Robotic Plant (CTP2)

Robotic Plant
Requires	Robotics
Production cost	5500
Upkeep	15
Effects
+20% Production

Robotic Plant is a building in Call to Power II.

Gameplay

Factories become more efficient with the introduction of robots specifically designed to carry out some of the more mundane tasks of assembly. They replace human workers to an extent, bolstering efficiency and safety.

Great Library entry

Although modern factories offered were reasonably efficient manufacturing entities, their owners were constantly searching for ways to minimize the element of human error inherent in the system. The occasional worker illness or injury required not only an abundance of employees to keep assembly lines staffed but health and liability insurance to cover the economic costs as well. Manufacturers also had to contend with worker inefficiency and, sometimes, theft of property, requiring both management staff to monitor worker progress and security systems to monitor worker conduct. Finally, factories often had to deal with unions, government regulation and labor laws, which all cut into their bottom line.

Modern manufacturers saw a possible solution in robotics. For many factories, the assembly system had been refined to require little more than unskilled machine operators and moderately skilled workers. Robotic technology enabled factories to replace human workers with robots. Although popular culture's notion of a robot was an intelligent, subservient humanoid machine, most robots were little more than machines specifically designed for a single task. For instance, the automotive industry benefited from robotic technology, replacing human welders and tool users with robotic arms that could perform the same task within exceedingly low levels of error with only occasion maintenance. Robotic plants and factories began to replace traditional human factories the world over. The socio-economic and cultural implications of this shift were akin to the devaluation of human effort that occurred with the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. Whereas pre-industrial artisans and craftsmen became little more than machine operators at that time, robotics began to cut human machine operators and workers completely out of the manufacturing process.