Robot Engineering

Bring your own army.

Robot Engineering introduces a powerful new gameplay system that lets you craft, salvage, customize, and command deployable robots. Choose their weapons, armor, color, name, and special mods to create your perfect mechanical ally—or an entire squad of them. Deploy them anywhere! Assign to crew ships/outposts or act as a follower!

With the Robot Engineer perk, you’ll unlock a new fabrication system and a dedicated workbench where you can build and modify robot frames from scratch. A "cheat" gameplay option will allow you to instantly max out the perk, complete all associated research, and add a large selection of items to Jemison Mercentile.

Enemies you defeat have a chance to drop rare robot frames or loose robot mods. You can also find frames and mods at Apex Electronics and certain cargo trade ships. These parts are intentionally rare, encouraging scavenging and exploration.

Deployable Robots

Robot frames appear in your “Weapon” inventory category and must be equipped to deploy—don’t worry, this doesn’t unequip your weapon.

Once deployed:

• Robots follow and assist you in combat.
• Robots can carry your loot.
• Robots can be assigned to crew slots on ships and outposts, letting you automate your operations without pesky humans.
• Robots can be issued orders using hotkeys when scrolling over them.
• A "Robot Control Terminal" is added to your misc items. This item will let you control multiple bots at once.

Power Management

Every robot requires power, provided by a battery mod installed at the Robotics Fabricator.

• Batteries automatically recharge in safe zones: cities, settlements, your ship, and outposts.
• In the field, recharge via the Maintenance Menu using Charge Packs, Positron Batteries, or 3kV ammo.
• If a robot runs out of power, it shuts down completely until recharged or fitted with a new battery.

Packing a robot back into its frame consumes its battery, requiring a fresh one on redeployment. Alternatively, if you have loose battery mods, you can re-equip them directly through the Maintenance Menu. A setting exists to disable battery removal, but packing and unpacking will refill a robots power level.

cV System

cV is your command bandwidth. Each robot consumes a portion of your total cV based on its complexity.

• You start with 3 cV by default.
• Each rank of the Robot Engineering perk increases your maximum cV.
• The Technovert trait adds +1 permanent cV.
• Specialized neuroamps can further raise your capacity.
• Player can view their cV level in the status menu, at the robot workbench, or when using the robot control terminal.

You can mix and match robots as long as you stay within your cV limit. For example, with 10 cV you can control 3 robots at 3 cV each, or 2 bots at 5 cV, etc.

Robot Damage and Recovery

• Robots will slowly recover health in cities, settlements, outposts, and players ship.
• In the field you can repair bots using Robot Repair Parts.

If a robot’s health reaches zero:

• Equipped mods are lost at random.
• It can be repaired using Robot Repair Parts.
• Be aware: leaving a broken robot behind may result in it despawning.

Modding and Customization

Robots are fully modular and can be upgraded at the Robotics Workbench, or fitted with salvaged loose mods.

Universal Mods:

• Plating – Changes the bot’s material, affecting resistances, speed, defense, and power usage.
• Chassis – Affects carry weight and storage.
• Battery – Provides energy capacity and sometimes bonus effects.
• Weapon – 12 unique weapon systems to choose from.
• Weapon Modifier – Alters performance with effects like bonus damage types or fire rate boosts.
• Paint – Every robot has at least 8 cosmetic skin options.

Model-Specific Mods:

Teenybombs – Tiny suicide drones that explode on contact.

• Deployed by throwing. Explodes both at launch and impact.
• Targets player’s enemies in priority order.
• Explosive Payload mod lets you choose the blast type.

Pylons – Stationary field emitters.

• Deploy a persistent energy field with various effects via Field Deployment.

Boxbots – Based on the Minibot line, includes Teenybot and Megabot variants.

• Field Deployment locks them in place while they project powerful effects.
• Field Deployment can be automatted to allow bots to automatically deploy in combat when player is in range.
• Painting your Boxbot with Gardening or Sanitation schemes grants it the outpost perk.

Model A – Classic humanoid robots with versatile loadouts.

• Dual weapon support and AI Processor installation.
• Some variants provide built-in utilities: cooking, industry, pharma healing.
• Can expend power to heal the player.

AXL (Model A – Extra Large) – Heavy-duty battle units that border on mechs.

• No processor, but high power and defense stats.

Model S – Streamlined variants with customizable limb enhancements.

Turrets – Micro, Light, and Heavy turrets.

• Static defense bots with two weapon mod slots.

Synths – Highly advanced humanoid units.

• Can equip any weapon or outfit.
• Supports two AI processors.
• Extensive cosmetic options available.

Robot Control & Maintenance

Activate any robot to open its control menu. From here, you can:

• Use special abilities
• Access inventory
• Assign/Unassign it to a ship or outpost
• Open the Maintenance Menu

The Maintenance Menu allows you to:

• Repair damage
• Recharge the battery
• Rename your robot
• Pack it into its frame for redeployment

================================== Perk, Trait, and Background

Robotic Engineering (perk)
From servo to CPU, you know every bolt and byte. Gain the ability to fabricate and deploy functional robotic units.
Each rank unlocks new robot engineering research projects and increases players cV by 1.

Technovert (trait)
Why make friends when you can make robots? Permanently gain +1 cV and begin the game with a set of pre-modded robot frames.

Tinkerer (background)
Since you can remember you've taken things apart to see how they work. Luckily, that has turned into a lucrative career. (+1 Robotic Engineering, Commerce, Scavenging & Crafted robots have +5% health.)

================================== Conflicts

This mod alters vanilla manufacturing recipes by adding a visibility condition that hides them from the robotics workbench. If you want another mod to override this, load it after Robot Engineering.

Note: This mod uses vanilla robot races. Mods that change robot races may affect stats or behavior.

================================== Known Issues

Robots have a standard world object for each variant, colors shown in the robotics bench when painting may differ on the actual bot once deployed. This is restricted to slight variations, so you won't build blue and it come out red, but it may be a different shade of blue.

Due to modding limitations, new workbenches cannot be added. Robot Engineering uses the Industrial and Weapons benches; its recipes will appear only under the Robotics Bench filter, but vanilla recipes will still be visible beneath unless using a mod like NWEF.

Also note: robot stat previews during modding are estimated using simulated calculations within the custom system.