I don't think this is a particularly new idea, but why not have the limpet controllers themselves contain several bays to house the limpets as opposed to using cargo space.
Limpets rather than self destructing after hitting the time limit will become inactive (due to fuel depletion) and will need to be manually scooped up for refueling (refueling could be free, or done via synthesis) before being redeployed again for active service.
Prospector limpets could eject themselves from an asteroid on being triggered again and recalled to the ship for future deployment (and automatically once the resources in an attached asteroid were depleted).
I guess this came to mind with the new repair limpets being suggested in the near future. A great thing for explorers so that they (me as well!) have a relatively complete repair suite (well I don't know if those repair limpets will actually fix advanced damage like paint and structual wear as opposed to just hull structure). The problem though being that 2 precious slots would be needed (one for a small cargo rack, another for the controller itself); having limpets attached to a controller (much like SRV's are attached to a bay), would free up another slot for exploration ships with a limited number of slots.
Another possibility (maybe a better idea) is to use synthesis to rebuild a new limpet from scratch instead of collecting inactive limpets for refueling (especially if refueling is going to require materials anyway). This would be less painful with the occasional suiciding of collector limpets, otherwise you would need to go all the way back to a base that sells the correct limpets to refill the Limpet controller bay.
Or for even more convenience we could have free refueling for inactive limpets combined with fairly cheap synthesis for those that are accidently lost.
Since I primarily spend my time exploring, I'm pretty limited in my experience outside the occasional mining with my Python, so I can't really see all the other drawbacks that other players do. So if you have any other ideas/opinions that you think will work better (or perhaps don't think the system needs any improvement currently as it), post it, but please give explanations to support any ideas/opinions you might have.
Thanks!
Limpets rather than self destructing after hitting the time limit will become inactive (due to fuel depletion) and will need to be manually scooped up for refueling (refueling could be free, or done via synthesis) before being redeployed again for active service.
Prospector limpets could eject themselves from an asteroid on being triggered again and recalled to the ship for future deployment (and automatically once the resources in an attached asteroid were depleted).
I guess this came to mind with the new repair limpets being suggested in the near future. A great thing for explorers so that they (me as well!) have a relatively complete repair suite (well I don't know if those repair limpets will actually fix advanced damage like paint and structual wear as opposed to just hull structure). The problem though being that 2 precious slots would be needed (one for a small cargo rack, another for the controller itself); having limpets attached to a controller (much like SRV's are attached to a bay), would free up another slot for exploration ships with a limited number of slots.
Another possibility (maybe a better idea) is to use synthesis to rebuild a new limpet from scratch instead of collecting inactive limpets for refueling (especially if refueling is going to require materials anyway). This would be less painful with the occasional suiciding of collector limpets, otherwise you would need to go all the way back to a base that sells the correct limpets to refill the Limpet controller bay.
Or for even more convenience we could have free refueling for inactive limpets combined with fairly cheap synthesis for those that are accidently lost.
Since I primarily spend my time exploring, I'm pretty limited in my experience outside the occasional mining with my Python, so I can't really see all the other drawbacks that other players do. So if you have any other ideas/opinions that you think will work better (or perhaps don't think the system needs any improvement currently as it), post it, but please give explanations to support any ideas/opinions you might have.
Thanks!
