Now vacant pickaxe slot should get dedicated to construction robots

[MoleOnDope]

TL;DR

The pickaxe slot got removed in 0.17 and can now be replaced with a slot that takes the personal roboport's construction bots.

What ?

At the beginning of the game, said slot would simply accept up to one Stack of bots. Easy and effective.
Later, when the player might want to use several Personal Roboports MK2s at once, it would be able to take a new item, the Personal Robot Stacker. When it is right-clicked, a separate mini-inventory opens with a certain number of slots, allowing more than 50 bots.
Now, how many slots exactly?
A Power Armor MK3 with a 10x10 grid takes up to 24 2x2 Personal Roboport MK2s and 1 portable solar panel. Which, of course, is insane, but possible. Which gives us 600 Construction robots max, or 12 stacks respectively.
That's why introducing the item in 3 tiers would be great:

• Personal Robot Stacker MK1: 4 slots or 200 bots max (for everyday needs)

• Personal Robot Stacker MK2: 8 slots or 400 bots max (for dedicated megabase architects)

• Personal Robot Stacker MK3: 12 slots or 600 bots max (for those who just like to go hard)

The item icon in the equipment bar would then show the accumulated number of bots the stacker holds, allowing for easy checking if you lost any.

Why ?

PROs:

• The currently greyed out space in the equippment bar is being put to good use again

• Inventory buff, which is only small considering most players will probably not use more than 100 bots at a time

• The suggested multi-tier item adds to the general sense of progression within a playthrough

• The name "Personal Robot Stacker" establishes a strong logical link to the Personal Roboport and suggests those two items are to be used together. The already known tier names "MKx" add to this.

• The change would impose no limitations compared to now: the available construction robot count can still be maxed out.

• The solution is non-recursive, meaning no inventories within inventories (As it would be if the bots were to be placed in the Personal Roboports like in their stationary big brothers)

CONs:

• Only thing I can think of is that the answer to the question "how many slots should the item have?" can't be answered definitely. Meaning it can relay on estimates on how many bots will be needed at the most by most players

Let me know what you think!

[leadraven]

I like the concept to have robots in this slot. Actually, I even suggested same thing)
I don't know about Robot Stacker, it feels redundant. I would prefer just to have all 600 bots in one cell. But it is a technical question, developers will decide how to make at.

[MoleOnDope]

I don't know about Robot Stacker, it feels redundant. I would prefer just to have all 600 bots in one cell. But it is a technical question, developers will decide how to make at.

Yeah, it's just a suggestion
The thing with having all of them in the cell would mean suddenly allowing a much bigger stack size than usual. That could barely be called intuitive, and I think the stacker would solve that quite effectively and even add to the gameplay experience.
If you don't, that's of course ok though

[BlueTemplar]

Or bring PickAxes / Melee Weapons / Mining Hardness back, for mods ! /ducks

[Sovietsanta]

+1 definitely would save inventory space

[Solar Marine]

I suggest giving personal roboports a small internal storage for bots. It's a little annoying to have to micromanage construction robots if you are clearing out your inventory.

[Koub]

[Koub] Merged into older topic with similar suggestion.

[conn11]

Good idea, the old slot is needlessly empty. I would go one step further and propose, to reserve it for a number of things like: grenades, cliff explosive, repair packs, fitting the playstyle and the players progress level.