I would love for a research to be required, either by default or via an option, in order to unlock spiderbots. It should require either red science or red and green.

I would also love if power were required. Currently, spiderbots have infinite use with no source of fuel or electricity. One cool solution to fix this would be to have a charging station that unlocks alongside spiderbots – spiderbots would automatically return to the nearest one and charge themselves when low on power.

I like that idea. Since they follow the player and they player may be far away from a charging station, maybe it makes sense for them to be able to take power from your armor equipment grid, or fuel from your inventory? I'll think about it.

There already are some basic technologies you can research - but unlocking the spiderbot recipe just requires mining a fish instead of using red or green science. That being said the spiderbot follower count technologies do use science packs.

Once I unlocked construction bots in my save, I removed this mod. I find that the spiderbots are even better than the regular bots. For one, they instantly zap items into your inventory, and you can recall them at any time without waiting for them to return the items.

My suggestions to make this a more balanced mod:
- Charging stations as mentioned earlier. Not requiring any fuel or power isn’t ideal. If you don’t want to implement this, at least having to supply them with wood or coal would be nice. In that case, it’d make sense to only need to add the fuel to one spiderbot, having them share one another’s fuel.
- Starting with 10 seems too powerful. I think you should start with 1, with each research adding 5, instead of 10.
- Instead of zapping items directly to your inventory, they should return with the items like normal bots do. If you recall them before they’ve returned the items, they could just drop onto the ground where the spiderbots were, or the ones that were carrying items could be prevented from being recalled.

Just my thoughts on how you could make the mod more balanced. Bots are incredibly powerful, so I’m of the opinion that early-game bots should be much less convenient than normal bots. Also, they shouldn’t be so good that they can be used even after you’ve unlocked regular bots.