Welcome to Perpetuum. Hauling-Online.
It's always been the case that you need about 5 Lithus running near daily to move assets around. It's now impossible to live completely in one place and when you do you'll still need miners that need hauling.

They should make the sequer more expensive but double the size of it. Same with the Lithus. It won't solve the issue however of always needing haulers. 5000U of minerals won't move themselves and it's so rewarding waking up every day knowing that people have dumped more crap for you to drive aimlessly around collecting.

Mining takes longer than the hauling, if it was the otherway around you would have a point.

This definitely needs to be brought in line. A good pilot in a Squeaker can make three runs in the time a lithus can make one run.  I like to mine far out, so hauling takes forever for me. Plus trying to move stuff between alpha and beta is a pain.

Hauling ore during a mining op can be done continually, so there's ways to mitigate that; not saying it isn't a pain, but it can be avoided.

After seeing 30 + lithus's rolling out of Tellesis however, it does become apparent that there are corps out there needing to move 10 of thousands of U's of material. Now that is something that can't be easily worked around.

I'm going to say that the next generation of bots should have a dedicated hauler, something large, very slow, and difficult to defend. But capable of moving something like 2400U's at a time. There could also be a larger but more tactical hauler following in the 3x capacity line of 720U's with a slower speed than the lithus.

If a bot comes out that is faster with more cargo than a lithus, that will make it obesolete. If it's going to have similar specs then it would need to be much more difficult to drive, so that the lithus would still be viable. Meaning the EP requirement would have to be large enough that the time it takes to drive the 720U bot is so long that it's desirable to use the lithus; something like 3 months of EP, in addition to Indy 10. That sounds like alot, but recall that it's 45 days of EP to get from Indy 9 to 10 simply to pick up a couple slots in the Riveler MK II.

On the other hand, the dedicated hauler can be less EP intensive, as it doesn't have a comparable bot; and would essentially become the base model of cargo bots; Think semi-truck vs cargo van (sequar) or 1/2 ton uHaul (Lithus) that we have now.

Lol not even close.  Sequer is 80kph and the luthus is 60kph max without defense or nexus.  That means (without load and undocking times) a 4:3 trip ratio.  The sequer can haul 320u when the lithus hauls 720u.

I have no idea where you're getting your numbers, but I assume it doesn't smell good there.

Personally I think Industrial and Logistics bots could be split (including extensions possibly).

This would allow for more variety in hauling options instead of just 2.

What about making molecular instability dependend on mass for the 2400u transport? So that if you want to use that teleport beacon you still have to wait 2 mins at the next teleport.

While you do raise interesting points Arga, I disagree completely.

ATM what we have in-game is:

Light Bot - ?
Assault Bot - Sequer
Mech - ?
Heavy Mech - Lithus

What would make sense is to place Mech Hauler Bot (lets call it Tridentpenis for easier recognition) at current Lithus 240U capacity, make it ~10 kph slower then sequer so its moving ~70 kph. Concurrently, the Lithus's cargo weight could be improved to 480U or 720U (warrants a balancing discussion).

Continous logistics SHOULD be a necessity. But theres a fine line to be walked between necessity and down-right pain-in-the-balls-spending-whole-day-hauling.

Also, why should haulers be super-duper extremely vunerable? The game shouldn't be designed so that T1 lightbots can blow up everything and go trolololo.

First LOL at Tridentpenis.

I think there should be a divide between strategic and tactical hauling.

The size increase to even 720U for tactical hauling doesn't do anything to address the issue of needing to move 20,000U of materials, but it does change the number of trips a lithus has to make during a mining operation.

The strategic hauler would fall outside of the tactical realm, by having a speed of 5 kph, but has an internal TP. The game play is that it undocks and is vulnerable while the TP charges from external ACC support. TP's a couple times requiring recharge at each, then slowly rolls the last part from the TP to the outpost.

I just feels like better game play to have 1 ship and 10 guards, then 30 haulers. Being vulnerable is what drives still needing 'players' to be active in the move, and discouraging it being used tactically. I'd even go so far as to say it can only drive on terraformed road ways too.

Tactically, the smaller lithus load does neccessitate continious hauling, probably with multiple players. But they don't need to be as guarded, since they can be sheilded and are designed to be used in dangerous situations (hence tactical).

At 10kph less, but with 3x the capacity, the sequar would only be used for t1-t3 transport missions and even then the 'bother' of maintaing 2 haulers may outwiegh the 10kph difference and then the large one just gets used for everything.

Speed and capacity. Currently there is a clear distinction between the seq and lithus, unlike combat bots there really isn't much room for choice and without a large gap in speed, the smaller cargo will simply be obsolete. This is the same issue with having cargo modules that effect speed.

Thats true Arga, but what is an Argano or a Termis used for? They're beginner bots, all industrials end up getting all the way up to a Riv/RivMk2 because they're better.

The Argano and Termis are still useful for other things, but by no means are they a viable mining bot. Just like a Sequer wouldn't be a viable hauler, but it'd be useful for other stuff.

As they share the same extension tree, current haulers and gathering bots suggest that sequer is newb hauler for 'small' range and volume logistic (like empty a can) and Lithus for small range / mid volume for the same purpose. But they do it very badly probably for some reason you explain. It must have a strict distinction between mining skill for mining bot purpose (miner AND short range / volume logistic), and the large volume / long range logistic.

I think a good alternative is up like by 50% for sequer and 200% lithus (price concordance) for mining purpose and to add new advanced hauler requiring a new skill (like Spec. ops robot control) with Industrial robot control prerequis. Like assault Special sequer for long range hauling with same volume transportation than sequer but a little faster with somethink like signal masking bonus for tactical hauling purpose and a huge hauler without def bonus and a bonus like 1% bonus in speed. If the skill is rank 9 and prereq for large hauler like 8-9, it will be very hard to get due to the two condition (logistic rank and industrial robot control rank).

It make logistic less painful for miners and the need of logistic specialist for the large volume logistic. There will have less specialist in logistic than lithus pilot actually due to the new skill to get (most off them will make miner), so finaly, same volume transported but less painful for the pilot (more with the coming waypoint changes).

PS : and during that time my can holder alt disconnect and ... zo , no can, no more hauling needed

sure, i dont think reducing 'significantly' speed to up cargo is a good deal cause it don't really fix the problem but lower hp is. Removing armor plate to reduce mass/volume to up capacity (not speed).
So lightweight + this fix (nvm the way, module or new bot) make larger logistic bot very vulnerable.