RobCo Pick-O-Tron: Your solution to Mining

[Jeffman12]

A friend gave me the rundown on mining, and from what I understand, if you want an efficient mine, you've got to invest in slaves that will of course net you neg rep with factions.
A simple alternative to this would be to implement robotic miners with their own downside, namely maintenance.
Maintenance could be broken up into different categories.
Hardware or physical damage repair might take electrical or metal scrap, a fission battery, or any variety of technologically based salvage. Higher repair skills would of course require less materials to complete the repair.
Software repair takes a maintenance terminal and science skill, depending on the process used to repair any given problem, it may take quite a while, tying up the repair terminal and the robot before it can be working good as new.
Fixes include:
-Format: The longest process with no skill modifiers. This takes some set level of time but can fix any and all software issues, this must be done for any freshly salvaged bot.
-Driver Update: RobCo's been defunct for well, a long time, your robot's drivers aren't going to be updated, they're just going to be reinstalled. This fixes a robot 'forgetting' how to use its tools. This simply takes time based on skill, if you have a low skill, more time, etc.
-Bypass: This is a quick fix for several problems including hardware, but won't actually repair anything. This has a chance of success based on skill, but crit failure might brick your bot. Each time a bypass is used without actually fixing the problem directly, it decreases the chance of success for the next time. Only so many bypasses can be done on one bot before it just needs repair.
-Re-calibration: This is used to fix slightly off-behavior, like talking to walls and trying to mine people.
-Marxware  Scan: Remove any malicious software that might convince the robot it has rights.

All problems can be diagnosed with a repair and/or science skill.
Possible problems:
-Revolution: It's easy for the Mr. Gutsy to hate commies, but they're no member of the proletariat, the pick-o-tron on the other hand is prone to sudden bouts of marxism thanks to a particularly prolific Chinese-written virus from before the war.
-Missing Software: Any robot you salvage won't just get to work, a Driver Update will fix this.
-Hardware Fault: Robots take damage over time, too much damage might render its tools inoperable, this requires either a bypass or a hardware repair.
-De-calibration: This can happen after damage has occurred, but is a software fix.

Anything in this suggestion is tentative, because, well, it's a suggestion. I just thought it'd be cool to have an alternative to slavery because, I'm not to keen on just having an alt account to farm neg karma.

[Sperber]

You don't get negative rep if you buy slaves.

[Zormad]

+1

I like this. I'd finnaly get rid of my lazy slaves and get a few mister handy robots.

[3.14]

Oh just put an npc that will sell 100x ore/minerals/hq ore/hq minerals for 5000 caps and be done with all this auto-resource crap.

[Jeffman12]

You don't get negative rep if you buy slaves.

Yes, I was just told you get tattooed. This tattoo gets you vilified.

[Strike]

I really would like to see robots ingame and possible to get them as followers.

I have already place in my mind where you could get your robot, do you remember that woman at NCR with robot?
Of course robots and such are much more expensive than other followers.

[kill n die]

I really would like to see robots ingame and possible to get them as followers.

I have already place in my mind where you could get your robot, do you remember that woman at NCR with robot?
Of course robots and such are much more expensive than other followers.

Yeah that's good idea,imagine Sentry Bot mk.2 as your companion or Merc,finaly EMP damage could be more useful...

[Jeffman12]

I had no idea robots were lacking in quantity in this, it just made sense to me that there might be followers or mercs, or even just mob robots, strewn about at least a little bit rarer than your flesh and blood enemies, but I'm kinda shocked to hear this. As a technophile, I believe an automated option should exist wherever possible.

[Kriomentos]

Cool idea, and for me having slaves, even if you can get them without getting tatoo (It's possible?) is bad and I don't want to do it. And having some help in mining would be nice. And come on, ROBOTS!

[Delta-9]

Very cool idea, and the graphics are already there for robots. Makes thematic sense, too.

[Eloar]

Very cool idea, and the graphics are already there for robots. Makes thematic sense, too.

I would love to see all bots which appeared in Fallout Tactics. This mining bot would be variant of humanoind robot, security robot or maybe Loadlifter robot.