Keeping Up with the Joneses

What happens to old droids?

Droids can live for ever, so theoretically droid characters never need to die off. They could appear in The Old Republic and still be around for the New Jedi Order. HK-47 could still be out there, still ticking. While we don't know about C-3PO, R2-D2 is still around in the Legacy comics.

So with all this longevity, will the trillions of droids in the galaxy, what happens to that model that's no longer up to date? When the family decides to trade up for a new one. When the processing power can no longer keep up and the cost to upgrade isn't feasible.

Shouldn't the galaxy be flooded with out dated droids? In fact, there could be so many abandoned droids out there that they could take over entire planets. Heck, since droids don't really need a hospitable planet, they could inhabit planets no one wants. There could be systems out there dominated by neglected droids.

It's a fun thing to think about.

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Knight Joined: 08 Apr 2011 Posts: 300

Most likely break down. I don't believe that we've seen many droids holding jobs and making money. So they are entirely dependent upon others for repairs. Once someone stops paying for those repairs, they'll likely not last long.

Though a book about an invasion of long forgotten droids would be amusing.

I noticed a vinyl cape jawa in the discard pile. I'll take one please!

The status of the much maligned droid is a depressing one. They are doomed to wind up in Death Star trash compactors, rusting in a corner of a crimelords palace and carted off peice-meal by Jawas and ugnauts.

You may even get a few anti-technology religious fanatics that are shoving them into a big burning pit.

And don't forget the oft suffered memory wipe. The soul of a droid can only be tangential.

Knight Joined: 03 Apr 2012 Posts: 103 Location: UK

It seems that Droids are regarded as propery unless specifically manumitted - set free - as happened to Wraith Squadron's doid, Squeaky. Owned droids would presumably rely on their owners for upkeep and upgrades. Squeaky earns his own living at work of his own choice.

I guess that in time droids become obsolete, and/or outdated, so replacement parts can no longer be found. In 'Isard's Revenge', the freight elevator of a hotel is run by a droid brain which had formerly operated a passenger turbolift until it was replaced during an upgrade cycle. Presumably, as droids get outdated, they get sold on to people who can't afford the newest thing, but are happy to have a ten year old droid to replace their twenty year old one. Eventually the droid wears out/breaks down and is broken up for parts or scrapped.

It's funny how often we think of the Jawas when it comes to junk. I theorize the bulk of the out dated droids fall into the hands of the Squib Merchandizing Consortium and Ugors. They both cherish junk, so I imagine junk droids are big business for them.

As for the fate of out dated droids, I would think owners might keep an old droid around as a back up. If repairs are too costly, the droid might become a hand me down, going to the owner's children as a starter droid. Droids might also be used as trade-ins for newer models. A droid no longer desirable on the used droid market would most likely be recycled and the seller would get their money from the scrap value.

So that leaves the case of droids who are given their freedom. As long as they can find a way to make money and keep up their repairs, they could live forever. I don't think hard to find parts would be a big factor unless the droid was trying to remain original for some reason. With the level of technology in the GFFA, they should be able to make something else work.

Something else worth tossing out there is Xim's droids. Even after 10's of thousands of years, they still worked when Han came across them.
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Knight Joined: 08 Apr 2011 Posts: 300

It's also possible that the programming (personality) of a droid is uploaded to a newer model leaving just an empty husk. So the droid's soul lives on but the rest is tossed away.

I've always thought the idea of a Droid Revolution was silly, but this has me thinking. There seems to be a lot of variety in the "sentience" of droids in Star Wars. Battle Droids (especially pre-RotS) tend to be portrayed as soulless automata, but C-3P0 and R2-D2 who have been around since the beginning seem to possess what we would call "sentience". If you go with the "sentient" approach, the idea of discarding old droids like i-phones as soon as the new model comes out, it's actually pretty disturbing. Confused

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EUC Staff Joined: 09 Nov 2011 Posts: 1204 Location: Nirn

I never understood where their names came from. Surely if Threepio is a 3PO model, there would be tons of C3PO's. Or perhaps their "serial number" or whatever. Like he's C-3PO-5T3-1138-X4R or something. But our Threepio is the kind of nitpicker that would refer to himself as said serial number.
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Also the fact that C-3PO was built by Anakin, presumably from spare parts lying around tattooine, yet is identical to the droids of the same series manufactured in a factory by the distributor, never made sense to me.

And why would a kid on a backwards planet want an interpreter droid? For that matter where did he get the software to teach him six million languages?

Master Joined: 09 Jun 2009 Posts: 1410

Protocol droid. And he probably "helped" himself to stuff in Watto's shop. Plus, droids are pretty pervasive in the galaxy so I don't think that's any stretch.

Also by "built himself", Anakin could have meant he got a beat up, broken down droid and tinkered and rebuilt him. That was something Anakin did a lot when he was an apprentice at the Jedi Temple.
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re: droid numbers.

I don't remember what stupid explanation they gave in TCW, so I'll go with the most logical one.

we were originality told that R2-D2 was an R2 droid, as in the second model in the R series which I think was up to 8 or something at that point. From that POV it doesn't make sense that his individual number could be D2 since that designation could only apply to a small number of droids- in fact by letter and number it would be 260. And it doesn't seem reasonable that there were only 260 R2 droids produced, or the R series should be up to thousands.

Unless he was only the second produced droid of the D's, and there is an R2-D3...through R2-D1,234,567. But we've never seen that either; all the droids follow the same model series number and 2 digit letter + number.

It makes the most sense that the 2 digit number refers to his batch production. In the R2 series the first batch of droids produced were the R2-A1's and so on up to R2-Z9. That way you get a potentially infinite number of droids produced that are able to keep to the name system of 4 digits.

That would of course mean that there was more than one R2-D2, which we are not shown. But that is the most logical explanation.

The question really kind of reminded me of the junkyard scene from I, Robot where the old model robots are packaged away in storage containers.
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Knight Joined: 03 Apr 2012 Posts: 103 Location: UK

A lot of droids simply don't have the processing capacity to develop a personality, or self-awareness, so being sold or scrapped wouldn't be traumatic for them.

Of course, there are plenty of droids that do have the potential for self-awareness. By and large, they have their memories wiped regularly, which stops them from developing. Some people just want droids to be droids, and don't want them to develop quirks, or start answering back. Others may not want their droids to develop personalities because they don't want to get too attached to them.
There are other reasons: Wedge was assigned a droid that had been named Mynock because of the way it screamed in combat. He found the screaming distracting, and had the droid's memory wiped and changed its name. After that, Gate, became much bolder.

Knight Joined: 07 Feb 2012 Posts: 358 Location: USA

The droids with the creativity damper turned off have the potential to become Rogue Droids. IG-88, R2-D2, I-5, Fidelity (to a cetain extent) are some of the ones that come to mind. The can modify themselves as much as they want as long as they have the credits.

Since, they can transfer their data to core processors, theoretically, a droid can live forever.

They also, with the creativity damper turned off, have the ability to name themselves, like Fidelity.

There was another free droid in Yoda: Dark Rendezvous but, I can't remember his name.
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