More deactivatable robots, remotes, and a robot scoop?

[Midaychi]

I’ve noticed, goofing around with a control laptop, that many robots you can hack aren’t deactivatable. This means that you’re usually stuck with robots perma-following you unless you find a creative way to get rid of them.

I would like to suggest that
1 - All robots that can be hacked via control laptop are deactivatable into objects, with appropriate weight and volume
2 - Vehicle remote devices can detect deactivated but functional robots and allow you to remotely control them
3 - Vehicles get a ‘drone scoop’, which can only hold one drone at a time but can be any size. That way you can pick up a chicken walker and cart it to a new location.
4 - An additional vehicle part called a ‘drone bay’, which requires advanced remote and robotics controls. You can store robots and only robots in it, you can’t have a cargo space on the same frame, and you can deploy activated robots out of it through a drone scoop set to reverse.
5 - Friendly robots activated directly by you can be controlled through a vehicle control device.

[RADIALTHRONE1]

[spoiler=Long response within][quote=“Midaychi, post:1, topic:10687”]1 - All robots that can be hacked via control laptop are deactivatable into objects, with appropriate weight and volume[/quote]
I doubt that military grade robotics are able to be hacked by any random person, let alone one without military grade hacking skills and technology.

2 - Vehicle remote devices can detect deactivated but functional robots and allow you to remotely control them

You’re assuming that they broadcast on the same frequency and that, once again, military grade robotics broadcast a signal to any random schmuck around to pick it up.

3 - Vehicles get a ‘drone scoop’, which can only hold one drone at a time but can be any size. That way you can pick up a chicken walker and cart it to a new location.

That would assume that the vehicle itself has enough mass to pickup any robot available.

4 - An additional vehicle part called a ‘drone bay’, which requires advanced remote and robotics controls. You can store robots and only robots in it, you can’t have a cargo space on the same frame, and you can deploy activated robots out of it through a drone scoop set to reverse.

See response for #3
This would require significant amounts of electronics and machinery. Not to mention the required software, security clearance, plain technical knowledge, and specific technical knowledge required to even build/operate such a device.

5 - Friendly robots activated directly by you can be controlled through a vehicle control device.

See response for #2[/spoiler]

[Midaychi]

If you’ve hacked it already with a control laptop, then I assume you’ve got military grade hacking skills and technology, and if you have a deactivated military grade robot in cataclysm 9/10 times its because you hacked it friendly and then turned it off. You need like 10 computers to reliably take down some of the higher end military grade robots.

A drone scoop and bay could be mountable only on the outside of a vehicle, thus making the mass limitation irrelevant, and there is a drone operator class start you know right?

[Coolthulhu]

Directly controlling robots won’t happen soon. It is far harder than it sounds.

As for all robots being activateable - there’s a PR that does exactly that, but not all robots are balanced well for that. Notably skitterbots - those are tiny, but can stunlock hulks until death (hulk’s, not bot’s). Tazing needs to be balanced first.