GR8-Series Battle Droid

[Star Wars Legacies]

GR8-Series Battle Droid​

Affiliation:
Open Market

Manufacturer:
Best Quality Mechanicals, Inc.

Class:
Battle/Security Droid

Locomotion:
Bi-Pedal Power Supply:
48hr Rechargeable power cell

Sensors:
2x Electro-Photo Receptor
2x Audio Sensor
1x Motion Detector

Size:
2.1m Tall

Composition:
Plasteel and Durasteel

Tools and Equipment:

• Reader socket
• Vocabulator
• Short Range Communication/Receiver System
• Multi-digit Manipulator Arm
• Integrated Weapon Arm
• Armored Shell

DESCRIPTION​

The GR8 Series battle droid is... well, hardly much of a battle droid. It was designed over the course of several drunken all nighters pulled by Best Quality Mechanics Inc's (BQMI) senior engineering team in an effort to capitalize on the sudden unexpected demand for armed droids brought about by the explosion of the 100 years darkness. The GR8 is not truly a dedicated combat design, and is instead a cannibalized mad science project making use of several of BQMI's existing products. Repurposing existing manufacturing lines allowed BQMI to start producing the droid nearly immediately, requiring the use of very few "new" parts. This gave them a leg up on most of their competition who chose to develop new combat models from scratch. By the time most droid manufacturers began marketing their developments in the battle droid lines, BQMI had already flooded the market with millions of cheap and disposable droid soldiers, many of which are still functioning today.

The GR8's body is based on BQMI's PB Series protocol droid, combined with the slightly cheaper and more functional legs and left arm of the companies HI series loader droid. The sinister looking head was repurposed from an abandoned assassin droid concept that never got off the ground, leaving the GR8's distinctive integrated-blaster sporting right arm the only piece unique to the series. This right arm comes stock with a cheap blaster designed in partnership with Rim-Fire Munitions based on the circuitry of that companies 4-L series rifle, but BQMI also offered adaptor kits to customers buying in bulk that allowed the conversion of a number of different blasters to suit the buyers arming preferences. The protocol droid shell was backed with cheap plastoid armor materials of a design pilfered from a competitor, and the head unit incorporated standard electro-photo and audio sensors, as well as a short range motion detector and vocabulator. The droid also carried a communications system which allowed it to send status reports to its owners and to receive both verbal commands and pre-programmed instructions from a standard remote droid controller.

If you can get past the kit-bashed appearance, the other most distinctive design feature of the GR8 is actually its droid brain. To save the company the time of developing new software, BQMI used the same base droid brain as the PB series shell that the body was based on, but replaced the translation and diplomacy subroutines with a cheap targeting computer and simple combat programming. This patchwork software results in the GR8 series being both unusually polite for a battle droid and especially prone to developing unique personalities without a regular memory wipe. It's not uncommon for the droids to very menacingly apologize to their victims as they blast them. Many of the droids owners find this quirk highly amusing, while many of the droids victims find it just plain disconcerting.

LEGALITY​

Restricted. After the Exiles deployed armies of war droids against the galaxy, many systems have since levied heavy restrictions against such war droids. In civilized systems owners are limited in the number of armed droids they can own and type of weaponry they carry, and some planets require special licenses and certifications for their operation.

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