- Proposal
- Add a temporary Harvester Resource Collection Chip that can be crafted by Droid Engineers and installed into a droid.
When activated, the droid can collect resources from a harvester and transfer them directly to the owner's inventory.
The chip would have a limited number of uses and a limited duration. These values could be affected through experimentation. The operating range could also be an experimentation attribute, potentially ranging from 5m to 50m, depending on what the developers feel is appropriate for game balance.
For example, experimentation could allow Droid Engineers to specialize a chip toward:
- Number of uses: 2–12
- Duration: 10–60 minutes per use
- Collection range: potentially 5–50m
- Justification
- This would give Droid Engineers another useful consumable product while creating meaningful choices for experimentation.
Instead of being a permanent upgrade, the chip would eventually run out of uses or expire, creating an ongoing market for chips crafted by Droid Engineers. Different experimentation results could also create different chip types and qualities, giving players a reason to seek out skilled Droid Engineers.
The range limitation would also prevent the system from becoming completely remote harvesting.
- Motivation
- Resource harvesting can involve a lot of repetitive manual collection, especially for players managing multiple harvesters. A droid-based collection chip could make resource collection more convenient while still requiring active player involvement.
The droid would give players a convenient way to collect resources from their harvesters and transfer them directly to their inventory. The player would still need to be within the chip's collection range for the droid to interact with the harvester.
It would also give Droid Engineers another meaningful consumable to craft, experiment with, and sell, giving players another reason to return to DEs for better chips.
I’d like to suggest adding a temporary Harvester Resource Collection Chip for Droid Engineers. The chip would allow a droid to collect resources from a harvester and transfer them directly to the player's inventory, with the chip's uses, duration, and collection range being determined through experimentation