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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Operator" data-source="post: 2288943" data-attributes="member: 32696">I'm sorry, but using the films as the source there is no way to have all the B1 droids be simple "dumb terminals"...In TPM they continued to operate for a few seconds without orbital control signals. A few seconds may not sound like a lot, but it is still impossible under the "dumb terminal" model. In AotC they reactivate after the control signal was cut off. In RotS it never comes up...Here's how I see the arguements breaking down: 1. The droids are actually receiving  a carrier signal from the control ship, which merely instructs them  to continue operating. This may have been designed as a safety  measure for the Neimoidians, who would otherwise be hopelessly outnumbered by their opponents in the unlikely event of a droid  revolt. A droid revolt seems unlikely, but it is always possible  that if the droids are sentient, they might object to their  treatment. Another possibility is that the Neimoidians may fear that  a competitor might have somehow maliciously reprogrammed the droids  to revolt, hence a central point of control. This is a rather poor  design decision from many aspects (there must be some better way to  deal with the possibility of droid revolt or malicious  re-programming), but we should remember that the Neimoidians are businessmen rather than soldiers or engineers. This signal  would have a "keepalive" period which would explain the  fact that the droids continued to operate for a short period of  time, and there might actually been a self-destruct command built  into the droids in the event that the keepalive signal was lost,  thus explaining the fact that the droids actually fell apart after  the loss of the signal.2.The droid central control computer  was programmed to mimic independent sentience (including aspects  such as rank structues and humour) on the part of the individual droids, even to the extent that significant potential tactical  advantages of centralized control are lost (such as the theoretical  ability for droids to attack targets without having to visually  identify them first, based on visual data from other droids). This  seems rather implausible, to say the least. There is also no obvious  reason why they would go to such great lengths to mimic sentience  when it actually costs them in battle rather than helping  them.3.The droids had certain autonomous  functions but no decision-making abilities, thus giving them partial  sentience. They would therefore perform functions like firing and aiming weapons based on local intelligence, as well as certain  interactions with the populace (such as the droid commander's  conversation with Qui-Gon). However, they would periodically take  orders from the control ship, and they would be designed to shut  down in the absence of those orders. This model is somewhat  difficult to rationalize, since it is difficult to imagine how one  would produce an artificial intelligence that could mimic so many of  the characteristics of sentient human beings without being able to  make even the smallest decisions.4.The army assembled to fight the  Gungans was substantially different from the droids on the TradeFed  battleships or the units in Theed. Those droids might have been  low-end units, as opposed to the higher-end units in Theed which had  substantial local intelligence (like normal droids, such as R2 units  and interpreter droids). The droids who fought the Gungans certainly  seemed to exhibit a lower level of individual initiative. However,  this would suggest that some of the droids on the planet  (particularly the commander units in Theed) would have continued to  function after the destruction of the control ship. According to the (non-canon) novelization, this didn't happen.5.The droids were powered by the droid control ship,  which had some technology for directly transmitting power to the  droids in some manner that is difficult to intercept. This would  explain the rapid shutdown after the destruction of the control ship  while also explaining the apparent presence of autonomous  intelligence.In conclusion, explanation #1 and #4 are the best candidates. The official SW cross-sections books explicitly disagrees with both interpretations, as does the SWd20 Core Rules but both are flagrantly inconsistent with the behaviour of the infantry droids in the film.</blockquote>

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