Can a Commander build itself?

Fear of death, over thousands of years would destroy you because it would be inevitable, the more self aware you were the more you could see that.

An machine would have no such problem, and would be better at the job short and long term.

HAHAHA

because humans have never gotten in any wars lasting generations.

Or do you consider us non sentient? Sentient doesn't mean compassionate or diplomatic. It means self aware.

Orks have religion.

ALL PRAISE GORK AND MORK FOR 'NUFF CHOPPY AND 'NUFF DAKKA!

Mike

That's different, imagine being the last of your species, fighting for hundreds or even thousands of years knowing that you can never win.

And even then, soldiers who have spent normal human lifespans in the army often come away as damaged individuals.

As above, that doesn't mean they are sentient, And really I still wouldn't class them as much.

Knowing you can never win seems unlikely. The odds may be incredibly low, but still what else are you going to do, roll over and let the other guy win?

Leave?

The are many choices in life, if you not going to win, the why bother? just get out and try not to die.

How do you leave against a creature as fast and capable as you are? That just means putting yourself at a disadvantage. The only way to effectively leave is to die.

A mirror can't be on all sides, and sometimes leaving means going on the offensive.

And you really shouldn't be making the decision while in a confrontation, but if you do, then fight your way too it.

Edit: Not that I am some kind of military philosopher. So I could be wrong.

huh?

Well if your enemy is the same strength as you, then really you both have equal ground and have the same opportunity to destroy the other, in which case you could use your equal strength to devise an escape plan.

An interesting game.
The only winning move is to win. :lol:

Why yes, I do follow the cult of the Machine God. Problem, heathen?

Reject the glory of the Great Machine at your own peril.

Another worshipper of the older from of the Dragon arises!!!

Ok I'm going to say everything you said into a sentence a cloning device/machine or whatever for the commander which I'm all for

Because this doesn't seem resolved, I present this:

The factory that creates commanders is so big that the commanders, with their ultimate prerogative to fight, win, then move on (as it would seem, since historically everyone starts from scratch at the beginning of a match), don't accumulate enough resources during a battle to be able to build such a factory, and so are unable to build other commanders during a battle.

While this doesn't exactly mean they can't build themselves, it does explain why there is only one commander in a battle, and allows the concept of not only a commander building [a factory that builds] itself, but that this is the way that the factions maintain the front lines.

That was actually suggested by different people into this thread few times already.

And actually, that's not the question of the thread. Question was - it's possible to self-reproduce or not, no matter how exactly. Bobucles (OP) suggested that it's not. In his view (he actually tried to put TA's lore into PA and made all assumptions to support that direction) commanders can't create anything as sophisticated as they are (it's physically or economically impossible) AND they are most sophisticated things in galaxy (so no commander factories), so every their creation is worse than they are practically degrading over time. And everyone else (as it seems) tried to convince him that this is crap and there is no obvious/believable limitations that do prevent most sophisticated thing create another most sophisticated thing.

And yes, it's resolved - bobucles admitted himself to be a worshiper of dark Metal Machine cult (and ACUs are avatars of Metal Machine God in his point, so they obviously can't self-replicate) and therefore any further discussion has no sense as any religion discussion =)

Heathen!

Haha, look at all the personal attacks! I think I'm going to go home and cry.

But yes, I'll admit that the purpose of a religion is, as the Daleks put it, "EXPLAIN. EXPLAIN". We are working on questions with impossible tech in any case, so the best answer is more of a theological debate than anything else.

Since nightnord is struggling with issues of faith (and mad, so very very mad), allow me to lay out the tenents of this "religion".

Commanders are built to be the most advanced death machines in the galaxy. To this end they are given:
A) the best, fastest production technology in existence
B) Superior storage and tech
C) Superior armor and armament
D) The schematics from which everything is built
E) Secure Command and control over all forces under their disposal

A standard unit, on the other hand, has very basic features:
F) Easy to build bulk firepower.
G) Find a thing. Shoot a thing.

It stands to reason from this, that Commanders are vastly more complex than any single unit under their command. Any way you crack it, this means that

H) A Comm demands vastly more effort and resources in its production.

There is no reason to fuss over creating a complex and nuanced unit when a walking brick-gun will do. A hundred brick-bots trump 1 machine god any day of the week. Thus:
I) Numbers win the day.
J) The nanolathe is built with this in mind.

A Commander doesn't have the tools to DIRECTLY spawn itself, nor is it necessary. This is because:
K) I+J: The nanolathe is specialized towards bulk production, allowing the fastest construction of simple war machines to create the most dangerous army possible in the shortest time.
L) Commanders are not simple war machines.

It may, however, generate the tools necessary for cloning. Machine cloning is necessary because:
M) The Commander is tasked with building itself.
N) It is impossible to store more information than oneself.


Whether this process is easy, hard, or something that a Commander gets into full apocalyptic production before blasting off into outer space is an exercise for the reader.

A Commander's self repair utilizes all information about itself to fix physical and data damage from combat. Any information damaged beyond repair is lost forever, and can not be passed on to its clone-offspring. Thus, the Commanders which retain more features and knowledge of their original design:
O) Are early generation, progenitor Commanders
P) Have been highly successful in avoiding combat damage.

A sufficient amount of corruption could lead to quality degradation, tech loss, robo-amnesia, or complete insanity. It might even lead to a last generation of Commanders, should their ancestors fail to (accidentally or deliberately) provide the next generation with clone machine schematics. Whether this has happened in the current war is up to debate, but as it pertains to the future of robot-kind, it is quite possibly the MOST important thing worth fighting over.

You could have limited your religion description to only this part More precisely to your faith that "machine cloning is necessary" thing is actually explained by two points below.

:? umm we are discussing religion on the internet?

Isn't it fun?