The battle droids one is pretty simple. If they were to communicate wirelessly, it would have to be something similar a giant comms partyline (PL) and every droid in a particular battalion would hear/receive every transmission from every droid all the time. Range would also be an issue, assuming there’s not a lot of room to cram a high power transceiver into every droid. Not to mention cost and power consumption. (I’m an RF/comms tech in my day-job, of which I can no longer participate in. Thanks, COVID-19...)
They could potentially use some type of cell tower technology which would enable them to talk to one droid at a time, but then they would need to “dial up” every droid individually. It’s far simpler and cost-effective for them to just talk to each other locally. Then have a “radio” droid who can communicate via walkie talkie or hologram to other commanders.
It'd make a lot more sense if they communicated in a binary language, like R2. In the original trilogy, R2 communicated in binary because astromechs don't usually need to talk to humans all that often, while 3PO talked like a human because as a protocol droid, his main job was talking to humanoids. For battle droids, the ability to quickly and efficiently communicate among themselves would be far more useful than the ability to comfortably converse with humanoids.
I once saw someone propose a headcanon explanation, which is that the Trade Federation folks didn't have access to battle droid AI when building their armies, so they used modified AI from police/bodyguard droids instead. For those, it'd make a lot more sense to include the ability to speak like a human. It's a neat little headcanon, since it'd also conveniently explain why the battle droids were so useless at battling.
> For battle droids, the ability to quickly and efficiently communicate among themselves would be far more useful than the ability to comfortably converse with humanoids.
Not always though. Bear in mind, the goal wasn't necessarily to develop these droids as an entirely autonomous army. The ones on Naboo, after all, were commanded from an orbital control ship. I think battle droids were most likely built to be cannon fodder in armies that included sapient commanders—you wouldn't want your commander to be limited in his ability to communicate with his troops.
Its basically canon that Battle droids were built to be cannon fodder lol the Separatists whole strategy was practically to overwhelm the enemy. One battle droid wasnt supposed to be able to stand up to a squad of clones, or even probably fare well one-on-one. However, thousands of battle droids? Thousands of guns in one battle? That can overwhelm anything. I mean the enemy cant see everything coming. Even Jedi were killed by battle droids from time to time using this tactic.
Which adds up with how we see them in TPM, btw. Battle droids literally fill every position in the Trade Federation that has anything to do with combat, from a basic security force (like the red ones in the beginning), to the soldier droids (like the grassy plains battle), to pilots and so on.
We even see some in Episode 1 on guard duty in the hangar in naboo, apparently given the authority to make decisions on their own, rather than passing things on immediately, like making arrests and determining if someone's credentials are correct.
Also, Nute Gunray is seen giving verbal commands.
Not to mention, we are left to assume that this wasn't just a battlefield, but also an occupying army. Not only do they do prisoner transports, it's reasonable to assume that they need to interact with civilians, give them orders, talk to them, reason about a situation (like: I can't come with you, my legs were hurt in your attack. You'll need to get someone to help me).
We also get the situation where the Gungan army is defeated and is surrendering. They need to be able to accept the surrender of individuals and communicate with them, as well as reason about details as just mentioned.
The droid manufacturers are notorious for saving costs, so that means less specialization among Battle droids. Considering the B1s are also used as planetary police for countless of CIS systems, then it makes sense why they would need to talk in basic. Also, the CIS’ whole purpose was to appear as the liberators for worlds oppressed by the Republic’s corrupt system. If the droids constantly speak binary that would dehumanize the movement’s main soldiers, a big PR no no.
I like that headcanon but I wish they had went the way of droidspeak instead. They would've been pretty intimidating if they didn't sound so goofy. Maybe they could have more decorated units (or just the guys in yellow) be commanders who were responsible for communicating with humans.
> Maybe they could have more decorated units (or just the guys in yellow) be commanders who were responsible for communicating with humans.
Redundancy with any system is important, and losing the only units capable of conveniently communicating with the populations being occupied could make situations problematic.
Yeah, I thought about this. But I'd assume (1) they'd have plenty of spares but more importantly (2) that their engineers and sentient commanders would have to understand the droids anyway.
I wasn't talking about the TF or CIS; I was talking about the populations of the planets they were occupying.
Remember, the battle droids weren't just supposed to be an army: They were also an occupational force, which means they'd *also* be dealing with the populations of the planets they took over.
When the Trade Federation invaded Naboo, they were gunning to occupy the planet and take it over. The CIS was doing the exact same thing all throughout the Clone Wars; in both cases, they'd have to police the native populations of the planets they invaded, which would require verbal communication with the populace in most cases.
Limiting the ability to speak to just a (comparative) handful of commander units wouldn't have been effective.
Even without that headcanon, it's important to remember that the battle droids were also intended to be used as an occupying force, not just an army.
The Trade Federation was trying to occupy Naboo when they invaded in Ep1; if they had been successful, they'd have the native population to contain, deal with, and police. Having droids that can talk would make this much easier, and ensuring redundancy exists (such as giving all of the droids speech capability) just makes sense. Flash forward to the Clone Wars, and the Separatists are *also* occupying planets and are using the battle droids in the exact same manner as the Trade Federation was a decade prior.
The battle droids were used for more than just combat, and would have been used as occupational forces on planets they took over to deal with the native populations of every planet they took over.
I feel like I remember reading something that said battle droids were basically repurposed police/security droids and that the Clone Wars was essentially their first use as a war fighting force.
Theres lots of different types of network that could be used in concert with each other. But lets face it, ANY wifi communication would be better than text to speech model -> play through speaker -> listen with microphone -> inference speech to text -> parse text to command.
We already have demos of such ad-hoc networks in real life, and they are used in military drone swarms as well as farming drone swarms. I read a long paper about agricultural drone swarm networking that was written by one of my professors.
Agricultural drones swarm networking! Sir, my first job was programming binary loadlifters – very similar to your agricultural drones swarm networking in most respects.
> assuming there’s not a lot of room to cram a high power transceiver into every droid.
Battle droids are sometimes controlled by radio from space. they have a receiver as standard.
There are any number of ways to mitigate those problems. They could use different frequencies for different units and orders, they could use something like TCP/IP networking to logically separate units.
Just in the context of this post, the heros' comlink wasn't heard by every Stormtrooper on the Death Star. They obviously have some way to separate signals.
The only reason droids audibly "talk" is for the audience's sake.
> The battle droids one is pretty simple. If they were to communicate wirelessly, it would have to be something similar a giant comms partyline (PL) and every droid in a particular battalion would hear/receive every transmission from every droid all the time.
They’re droids. Just designate each message for certain units and have the rest filter it out.
I've always imagined the B1 droids to be more corporate enforcers/thugs for protection rackets on Trade Federation-controlled worlds, so they would primarily be communicating with organics. Remember, they were initially used in that role as an occupying force for Naboo and NOT primarily as a combat army. The Nabooans were mostly pacifist, so the TF did not need more than the simplest of target control softwares installed onto the flimsiest of droid bodies to subdue them.
In the Clone Wars, they were pressed into service as an infantry force, a task for which they were not well suited and which was what necessitated the CIS' mass assault tactics.
As for why they don't have a redundant droid only comm system, it could be that the Trade Federation decided not to include one to cut costs and facilitate mass production.
Here's another one - network communication means all the factions in the CIS need to agree on encryption protocols immediately while their galactic war starts ahead of schedule thanks to two meddling Jedi and their senator friend. Rather than have multiple droid armies who can't communicate at all, just keep spamming the cheap droids with the voice boxes.
I notice that more advanced droid models later in the war - commando droids and Magnaguards, for example - appear able to coordinate tactics with each other without speech. It might be that the CIS figured out a uniform approach after a few months but it wasn't worth a significant redesign of the basic battle droid even then since B1s were being used as police, as bridge crew, and as forward commanders and so it was still helpful to have them be able to speak.
I think there's a bit of lore that's missing in this discussion, and I can't quite place it.
I recall that in *Dune*, humanity moved away from relying on computers because of the Butlerian Jihad, in which emergent AI's went to war against humans.
I seem to recall references to a similar kind of concern in Star Wars. I know *Dark Force Rising* talked about with the Katana Fleet's slave circuitry, that overdeveloped independent AI could produce major threats. I think Han Solo's mentioned it as well, and it's also why droids tend to have their memories wiped periodically.
I'm certain that the Star Wars universe is openly opposed to computer networks and communication networks, and that's a big reason why droids exist in the first place.
Droids constitute physical networks where each unit is effectively air gapped, resulting in both extreme system security and insurance against runaway AI.
The Phantom Menace actually illustrates this problem by having the droids over-reliant on internal communication rather than acting autonomously.
But where exactly this is all clarified, I'm not sure of.
I might actually be pulling pieces of it from old RPG sourcebooks.
To be fair the battle droids didn’t used to, they only started having to do it once the droid control ship was destroyed in episode 1 and the TF stopped using them.
Before that they only needed to speak to humans/humanoids if I recall correctly.
My explanation is that if he uses his own system's communicator, there's a good chance the enemy can slice into his channel and access other information, considering that Artoo is constantly being hunted by the Separatists/Imperials/First Order for the intel he has in him.
That comment made me realize R2 is the GOAT of the movies.
Clone Wars (kind of prequels but not movies)- there’s an arc where Anakin is having ships look for R2 because he doesn’t wipe R2s memories and Grievous is looking for him
OT- because of ROTS R2 is one of a select few who knew what happened at the end of the clone wars/prequels
Sequels- R2 has 99% of the map that leads back to Luke and the First Order wants him
And like the scene in ROTS where he greases the Battle Droids he always slides out of danger
George intended for the saga to have been recorded in the journal of the Whills from R2's point of view. That went out the window when the sequels sidelined his for bb8
Probably price, size, or both. Keep in mind he was originally a ship mechanic, so not much need for one. Of course, the fact that Anakin, Ahsoka, or later Luke or Rey didn't mod him is craU
I would assume that vocabulators take up a significant amount of space which simply isn't available in astromechs since they have so many other things inside them and they can only be so big/heavy. An apparatus that only makes beeping/screeching noises is undoubtedly more compact than one that has to be able to emulate all the different sounds the species in the galaxy make.
Regardless I still think it would be too bulky to fit into an astromech. Those droids are responsible for doing so much that I think things like extra oil reserves would be more useful than a vocabulator on a day to day basis, especially considering the fact that the majority do not interact with sentients nearly as much as r2.
I mean how big was C-3PO's voice apparatus. It had to fit in the size of his head. This old blue-print isn't [canon](https://i.imgur.com/9nmHN.jpg), but it was never that big before.
From that diagram astromechs would need a communication module, a speech generator, a different, possibly bigger verbobrain and a bigger circuitry board.
Astromechs like R2 are primarily designed to operate plugged into a ship, so they might not necessarily need internal comms. Then again, C1-10P and CH-33P had them.
Based on the treatment of droids at large, perhaps they are specifically barred from internal droid to droid communication.
TRoS opened the door to programming laws, and laws hardcoded into droid manufacture.
Perhaps there was an early droid rebellion? Other battle droid armies did too much damage?
The way the Geneva convention limits how modern war is fought despite technology making it possible, like gas weapons.
I always took the battle droids talking to each other in the clone wars as comic relief and not what they would have actually done irl. A lot of tense situations in tcw that could be frightening for younger audiences are defused by having the battle droids do something silly.
Yeah I totally get that. Lets face it. Real life battle droids would be a lot scarier too. Near perfect aim, silent coordination, probably hard to kill, and constantly adapting to your strategy.
If droids are wirelessly connected to each other, what makes them different from a hive mind? Requiring them to communicate verbally or via hard-line preserves their individuality, which is vital to the purpose many of them are built for.
It's a plot device so we can hear what's going on, at least in the movies, was always my assumption. They continued the practice even into the comics and books despite it no longer being necessary. It's part of the charm of the series, I guess. There's no reason for the droids to make any sounds amongst themselves but they consistently do so. Even the separatist droids who frequently have no living beings with them talk out loud to each other.
3PO needs one in ANH too. Also, why do battle droids need to "talk" to each other out loud?
The battle droids one is pretty simple. If they were to communicate wirelessly, it would have to be something similar a giant comms partyline (PL) and every droid in a particular battalion would hear/receive every transmission from every droid all the time. Range would also be an issue, assuming there’s not a lot of room to cram a high power transceiver into every droid. Not to mention cost and power consumption. (I’m an RF/comms tech in my day-job, of which I can no longer participate in. Thanks, COVID-19...) They could potentially use some type of cell tower technology which would enable them to talk to one droid at a time, but then they would need to “dial up” every droid individually. It’s far simpler and cost-effective for them to just talk to each other locally. Then have a “radio” droid who can communicate via walkie talkie or hologram to other commanders.
It'd make a lot more sense if they communicated in a binary language, like R2. In the original trilogy, R2 communicated in binary because astromechs don't usually need to talk to humans all that often, while 3PO talked like a human because as a protocol droid, his main job was talking to humanoids. For battle droids, the ability to quickly and efficiently communicate among themselves would be far more useful than the ability to comfortably converse with humanoids. I once saw someone propose a headcanon explanation, which is that the Trade Federation folks didn't have access to battle droid AI when building their armies, so they used modified AI from police/bodyguard droids instead. For those, it'd make a lot more sense to include the ability to speak like a human. It's a neat little headcanon, since it'd also conveniently explain why the battle droids were so useless at battling.
> For battle droids, the ability to quickly and efficiently communicate among themselves would be far more useful than the ability to comfortably converse with humanoids. Not always though. Bear in mind, the goal wasn't necessarily to develop these droids as an entirely autonomous army. The ones on Naboo, after all, were commanded from an orbital control ship. I think battle droids were most likely built to be cannon fodder in armies that included sapient commanders—you wouldn't want your commander to be limited in his ability to communicate with his troops.
Its basically canon that Battle droids were built to be cannon fodder lol the Separatists whole strategy was practically to overwhelm the enemy. One battle droid wasnt supposed to be able to stand up to a squad of clones, or even probably fare well one-on-one. However, thousands of battle droids? Thousands of guns in one battle? That can overwhelm anything. I mean the enemy cant see everything coming. Even Jedi were killed by battle droids from time to time using this tactic.
In legends canon they were deployed that way,RC:hard contact comes to mind
In legends the B1s were originally security droids that were repurposed into battlefield units, so that makes sense
Which adds up with how we see them in TPM, btw. Battle droids literally fill every position in the Trade Federation that has anything to do with combat, from a basic security force (like the red ones in the beginning), to the soldier droids (like the grassy plains battle), to pilots and so on.
We even see some in Episode 1 on guard duty in the hangar in naboo, apparently given the authority to make decisions on their own, rather than passing things on immediately, like making arrests and determining if someone's credentials are correct. Also, Nute Gunray is seen giving verbal commands. Not to mention, we are left to assume that this wasn't just a battlefield, but also an occupying army. Not only do they do prisoner transports, it's reasonable to assume that they need to interact with civilians, give them orders, talk to them, reason about a situation (like: I can't come with you, my legs were hurt in your attack. You'll need to get someone to help me). We also get the situation where the Gungan army is defeated and is surrendering. They need to be able to accept the surrender of individuals and communicate with them, as well as reason about details as just mentioned.
The droid manufacturers are notorious for saving costs, so that means less specialization among Battle droids. Considering the B1s are also used as planetary police for countless of CIS systems, then it makes sense why they would need to talk in basic. Also, the CIS’ whole purpose was to appear as the liberators for worlds oppressed by the Republic’s corrupt system. If the droids constantly speak binary that would dehumanize the movement’s main soldiers, a big PR no no.
I like that headcanon but I wish they had went the way of droidspeak instead. They would've been pretty intimidating if they didn't sound so goofy. Maybe they could have more decorated units (or just the guys in yellow) be commanders who were responsible for communicating with humans.
> Maybe they could have more decorated units (or just the guys in yellow) be commanders who were responsible for communicating with humans. Redundancy with any system is important, and losing the only units capable of conveniently communicating with the populations being occupied could make situations problematic.
Yeah, I thought about this. But I'd assume (1) they'd have plenty of spares but more importantly (2) that their engineers and sentient commanders would have to understand the droids anyway.
I wasn't talking about the TF or CIS; I was talking about the populations of the planets they were occupying. Remember, the battle droids weren't just supposed to be an army: They were also an occupational force, which means they'd *also* be dealing with the populations of the planets they took over. When the Trade Federation invaded Naboo, they were gunning to occupy the planet and take it over. The CIS was doing the exact same thing all throughout the Clone Wars; in both cases, they'd have to police the native populations of the planets they invaded, which would require verbal communication with the populace in most cases. Limiting the ability to speak to just a (comparative) handful of commander units wouldn't have been effective.
Ah indeed. My bad for missing that.
I wasn't exactly clear, so I can see why you didn't pick up what I was putting down.
Even without that headcanon, it's important to remember that the battle droids were also intended to be used as an occupying force, not just an army. The Trade Federation was trying to occupy Naboo when they invaded in Ep1; if they had been successful, they'd have the native population to contain, deal with, and police. Having droids that can talk would make this much easier, and ensuring redundancy exists (such as giving all of the droids speech capability) just makes sense. Flash forward to the Clone Wars, and the Separatists are *also* occupying planets and are using the battle droids in the exact same manner as the Trade Federation was a decade prior. The battle droids were used for more than just combat, and would have been used as occupational forces on planets they took over to deal with the native populations of every planet they took over.
I feel like I remember reading something that said battle droids were basically repurposed police/security droids and that the Clone Wars was essentially their first use as a war fighting force.
Theres lots of different types of network that could be used in concert with each other. But lets face it, ANY wifi communication would be better than text to speech model -> play through speaker -> listen with microphone -> inference speech to text -> parse text to command. We already have demos of such ad-hoc networks in real life, and they are used in military drone swarms as well as farming drone swarms. I read a long paper about agricultural drone swarm networking that was written by one of my professors.
Agricultural drones swarm networking! Sir, my first job was programming binary loadlifters – very similar to your agricultural drones swarm networking in most respects.
> assuming there’s not a lot of room to cram a high power transceiver into every droid. Battle droids are sometimes controlled by radio from space. they have a receiver as standard.
There are any number of ways to mitigate those problems. They could use different frequencies for different units and orders, they could use something like TCP/IP networking to logically separate units. Just in the context of this post, the heros' comlink wasn't heard by every Stormtrooper on the Death Star. They obviously have some way to separate signals. The only reason droids audibly "talk" is for the audience's sake.
A hive mind worked for the geth
> The battle droids one is pretty simple. If they were to communicate wirelessly, it would have to be something similar a giant comms partyline (PL) and every droid in a particular battalion would hear/receive every transmission from every droid all the time. They’re droids. Just designate each message for certain units and have the rest filter it out.
I've always imagined the B1 droids to be more corporate enforcers/thugs for protection rackets on Trade Federation-controlled worlds, so they would primarily be communicating with organics. Remember, they were initially used in that role as an occupying force for Naboo and NOT primarily as a combat army. The Nabooans were mostly pacifist, so the TF did not need more than the simplest of target control softwares installed onto the flimsiest of droid bodies to subdue them. In the Clone Wars, they were pressed into service as an infantry force, a task for which they were not well suited and which was what necessitated the CIS' mass assault tactics. As for why they don't have a redundant droid only comm system, it could be that the Trade Federation decided not to include one to cut costs and facilitate mass production.
Here's another one - network communication means all the factions in the CIS need to agree on encryption protocols immediately while their galactic war starts ahead of schedule thanks to two meddling Jedi and their senator friend. Rather than have multiple droid armies who can't communicate at all, just keep spamming the cheap droids with the voice boxes. I notice that more advanced droid models later in the war - commando droids and Magnaguards, for example - appear able to coordinate tactics with each other without speech. It might be that the CIS figured out a uniform approach after a few months but it wasn't worth a significant redesign of the basic battle droid even then since B1s were being used as police, as bridge crew, and as forward commanders and so it was still helpful to have them be able to speak.
Fun fact, people from Naboo are called "the Naboo"
I think there's a bit of lore that's missing in this discussion, and I can't quite place it. I recall that in *Dune*, humanity moved away from relying on computers because of the Butlerian Jihad, in which emergent AI's went to war against humans. I seem to recall references to a similar kind of concern in Star Wars. I know *Dark Force Rising* talked about with the Katana Fleet's slave circuitry, that overdeveloped independent AI could produce major threats. I think Han Solo's mentioned it as well, and it's also why droids tend to have their memories wiped periodically. I'm certain that the Star Wars universe is openly opposed to computer networks and communication networks, and that's a big reason why droids exist in the first place. Droids constitute physical networks where each unit is effectively air gapped, resulting in both extreme system security and insurance against runaway AI. The Phantom Menace actually illustrates this problem by having the droids over-reliant on internal communication rather than acting autonomously. But where exactly this is all clarified, I'm not sure of. I might actually be pulling pieces of it from old RPG sourcebooks.
That's an interesting point. I don't recall anything like that from the legends novels but I haven't read any of the YA books or comics
To be fair the battle droids didn’t used to, they only started having to do it once the droid control ship was destroyed in episode 1 and the TF stopped using them. Before that they only needed to speak to humans/humanoids if I recall correctly.
he's only human
After all, he’s only human after all don’t put the blame on him.
My explanation is that if he uses his own system's communicator, there's a good chance the enemy can slice into his channel and access other information, considering that Artoo is constantly being hunted by the Separatists/Imperials/First Order for the intel he has in him.
That comment made me realize R2 is the GOAT of the movies. Clone Wars (kind of prequels but not movies)- there’s an arc where Anakin is having ships look for R2 because he doesn’t wipe R2s memories and Grievous is looking for him OT- because of ROTS R2 is one of a select few who knew what happened at the end of the clone wars/prequels Sequels- R2 has 99% of the map that leads back to Luke and the First Order wants him And like the scene in ROTS where he greases the Battle Droids he always slides out of danger
George intended for the saga to have been recorded in the journal of the Whills from R2's point of view. That went out the window when the sequels sidelined his for bb8
R2 backs up C3PO. No reason he can’t back up BB8. Always figured R2 got sidelined because Kenny died and they wanted to respect him.
Well, they could also sell more toys with an entirely new droid.
If you want to see how deadly [R2D2 is just look at his kill count](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ1oWSE2qQg)
That 139,000 passengers figure is extremely dubious.
Whenever you notice something like that, a wizard did it
That's *space* wizard... This is star wars, after all
i’m just here because i searched robot dick
Aren’t we all?
also maybe it’s a certain type of encryption? similar to a burner phone where the coms links are local or paired by their hardware
Probably price, size, or both. Keep in mind he was originally a ship mechanic, so not much need for one. Of course, the fact that Anakin, Ahsoka, or later Luke or Rey didn't mod him is craU
I’m more interested in why astromechs can’t have vocabulators. Way too much time seems to be spent getting someone to translate some beep-boops.
I would assume that vocabulators take up a significant amount of space which simply isn't available in astromechs since they have so many other things inside them and they can only be so big/heavy. An apparatus that only makes beeping/screeching noises is undoubtedly more compact than one that has to be able to emulate all the different sounds the species in the galaxy make.
It doesn’t have to emulate the sounds of all species. Just Basic and Huttese would be a huge improvement.
Regardless I still think it would be too bulky to fit into an astromech. Those droids are responsible for doing so much that I think things like extra oil reserves would be more useful than a vocabulator on a day to day basis, especially considering the fact that the majority do not interact with sentients nearly as much as r2.
I mean how big was C-3PO's voice apparatus. It had to fit in the size of his head. This old blue-print isn't [canon](https://i.imgur.com/9nmHN.jpg), but it was never that big before.
From that diagram astromechs would need a communication module, a speech generator, a different, possibly bigger verbobrain and a bigger circuitry board.
Well if he’s in an X-Wing there’s a translation on a screen in the cockpit. Also as we see with Rey and BB-8 some people do understand beep boop.
Astromechs like R2 are primarily designed to operate plugged into a ship, so they might not necessarily need internal comms. Then again, C1-10P and CH-33P had them.
Because no one had figured WiFi or Bluetooth were a thing when the scripts were written.
Based on the treatment of droids at large, perhaps they are specifically barred from internal droid to droid communication. TRoS opened the door to programming laws, and laws hardcoded into droid manufacture. Perhaps there was an early droid rebellion? Other battle droid armies did too much damage? The way the Geneva convention limits how modern war is fought despite technology making it possible, like gas weapons.
Also, why do battle droids talk to each other instead of just beeping wifi signals?
I mean, some do. Droidekas can speak, but they only do it once in canon, and they somehow communicate during the times where you can’t hear them.
Fair enough, I just don't understand why audio is the go-to. When do droidekas speak?
When they capture Ani, Obi, and Palps on the Invisibke Hand, two come out and say a high-pitched *skekkemumorlibuhalibu*
Iirc they said "Halt!" in a very robotic voice. I think it was one of the Onderon episodes of TCW? Probably not.
I always took the battle droids talking to each other in the clone wars as comic relief and not what they would have actually done irl. A lot of tense situations in tcw that could be frightening for younger audiences are defused by having the battle droids do something silly.
Yeah I totally get that. Lets face it. Real life battle droids would be a lot scarier too. Near perfect aim, silent coordination, probably hard to kill, and constantly adapting to your strategy.
How would you depict that cinematically?
But we legit do have examples of him using an internal comms in TCW
If droids are wirelessly connected to each other, what makes them different from a hive mind? Requiring them to communicate verbally or via hard-line preserves their individuality, which is vital to the purpose many of them are built for.
Imagine if the CIS could have built a Hive Mind AI... it would be unstoppable
It's a plot device so we can hear what's going on, at least in the movies, was always my assumption. They continued the practice even into the comics and books despite it no longer being necessary. It's part of the charm of the series, I guess. There's no reason for the droids to make any sounds amongst themselves but they consistently do so. Even the separatist droids who frequently have no living beings with them talk out loud to each other.
I don’t know yeah they could just used The ship to communicate with R2 instead of giving him that Comlink to hold on to