are better than others and that "if droids could think, there'd be none of us here."

So I have to assume that droids are significantly more limited than humans in terms of interpretation of information, and especially limited in their ability as eavesdroppers since they would need to be able to interpret things like innuendos (which are very dependent upon previously established idioms that may be unique to the speaker or particular group).

I tend to shy away from the idea that droids have effectively unlimited memory. It diminishes them as characters and relegates them (in my mind) to utilitarian devices. As I see it, for example, the most amazing SW droid is orders of magnitude less sophisticated than Data, which is the closest I would say any droid has come to human-like intelligence.

For that reason, I like to think that the limitations of physical memory chips add an element of "weakness" to a droid's otherwise impressive ability to analyze and sort certain kinds of information relative to a human.

If not, then, "there'd be none of us here."

[CRMcNeill]

Well, they pretty much are utilitarian devices, apart from the ones that become PCs. Ultimately, is it really important for gaming purposes to know exactly how much memory storage an espionage droid has? Why not just let the GM handwave it; it either has enough or it doesn't, but usually it will have enough.

And how much memory does a human being have? If nothing else, a droid's CPU is going to prioritize newer information over older, with older, low-priority data being overwritten in favor of newer. There are probably espionage sub-routines built into the droid's CPU to flag conversations or visual data that contain certain keywords or images, and the droid probably has enough intuitive capability to add new "flags" on its own.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index