Why they made Battle Droids so dumb

Did you know there's an actual lore reason why Battle Droids were so seriously dumbed down in the latter two movies. We'll talk that and more for today's Star Wars lore video!

[TheWarmachine]

And yet the Battle Droids are like a case of Beware the Silly Ones. They may be fools but they almost overwhelm their enemies in greater numbers and firepower.

[casbot]

Imagine how terrifying if the standard battle Droid had the personality and skills of Mr Bones

[Butter_Warrior]

In lore: It was easier to install dumber ai.

Real reason: It’s more funny that way.

[Ashguy]

Honestly they should have just made a backup control module for the Droids if the ships were destroyed, like for planetary protection, just have it deep underground with shielding.

[hunterkiller]

Should've just used an army of astromechs instead. Imagine a bunch of R2 warmachines. They'll be like Daleks in Star Wars.

[Meravokas]

I think the best option would be hybridization. Tactical and central computing and coordinating with an independent droid brain as well. You take half the load off of the cheap droid brain as long as they're in signal range of a DCS or field control center, whatever, but if it's taken out they may need a moment to adjust to not having that breadth of awareness, but they'll still be able to fight and won't just shut down. We see that OOM-9 was an example of this. Being the only proper (To my knowledge) commander droid at least in the Naboo invasion force, they had an independent droid brain that was tied into the DCH for all the benefits, while still actively being able to make tactical decisions and calculated risks based on information on hand on the fly without addressing central processing to make the decision, but to disseminate it instead.

[sschuster]

God I wish they kept the EP 1 style Battledroids. Their high pitch voice and utter baphoomishness makes them such a non-threat which is the last thing you'd want for your antagonists main fighting force. It's like with the Empire and every new depiction of Storm troopers making them more and more inept. Your main opposition should be threatening and overcome by the protagonists skill, ingenuity and teamwork, not their own shittyness

[YesmynameisBob]

I prefer the reason that they're just more fun that way

[Meanlucario]

Honestly, I think it would have been better for them to use both. Like if they don't expect space combat/can hide it from any attacks or need the droids at peak performance, go main computer.

[anthony]

Hybrid system - primary control is through the singular control ship (unless they can afford to have more than one in the area) but if something happens to the control ship/signals from it, they switch over to autonomous mode to continue what they are doing till connection is reestablished by a new ship or the old one.

[neofulcrum]

Numbers are pretty much their main advantage like stormtroopers.

[byzantium]

If only more of them could have sounded like OOM-9. I don't mind their later silliness, but dang the Ep 1 battle droids just sounded cool.

[Hobbit_libertaire]

Maybe that would have been too technically difficult or coastful, but imagine if a droid army was one giant decentralised computer, with each unit informing instantly every other one about everything they perceive, and being a bit of a giant brain, doing some of the calculations while other units do the other one. Therefore the lose of one unit would be a negligable lose of computing power and source of intelligence, and the whole army would be so fast-reacting and clever, the GAR would have been no match to such a force. One droid could see you from one side of the battle field and another one would instantly take you out because it was the best located unit according to the army's calculations. Sneaking on droid territory would also become quite impossible because as soon as one of them sees you, or is disconnected without any appearing reason, the whole army would know it. It would just be inimaginable

[AGuyNamedRicky]

Idk considering the CIS had such an advantage in space battles with their droid star fighters you’d think they hold on to the central processing unit a little longer, or even have both. Independent thinking units to assault areas where lucrehulks were not so firmly rooted.

[casbot]

_Why not both?_

Have centralised control but each Droid can operate independently if the main signal goes down.
So the less skilled and dumber independent battle Droid becomes a backup mode.

[KatieWhitewater]

The first method obviously had its problems at the second method has its problems too but the second method is more fun because they're so funny. 😂

[aruaoki]

In terms of voices, i actually preferred ep 1 droids because they sounded cooler. Kinda wish they kept those voices instead

[Uzarran]

They should have paired later generations with a distributed processing system, where each droid handled some of the computational functions of the army rather than isolating them or relying on a control ship.
The larger the army the smarter and more sophisticated the droids become, even if an individual was on-par with the droids we saw in TCW. Then the CIS could supplement those groups with tactical droids for an added boost in processing power and strategy.

[WolfX]

I think the Tactical Droids help to fix some of that in the later part of the war.

[DrMutran]

The individual processors would be better as a backup if the droid control ship was ever destroyed.