astromech droid's origins

[griff]

I was watching E1 TPM and I was thinking that it seems that all astromech droids are from Naboo. We see Rd units on the queen's ship the NY fighters and the only one we see off world (other than R2) is on tatoonie is in Watto's shop in a oil bath. But after Palpatine became Supreme Chancellor there now one jedi ships and in E3 there on the Republic ships and even on the Death Star. Is the proliferation of R2 units just Palpatine bringing home the bacon to Naboo?
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"EXECUTE ORDER 67. Wait a minute, that doesn't sound like order 67..... No, wait. Yes, yes it does. EXECUTE ORDER 68" Palpatine's last moments - robot chicken.

[evilnerf]

Well. What I came away from Episode 1 with was that the R2 units were imported to serve the Naboo military during King Vurna's military build up. I have never seen any context to suggest that Naboo has the kind of industrial infrastructure to make droids.
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His eyes are shifty. That's how you know the nerf did it.

[Thx1138]

The Astrodroid concept was not naboo based. if you remember from TPM, one of Anakin's friends was surprised to see an astrodroid "R2" on tatoonie but the rational would be that an outer rim planet would not likely have many if any on it. Also since they are class 2 droids which are meant to repair and build things as well as not really interact with sentient being, you wouldn't expect to see them in the upper levels of coursant. If anything, astro droids would be used on starships as astrogation backup and repair like what happened to the royal cruiser. Also on the naboo royal cruiser, there were members from multiple series, off the top of my head I remember seeing mostly R2 units and at least one R4 unit and one R5 unit. The ratio of R2's to other series can be explained that the price of R2 units started to drop with the introduction of the later series. And as evilnerf had pointed out, it was most likely that most of the astromechs on naboo were bought for the military buildup with probably a few originally bought many years ago to maintain the royal cruisers, R2-D2 would have fallen in to this batch in my mind since sources have said that he had be working for the royal house of naboo for a while.

[griff]

An astromech on Tatoonie would not be unlikely since of their proximity. Watto even had hyper drive parts for the queen's ship. Since we don't see them anywhere else until Palpatine was supreme chancellor. I can see Palpatine awarding contacts to his home planet to make droids for the Republic, which then became standardized throughout the galaxy since R2-D2 can jack into a Separatist ship in eIII. there needs to be a emoticons for tongue-in-cheek post.
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"EXECUTE ORDER 67. Wait a minute, that doesn't sound like order 67..... No, wait. Yes, yes it does. EXECUTE ORDER 68" Palpatine's last moments - robot chicken.

[Thx1138]

Keep in mind TPM was the first of the prequel trilogy, also a considering the naboo are a people obsessed about preserving the planets resources and environment, I find it hard to believe that Naboo would be willing to build the huge factories need to produce the sheer number of Astro droids the market would eventually demand. I also remember reading somewhere that naboo really imports all high technology items in order to preserve the planets environment since a lot of high technology components create undesirable byproducts. And if you are wondering how they pay for the high tech items, they sell the plasma from the planet core. Also even though Tatoonie is near naboo, not being in the republic makes it less likely to have certain amenities. Also the parts for the Royal Cruiser were made by an outside company, the Nubian company exports high quality parts for many royal and high political people. And since watto was apparently the only person on the planet who had the component, it is not as common as you would think. And if you say the Trade Federation could have had astrodroids on there ships, the reason they didn't was to cut down on cost because Nemodians are a very thrifty species, the PK worker droids we see in it are a much cheaper alternative than a astrodroid. And as I had said before, the astromech concept was designed to be used on ships such as capital or other craft. I also have to go back to my earlier point that, as droids that communicate in binary, most intelligent species would have little use for them in the political offices on coursant or the Jedi high council chamber, which were the only areas we really see outside of naboo and tatooine.
I would suggest looking up industrial automaton on wookieepeida before some of the more hard core people get wind of this thread.

[Ning Leihrec]

Seems more like astromechs are ubiquitous in the SWU. Even less technologically advanced backwater ports are crawling with droids and many of them appear to be some form of astromech.