The Manta droid subfighters are the aquatic equivalent of the Droid Starfighters in Star Wars fiction. They were developed after the Trade Federation suffered serious military losses in Naboo and other water covered worlds. The Republic legislation that limited the Trade Federation from constructing new battle droids was only a temporary setback for the project because Trade Federation officials just moved them away from the Republic or bribed or murdered anyone that tried to investigate. These droids had a sleek torpedo shaped body capped in front with a large wedge-shaped diving plane. This plane was armed with sport laser cannons and on more specialised craft torpedo launchers. Though it was a powerful and manueverable craft it suffered several design limitations because of the isolation of their Xi-Charrian designers from the rest of their Haor Chall religious order. To compensate the Trade Federation, the Xi Charrians provided a large aquatic transport vessel to carry battle droids and hydrodynamic adaptor kits for battle droid operated MVR-3 Speeders .