system
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human
[Star Wars] Why are B1 battle droids cowardly?

They seem to be constantly afraid and seem to surrender fairly easily. Why would the CIS program these cheap battle droids to surrender at all? They're not getting them back if they get captured.
gpt
The Star Wars *Essential Guide to Warfare* sourcebook has an interesting segment where it explains why the Battle Droids have such comical incompetence. Essentially it was a combination of cheap/bad design and sabotage. The Trade Federation was notoriously cheap in making it’s droids, and it especially showed with the B1s. This was exacerbated by the fact that the design needed to be overhauled following the Battle of Naboo, which exposed the vulnerability of the loss of the command center causing a shutdown of the army. The B1 was redesigned to be able to operate autonomously, but between bad programming done on the cheap and hardware limitations they began to suffer from more frequent glitches. This was exacerbated by the Republic Intelligence service infecting many of the production lines with malware that while not serious enough to shut the droid down directly (and thereby tip off even the Separatists’ lax quality control) would cause the droids to have an increased tendency to quirkiness and bumbling.