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Re: The terrifying secret of Pfhor drones
Posted By: Bob-B-QDate: 6/28/21 9:57 a.m.

In Response To: The terrifying secret of Pfhor drones (Forrest of B.org)

: I immediately fell in love with this gruesome idea because it explains
: something that's long bothered me about Marathon's worldbuilding: why
: would a spacefaring civilization like the Pfhor bother to use slaves?

On a narrative level, it's an easy way to show that the antagonists are evil and you shouldn't feel bad about splattering dozens of them across the nearest bulkhead. Same reason Halo's advanced alien civilizations tend to be genocidal zealots.

In-setting, there are the Pfhor's known difficulties with advanced AI and a suggested aversion to making things too smart after the incident with the cybernetic Hulk. Given that the Pfhor also sell slaves to other high-tech races, these limitations might not be unique to them.

Or it could simply be that the Pfhor practice slavery for the same reasons humans still do today, despite all our advances in automation.

: Surely robots would be a lot better. One obvious answer to this is that
: the Pfhor reportedly have really really terrible AI, but the immediate
: retort to that is that they have AI good enough for drones to fly around
: doing maintenance and combat and such, so surely they could have simple
: labor-bots that would obviate the need for any slaves.

FWIW Durandal says on Ex Cathedra that the Pfhor drones are remotely controlled by a central computer, and the main function they perform (fly around and shoot things) appears simple enough that it shouldn't require an on-board brain. This degree of automation is already feasible with real world technology, despite us being far from attaining general purpose AI. The Pfhor, who benefited from piggybacking off the work of more advanced predecessors, should be able to manage at least that much.

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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

The terrifying secret of Pfhor dronesForrest of B.org 6/27/21 11:52 p.m.
     Re: The terrifying secret of Pfhor dronesukimalefu 6/28/21 2:19 a.m.
           Re: The terrifying secret of Pfhor dronesForrest of B.org 6/28/21 8:39 a.m.
           Re: The terrifying secret of Pfhor dronesVikingBoyBilly 6/29/21 4:09 p.m.
     Re: The terrifying secret of Pfhor dronesBob-B-Q 6/28/21 9:57 a.m.
           Re: The terrifying secret of Pfhor dronesForrest of B.org 6/28/21 10:21 a.m.
                 Re: The terrifying secret of Pfhor dronesBob-B-Q 6/30/21 9:51 a.m.
                       Re: The terrifying secret of Pfhor dronesVikingBoyBilly 6/30/21 11:04 a.m.
                             Re: The terrifying secret of Pfhor dronesForrest of B.org 6/30/21 12:12 p.m.
                                   Re: The terrifying secret of Pfhor dronesForrest of B.org 6/30/21 3:21 p.m.
                       Re: The terrifying secret of Pfhor dronesVikingBoyBilly 6/30/21 3:57 p.m.
     this is my headcanon now *NM*VikingBoyBilly 6/29/21 2:13 p.m.

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Pre-2004 Posts

 

 

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