Robot Kittens

[Kraken]

This suggestion is intended for late into the game’s development, feel free to give your own 2 cents

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KSA should include something more than ordinary probe cores: physical robots
(and I’m not talking about rovers!)

These robots could come in many shapes and sizes for any task: station maintenance, science collection, colony construction, exploration.


Humanoid robots could be controlled by the player (in-universe: containing simple AI capabilities), at the cost of requiring hefty amounts of power and an adequate connection to the Kitten Space Center at all times.

Both humanoid and non-humanoid robots could be initiated by the player to begin autonomously performing a specific redundant task for a reasonable period of time.


If life support is added to any extent, these robots can be sent off to perform redundant and dangerous tasks like building a base on a toxic world that would be too costly to send a kitten for.

An early-game surface robot could be rendered as a dependent husk that requires a kitten to remotely control it.

For example, a specialized humanoid drone is on the surface of a scorching high-pressure planet (like Venus), and a kitten in orbit is using VR-esque technology to remotely control the drone in this situation where the fragile kitten cannot go.​

On top of this, cheap independent robots could be prone to failure/confusion, requiring a kitten (ideally nearby) for repair and/or a strong connection to receive refined instructions from Mission Control

 

[Spaceman3d]

Great Idea.
Robot are also usefull in early colony gameplay for building first infrastructure on another planet. A good example is the game Surviving Mars were autonomous "drones" are used to buld the parts for the colony placed by the player.
It could be made so that robots are slower in building things than Kittens so that the player has to decide if to risk sending crew just to get things done faster. This is epecally true if basic life support gets added.
As for AI, I think then the player should be able just to assing tasks to the robot. Early robots will require remote control (player controling robot) as you develop more advanced autonation/AI robots will be able to do more tasks autonomsly.
Robots need power so they will have to rechage periodically, this requres charging stations to be set up, Simlar to Surviving Mars.
Like the Idea of remote conrol by Kittens. One of the reasons the first crewed mars misson should be orbtal so we can control robots in real time, react to issues faster.