Robots in Mutant Future are advanced creations of the Ancients. They are walking, flying, swimming or teleporting disasters or angels depending on their original function and current existence. But those machines are not the only robots in the wastes. The people of the current era make their own robots from junk and scavenged artifacts. These robots are nothing like those of the Ancients. They aren't intelligent, sleek or very durable. Their programming may be from scratch and thus can do silly things like drive off a cliff or wander into a swamp. It takes a lot of effort into programming a robot to be able to exist in a hazardous environment. Even if they use an AI from before the cataclysm, there is no reason to believe that the mind can handle the new body and all of its faults and issues. Most are made from machines that weren't robots in the first place, thus placing more limitations on them. I mentioned junkbots in the first issue of Wisdom of the Wastelands on robots (issue 15), but even there I was a bit too generous in what they can and can not do.
As junkbots have such limited abilities to learn, the easiest way to use them is to have a pilot or controller. The person in control will be limited by their biology and the controls, thus these robots will be slower than those of the Ancients. This is represented by a -4 penalty to initative. Robots running on their own programming have no penalty to initative.
Junkbots are put together with bolts, welding and the occasionally organic superglue. They are much easier to break and have many more weak points than ancient machines. Their hit dice can be no more than 5 and their armor class no better than 6. Falling damage is doubled and they may have the Epidermal Susceptibility drawback that represents a weakness to one or more forms of energy.
Junkbot sensors may be more advanced than the AI can handle. Sensors ripped from ancient robots will cause a -2 to hit and poor depth perception or worse. Sensors can be taken from other machines, from primitive vehicles (those of the middle 21st century) to appliances, may be used and will not cause a penalty. Of course the more advanced sensors may also allow the junkbots to pick up on things they would otherwise miss.
And junkbot weapons are usually bolted on (who wants to come close to a plasma rifle with a welder?) and have no independant ability to aim. Damage is unaffected but the to hit roll is going to suffer a penalty of at least -4 and possibly much more if the weapon's range is low (it keeps firing at things too far away).
Even with all these penalties, junkbots are highly useful items for those who can construct them. Some are used in the form of labor, but most are defense or offense for small communities that are otherwise defenseless. In some settings, they may even be the most abundant trap in the wastes. It isn't like there isn't a lot of raw materials for them littering everywhere.
