So the Confederacy of Independent Systems’ droid army is notorious for being very expensive and resource heavy. So it makes sense the separatists are looking to cut costs wherever they can. Yet form my understanding, as the war dragged on, so did the need to reduce upkeep costs and materials used to make droids, with even at one point the CIS begged for price reductions just to afford Droidekas. So it looked like the longer the war went on, the CIS had less material and income to produce droids.
However, in a hypothetical scenario where the Clone Wars kept going to the point where the CIS started running very low on supplies and materials, what drastic measures would the Confederacy preform to cut down on costs?
Essentially, what would last ditch versions of CIS droids like the B1 battle droid or B2 super battle droid look like? How would they be able cut down on costs even more just keep an army up?
TL:DR: What would be the Volkssturmgewehr of battle droids?
Comments
Reminders for Commenters:
All responses must be A) sincere, B) polite, and C) strictly watsonian in nature. If “watsonian” or “doylist” is new to you, please review the full rules here.
No edition wars or gripings about creators/owners of works. Doylist griping about Star Wars in particular is subject to permanent ban on first offense.
We are not here to discuss or complain about the real world.
Questions about who would prevail in a conflict/competition (not just combat) fit better on r/whowouldwin. Questions about very open-ended hypotheticals fit better on r/whatiffiction.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
In the OG Battlefront 2 campaign, there’s a mission where a Genossian restarts a droid foundry on Mustafar and the mission is to first neutralize any of their ships, later go down and destroy the factory and the Genossian who activated it. This is in legacy.
In Disney canon, there’s an episode where the Ghost crew searches for proton bombs(?) and stumbles upon a Factory that is also the very last holdout since the Tactical droid rejected the sh it down command, deeming it a Republic trick. Whatever troops he had fought against the Empire and “lost” (as the tactical droid escaped) but also survived. It is considered the last battle of the clone wars to a degree.
They were kind of already operating like this anyway. Because Palpatine ensured they were prevented from using their droids competently and from innovating. If something happened to Palps for whatever reason and the CIS were forced to ride the war to the bitter end, then they’d either be freed from their shackles and dominate the battlefield or stay stagnant and slowly die out. It seems you’re more interested in the latter, so that’s what I’ll tailor my answer towards.
The overall strategy would be quantity over quality. At this stage, the goal isn’t to win through power, just to keep trying to delay Republic advances.They’d probably focus on modular construction, so reuse of scrap and modular parts would become key. We’d see a lot of Frankensteinian droids with cannibalized and mismatched parts in various states of disrepair. Theyd also look to severely simplify their droids so they require fewer steps or resources to assemble, possibly in-field or even by other droids. This is uncharted territory, so I’ll try to come up with some ideas I think would be plausible:
“Already cheap, but there’s always room to cut corners.”
They’d have plastic or composite limbs in place of metal. A lot easier to take down, but since they’re so cheap you can make 5 for the price of. Their already bare-bones AI would be further stripped down, severely limiting and tactical thinking, if that. They might just bring back the central control units. They’d probably have exposed wiring, their internal circuitry hanging out with no insulation. And for extra style points let’s give them recycled voice modules with glitchy comms, reused audio logs.
“Just cover the important bits, no need for overkill.”
To cut costs they’d have just a skeletal endoskeleton frame with only critical parts being “armored.” Replace the arm canons with basic blaster attachments or even melee tools like repurposed mining gear. Reduce their power cores: Shorter operational time, maybe rigged for suicide runs or temporary skirmishes. Maybe even just make them sprinting bombs.
“We’ve still got all these parts, might as well strip what we need and send in what we don’t.”
They’d probably be phased out entirely in favor of cheaper alternatives, but because of the production scale of the CIS, we might see them pop up as they’re using everything they have available and wouldn’t want to waste the parts they already have. They probably wouldn’t have shield generators, having the parts repurposed for other, more necessary equipment. No wheel transformation, just crawling or hobbling movement, for zombie points because why not. And let’s make some mounted versions, basically stationary turrets salvaged from old Droidekas
“Just slap the parts together, we need droids out there NOW!”
Scavenger Droids: Constructed from battlefield salvage, such as clone armor, wrecked walkers, even non combat droids like astromech and nanny droids
Frankenstein units: like a B1 torso welded to a STAP. Astromech head on a droideka.
Salvage Droids: Repurposed civilian or factory droids retrofitted with weapons: mining droids wielding repurposed drills, repair bots armed with buzzsaws.No combat training, just overwhelming numbers with anything that can move or hold a weapon.
Remote-Controlled Swarms, as I said, might make a comeback. Central command AI (like a Lucrehulk core or command droid) would control dozens, if not hundreds, of ultra-simplified, camera-only droids that act as eyes and guns. They might even strain their capabilities to madness. Something cheap and fast to make, but easily shut down if the signal is lost.
Imo as resources and funding dried up, we’d start seeing the more complex and better-equipped droids fade out, and all that would be left B1 droids.
Ignore the droid army and focus on the navy.
The cost of infantry and tank droids or optionally manned vehicles is a drop in the ocean compared to the massive costs of a SW navy.
But a last ditch CIS Army would be primarily organics with whatever droids they can keep running. You’d have prewar units intermixed with late-mid war units and whatever else you can get your hands on.
It would likely be more diverse than a well functioning and supplied Droid army but likely less capable since you can’t say “we aren’t using those crab droids, we have these Dwarf Spider Droids” it’s “grab those heavy infantry droids, the mechanics can work the maintenance issues out in any that survive the coming battle since we need as many as possible”
The navy would alternate between rarely taking fights against anything that can fight back or fighting like lions to defend critical infrastructure that cannot be lost. Anything that can carry a gun is now carrying a gun.
I would have to imagine an Umbaran style army where it’s mostly indigenous local militia forces, supplemented by whatever confederate war material is available.
Without any potential Droid Factory to reproduce droids lost, their deployments and use would have to be more conservative and used in situations where droid forces, depending on the ones available, are better suited then whatever militia forces you have on hand. Asymmetrical warfare against the overwhelming, possibly days old triumphant Imperial Clone Army with their unlimited resources would make direct engagements potentially impossible. Digging in, trenches, hit and run attacks, ambushes, logistic attacks, assassinations would probably be more preferential as field battles at this point would be a no go.
Try and bleed the enemy for long enough, that they might just give up. Not lose, just give up. And hope they don’t spitefully bomb the planet from orbit afterwards.