As talked about on stream:
The majority of the auton bay's functionality should be possible to have done (for a price) at auton dealerships (and possibly some other stations as well). This would include repair and replacement of armor, device installation and removal, renaming, and restoration of salvaged autons (for the edge case when someone grabs a destroyed auton via an auton bay, then gets rid of said bay before the auton is restored).
The auton bay would still have the advantage of doing this for free, on demand, identifying all autons when installed, and also allowing salvage of autons in the first place.
(This might be possible to re-use for managing companions' ships as well)
(I do however think that if an Auton Services menu option is added, we should still have a quick way to repair/restore all autons with one or two buttons, the way the current 'Repair Autons' option allows)
I was planning something like this for my old Upgradeable Wingmen mod, though I never got around to implementing any of the auton parts.
Auton Dealer would let you purchace auton euipment upgrades, but not let you install from cargo hold i.e. upgradeInstallOnly as offered by Corporate arms / armor dealer stations
- maybe Auton Dealer will only support corporate autons
- full customisation (install from cargo / support non-corporate autons) could be unlocked somehow such as purchacing "auton technician licence", with high corporate rank or shares
Tinker or Blackmarket would allow the player to install devices from cargo etc.
For upgrading companion ships, the mod assumes that the wingman owns the ship and the player should not be able to remove all the equipment and sell it.
- Player can offer equipment to the wingman, but only upgrades will be accepted
- There is no charge for installing upgrades as we assume the wingman pays for installation
- Old equipment is not given to the player, assumes that the wingman will sell off any old equipment to pay for installation, repairs, etc