19 hours ago, arnoldrew said:

Because that's the best designation for them? It makes sense to me. I guess I could see an argument for Emplacement Trooper, but vehicle seem like the best match.

That's my question. What makes that the best designation for them? Nothing about them feels like a vehicle to me. They're not piloted, or a form of of transport, or anything else I would associate with being a vehicle. They move and fight independently. Every other vehicle in the game is an actual vehicle operated by a pilot.

I don't understand what makes "vehicle" the best match for droidekas.

18 minutes ago, Vlad3theImpaler said:

That's my question. What makes that the best designation for them? Nothing about them feels like a vehicle to me. They're not piloted, or a form of of transport, or anything else I would associate with being a vehicle. They move and fight independently. Every other vehicle in the game is an actual vehicle operated by a pilot.

I don't understand what makes "vehicle" the best match for droidekas.

I don't either. It seems like they would have made much more sense as troopers on larger bases. Being vehicles just seems to add a layer of unnecessary complication to them.

19 minutes ago, Vlad3theImpaler said:

That's my question. What makes that the best designation for them? Nothing about them feels like a vehicle to me. They're not piloted, or a form of of transport, or anything else I would associate with being a vehicle. They move and fight independently. Every other vehicle in the game is an actual vehicle operated by a pilot.

I don't understand what makes "vehicle" the best match for droidekas.

It's because they are not humanoid in any form. They don't have many limbs in the traditional sense and cannot climb or interact with the environment around them due to their lack of any sort of gripping limb and thus shouldn't be classified as troopers as they don't really have anything in common. They are much more akin to small artillery vehicles that just happen to operate without a distinct pilot. The vehicle classification makes much more sense IMO.

3 minutes ago, Atromix said:

It's because they are not humanoid in any form. They don't have many limbs in the traditional sense and cannot climb or interact with the environment around them due to their lack of any sort of gripping limb and thus shouldn't be classified as troopers as they don't really have anything in common. They are much more akin to small artillery vehicles that just happen to operate without a distinct pilot. The vehicle classification makes much more sense IMO.

I think that asking "can it climb and grip things" is an odd way to determine if something counts as a vehicle, especially when we have literal climbing vehicles in the AT-RTs. (And there are other climbing vehicles we could see in a Star Wars game.)

2 minutes ago, Vlad3theImpaler said:

I think that asking "can it climb and grip things" is an odd way to determine if something counts as a vehicle, especially when we have literal climbing vehicles in the AT-RTs. (And there are other climbing vehicles we could see in a Star Wars game.)

It's not just that they can't climb, it's that they don't fit in with pretty much every other trooper in the game. The only thing they are capable of is combat, they can't pull boxes or fix equipment or open doors because they aren't meant to. Compare them to something like the B2, It has hands and arms and can actually manipulate things around them, which means that the trooper classification makes sense, but I just don't see the Droidekas filling that same criteria.

19 minutes ago, Vlad3theImpaler said:

I think that asking "can it climb and grip things" is an odd way to determine if something counts as a vehicle, especially when we have literal climbing vehicles in the AT-RTs. (And there are other climbing vehicles we could see in a Star Wars game.)

And the AT-RT has special rules to account for it's ability to climb.

That it does. And a trooper unit could likewise have rules that account for its inability to climb. (Which if I'm not mistaken, is already a rule for emplacement troopers.)

1 hour ago, Vlad3theImpaler said:

That's my question. What makes that the best designation for them? Nothing about them feels like a vehicle to me. They're not piloted, or a form of of transport, or anything else I would associate with being a vehicle. They move and fight independently. Every other vehicle in the game is an actual vehicle operated by a pilot.

I don't understand what makes "vehicle" the best match for droidekas.

The idea that a droid army would have vehicles that needed to be manned was a flaw in the early weapons of the CIS, something they fixed later. When they release crab droids, or the hellfire tank, or the spider droid, they all work as vehicles but act independently with their own AI and no crew.

1 hour ago, Vlad3theImpaler said:

That's my question. What makes that the best designation for them? Nothing about them feels like a vehicle to me. They're not piloted, or a form of of transport, or anything else I would associate with being a vehicle. They move and fight independently. Every other vehicle in the game is an actual vehicle operated by a pilot.

I don't understand what makes "vehicle" the best match for droidekas.

Nothing about being a vehicle means it has to be crewed or not fight independently (the fact that some CIS droid tanks are crewed at all by other droids is a little silly). I do understand what makes "vehicle" the best match for Droidekas, and that is that it feels right, just like how it doesn't feel right for you. It seems like it should interact with the battlefield just like how a Vehicle does, and not how a Trooper does.

4 hours ago, Atromix said:

It's not just that they can't climb, it's that they don't fit in with pretty much every other trooper in the game. The only thing they are capable of is combat, they can't pull boxes or fix equipment or open doors because they aren't meant to. Compare them to something like the B2, It has hands and arms and can actually manipulate things around them, which means that the trooper classification makes sense, but I just don't see the Droidekas filling that same criteria.

I think I get what you're saying now. You're saying droidekas should be classified as vehicles so that they can't interact with objectives that care about trooper units?

I think it's themetically absolutely fine that a unit that has no hands and no voice can't pick up / open boxes, repair vaporators or push around hostages.

The only reason people complain about them being vehicle is because they can't score some objectives.

18 minutes ago, SailorMeni said:

The only reason people complain about them being vehicle is because they can't score some objectives.

That is certainly true, but as others have pointed out they obviously shouldn't be able to score many objectives (how would they pick up a supply box? how would they repair a vaporator?). And as there are now 4 objectives that vehicles can score on, that is not a huge issue.

The real issue is that they can't be part of the coordinate chain without STAPs, which competes for the same Support slots.

8 minutes ago, Lochlan said:

The real issue is that they can't be part of the coordinate chain without STAPs, which competes for the same Support slots.

Yes, that has also been agreed on. Mechanized incursion will help, but that's not before January ... Let's first hope for a rebalance later this year.

I think droidekas as vehicles make sense.

They aren't programmed with the same robust AI programming that B1s have. They're devoid of personality, specifically programmed for rapid response/destroy protocols.

This allows them to march into potentially overwhelming fire and put down fire of their own. No risk of robo-panic and retreat.

They've also got enough mass, and are implacable enough that I can see squads fleeing out of their way to avoid being rolled over or stepped on.

They're such weirdly sized transformer bots that it almost feels like a separate unit type should have been created for them. Something between a vehicle and a trooper.

But vehicle works for me.

A creature trooper with a "-" for morale would also work. Can't interact with objectives requiring dexterity, can't climb, but can escort a hostage (everybody understands a pointed gun), won't run away.

Creature Trooper would make even less sense than Vehicle. I don't think there is a particularly good unit type for them, and vehicle is probably the least inappropriate type.

1 hour ago, costi said:

A creature trooper with a "-" for morale would also work. Can't interact with objectives requiring dexterity, can't climb, but can escort a hostage (everybody understands a pointed gun), won't run away.

10 minutes ago, GooeyChewie said:

Creature Trooper would make even less sense than Vehicle. I don't think there is a particularly good unit type for them, and vehicle is probably the least inappropriate type.

They could have made up a new unit type. We didn't have Creature or Emplacement troopers until they added them. Heck, we didn't have Droid or Clone troopers either until they added them.

But personally I don't have a problem with them being vehicles.

9 hours ago, Atromix said:

It's because they are not humanoid in any form. They don't have many limbs in the traditional sense and cannot climb or interact with the environment around them due to their lack of any sort of gripping limb and thus shouldn't be classified as troopers as they don't really have anything in common. They are much more akin to small artillery vehicles that just happen to operate without a distinct pilot. The vehicle classification makes much more sense IMO.

Except they are humanoid. They have a head, torso, two arms and legs. They're more humanoid than several of the other Droids already in the game, and those count as troopers.

They probably can't climb, but then again neither can several other Droids in the game that do count as troopers.

Are we sure they can't interact with the environment? Are we sure they don't have retractable tools like many other droids do for opening or closing doors or interfacing with computers? It would be pretty dumb to have a combat droid that was completely crippled by its inability to open doors.

3 minutes ago, Jake the Hutt said:

Except they are humanoid. They have a head, torso, two arms and legs. They're more humanoid than several of the other Droids already in the game, and those count as troopers.

They probably can't climb, but then again neither can several other Droids in the game that do count as troopers.

Are we sure they can't interact with the environment? Are we sure they don't have retractable tools like an Astromech of opening or closing doors or interfacing with computers? It would be pretty dumb to have a combat droid that was completely crippled by its inability to open doors.

Getting into theory now though... To my knowledge we have never seen them interact with their environment in that way (i.e. like an astro-mech does) in film, TV or books, which is ultimately what this game has to go off

Just now, Lochlan said:

They could have made up a new unit type. We didn't have Creature or Emplacement troopers until they added them. Heck, we didn't have Droid or Clone troopers either until they added them.

But personally I don't have a problem with them being vehicles.

They could have, but I'm glad they didn't. I'm sure if they had they would have added some additional quirk to make it not just vehicle with a different name. I already wish the special rules for various unit types were printed on the backs of the cards; I don't want to have to keep track of even more rules variations just to give special types to quirky units.

Just now, Haslamm1 said:

Getting into theory now though... To my knowledge we have never seen them interact with their environment in film, TV or books, which is ultimately what this game has to go off

That is true, It was meant as a real question, and not a challenge.

But I feel like we already have multiple Droids embedded in trooper units that either don't have hands at all or clearly can't climb. So that standard doesn;t make a lot of sense to me.

I also feel like Driodekas could have been troopers with "Cannot Climb" and "Can't complete objectives requiring hands" keywords, if that was really important.

Not that it makes a difference now. To me it feels more like Droidekas were classified as vehicles because that was a slot FF had to fill and not because they were a great fit (although they're not a great fit as troopers either, I admit)

7 minutes ago, Jake the Hutt said:

But I feel like we already have multiple Droids embedded in trooper units that either don't have hands at all or clearly can't climb. So that standard doesn;t make a lot of sense to me.

That's simply for simplicity's sake. They don't want a whole bevy of rules (most negative, I guess) added when you attach one mini to a unit because you want to fix/heal stuff. They generally value simplicity over simulationism.

1 minute ago, arnoldrew said:

That's simply for simplicity's sake. They don't want a whole bevy of rules (most negative, I guess) added when you attach one mini to a unit because you want to fix/heal stuff. They generally value simplicity over simulationism.

Of course. But that was kind of my argument for making Droidekas troopers. It would have been a lot simpler.

But it doesn't really matter now. I just found it odd.

Just now, Jake the Hutt said:

Of course. But that was kind of my argument for making Droidekas troopers. It would have been a lot simpler.

But it doesn't really matter now. I just found it odd.

How would it be simpler? It would be less simple. It would require a bunch of new rules and keywords on the card, as well as redefining Troopers to not be on a small base only. The simplest thing by far was just to make them vehicles, which I think is the best option anyway.

13 minutes ago, arnoldrew said:

How would it be simpler? It would be less simple. It would require a bunch of new rules and keywords on the card, as well as redefining Troopers to not be on a small base only. The simplest thing by far was just to make them vehicles, which I think is the best option anyway.

What new rules and keywords would it have required?

Edit (forgot to answer your question) Also, its just intrinsically easier for something not to use the vehicle rules. Droidekas could have just been a unit of Droid Troopers on larger non-notched bases (which would have admittedly required new bases). No reason to involve the vehicle rules at all.