OK, I'm pretty sure I have a fix for this, but the underlying cause is unclear. The fix (null check) will unfortunately have the effect of creating a "silent failure". In other words, combat robots just won't spawn. This is better than crashing the game obviously, and if this is a "1 in a million" circumstance then that's probably OK.
Can you provide any more info about your save & circumstances? A comprehensive list of mods would be great, but in particular I am curious if you have any mods that either:
- Add new quality tiers or mess with quality in some way
- Add new types of combat robots