Maintenance Droids (slower than normal pawns, can break down, use metals)

[cappie]

Why Maintenance Droids?
Simple droids that can do limited things, for example: "only repairs, hauling and cleaning". However, droids use up metals whenever they repair themselves, thus forcing the player to choose between the short term solution of adding a Maintenance Droid that eats through his non-renewable resources, or waiting for that extra colonist (which is faster and better than the droid, since it can do a lot more, a lot faster).

Development info
Droids could be programmed like normal pawns, but with the following defining characteristics based off the pawn class:

• Droids have to be researched
• Walking speed * 0.75
• Hit points * 2.5 (they're quite tough little buggers), but auto-repairs cost metals, and they can't do anything while repairing)
• Task speed * 0.75 - 1.25, (depending on research level?) of normal pawn
• Electric engine sound effect, frequency based on current speed (it is possible to read out a pawns speed in Unity, right?)
• Droids have a breakdown chance
• Droids lose health out in the rain or sandstorms
• Droids have a chance to get stuck moving on sand
• Droids use their own solar energy panels to charge which they have to expose to recharge, and they can't do anything while charging. (possibly recharge sound effect and/or bars filling visually), think Wall-E)
• Alternatively, Droids could use energy from the base, the same way Pawns eat food from a dispenser, if that is less work to program.. could also be a nice game mechanic.. no power, no army of droids.. another disadvantage of droids to balance things out
• Limited skillset, based on what research you choose for your droids, droids get more expensive whenever you research then to have more skills
• Existing droids can only be manually upgraded whenever you've researched a new skill
• Droids get disabled during solar flares.. just imagine the chaos that will bring, combined with a raider attack [/i]
  

I really hope something like this gets implemented.. I think they could prove to be an interesting game mechanic.

[Renham]

sounds cool, but maybe...
droid should be expensive, need a robot master (person in charge to give orders to them)
they will perform whatever task is given by the master.
fixing them takes time and resources.
they have a durability that is reduced thorugh time.
need to recharge their batteries, althou it wont take too long, still requiere the robot master to work.

can be specialized, common droids will perform below the average level of a colone, but, with an specialization, they will perform at the same level.
droids will requiere special buildings and forniture to operate properly

-Droid pod, will be used to contain droids and recharge their batteries.
-Maintenance table, used to repair and upgrade electronics.
-Radio control anthena, used to operate the droids.
-mechanical assembly machine, used to build some devices and droids.
-metal printer, used to make components for electronics and machines.

therefore making droids would be good for production and even combat, thou droids are expensive, but better risking some soul less machines than the lives of tour colones.

some events for the droids would be a robot revolution, all your droid seek freedom, they will ask your for freedom if not they will become aggresive.

and
selfconciusness, the droid in particular will be able to learn a socialize with other colones, may suffer metal breakdowns too.

[Robitski]

You'd need to make them have a big research project, like 20,000 to unlock them. I dunno though, if these refugees would have such technological capabilities... oh well, it's early days yet.

[Darkfire9825]

Maybe if you need to use large amounts of power to recharge them every day? I think that this should definetely be endgame if implemented.

[Renham]

maybe not endgame but expensive technology...
if you consider my addition to the suggestion, you will find that having battledroids can save the life of your colonists
althou you will need to work hard to maintain those droids.

having a long research tree to have droids is a posibility.
starting with the ai development and mechanical components research to finaly droid building and mass production.

[NephilimNexus]

• Droids have random chance of wandering off to look for someone called "Ben Kenobi"

[Renham]

or maybe some spaceship looking for certain droids.

a militar spaceship has started a massive broadcast, they are looking for a couple of droids, they demand to give some of your droids to them for further study.

barther: for 10.000 we may do
cientist: I can send you their memory database
soldier: you will have to pay in iron then

high charisma: these are not the droids you are looking for.

negative: ignore broadcast.

[Darkfire9825]

Or maybe raiders reprogram your droids?

[Cyclops]

• Droids have random chance of wandering off to look for someone called "Ben Kenobi"

GIVE THIS COMMENT A COOKIE!

[Aisomasu]

With all these restrictions/disadventage I prefer to reseache jetpack strong enought to raid raider's spaceship directly and enslave some of them... looks easier ^^

[Antares [UK]]

It is a dream colony - Just me, mad-scientist, and army of my droids: protecting the base, growing crops, mining uranium and building more droids!

[willow512]

I love the idea... But why make droids hard to work with? I don't think they'll imbalance the game if you make them a common occurence.

Basically a robot is a colonist who doesn't eat, moves slowly, has no social skills, sleeps only a short time and has a very very limited skillset.

Clearly The technogy required means you can't make them yourself, no matter how smart your lab guy is he just does not have the equipment. So you purchase them from robotics sellers who are like slave traders, only they're more expensive (10k per droid?)

They are bound by Asimov's rules of robotics, so they cannot fight. They have a tough skin (200hp, but get incapacitated at below 100hp) Any minor damage means they might short circuit in the rain so a colonist needs to go out and repair them. They have no social skill and can only do dumb manual labour. A robot requires a bed, which is a robotics recharging bay, but sleeps only a quarter of the time. Alternatively you might have a "replace batteries" task for your colonists.

Basically you'd use them to sweep, and to haul, maybe to farm, If you want to go fancy, give them the rescue colonist/capture incapacitated/feed prisoner jobs too, I'd leave repairs to humans as it requires more intelligence.

Research projects might increase their speed, hauling capacity, or reduce their energy consumption.

[Robitski]

It is a dream colony - Just me, mad-scientist, and army of my droids: protecting the base, growing crops, mining uranium and building more droids!

I think you're looking for a city-building game with contracts, missions and droids, not an isolated getusoutofhere colony simulator :L

[Renham]

what we havent consider yet in here is...
solar flares, droids may get seriusly damaged during solar flares, therefore depending solely in your droids wont be a realistic solution to your problems, if you get a raider attack during a solar flare or when your droids are recharging you will have a bad time.

no seriously..., also developing droids I dont think would be that hard considering the context, those guys may have access to advance technology, even components of droids to study. and you have naval cientists, phd in things that doesnt even exist yet... they can build a fucking robot from nothing.
so dont tell me dudethe context you couldnt do that... they can mine build solar panels, generators, batteries, so droids isnt that hard to imagine.

[Sky_walker]

How about that:
- Make them obtainable only though trade, and the chance of having them offered will drop by the amount of droids you have (eg. you got 0: 75%, you got 1: 50%, you got 10: 5%)

Another way to balance them would be to do what Renham said - instead of limiting the availability make them break down during solar flare if they weren't powered down when event occurred.