Doubt it, otherwise you wouldn't think I want them to only be available to Gamma people.

Beta would be the only place where you could actually FARM them. Artifact part could be changed so you have chance to get them on Beta too. 3-stripe star beacons themselves are rare, and not locked to any island types.

I stopped reading after that.

Observers are a poor choice if you have 3-stripe star beacons in mind since they are not easy to farm by nature and have poor droprates for those beacons. Best would be to either get star beacons from SAP loot or farm tokens and then beacons. (Notice that Beta is heavily involved here!)

Basically what I got from your post was that you understood as the MK3-s would mostly be available to people on gamma since you wrote "Something being rare should not mean finding it is confined to areas under control of a very small amount of people, that will just unbalance things more. Specifically gamma, ..."

The main focus is actually to make it available mostly from Beta interactions while avoiding Beta exlusivity by adding small chance to get them from Gamma loot-tables.

I disagree here. If MK3s and tanked MK2-s were to fight, my money would be on the MK2s to win, even if they would have smaller numbers. Remember that the MK3s have both smaller accumulator pool AND armor not to mention less slots. You have to remember that you are sacrificing big portion of your bot for a ~20-25% damage gain. MK3's are built in a way that makes them not superior to MK2s.

It all comes down to the nature of how you farm. For example, me sitting on an Alpha Rank 4 spawn or beacon pit could surely use more DPS while sacrificing tank. It adds slightly more risk to the farming, which is good.

The bots themselves are not that big and important part of the suggestion since the real focus is set on providing more content to the vets while also buffing some vital aspects that should need some more attention(beta islands, artifacting etc).

We chose the DPS route because everyone can benefit from it. If you add bots to the game that don't cater to the PVE and PVP crowds both, it's not very well thought out imo.

Basically about the roles suggestion you and Sundial are having:
I feel the roles should be made available to bots by creative minds of players and actual fitting. Bots should just be blank canvases and not restrict certain bots to certain roles.

Problem with beacons is, if you were to get it for free(if they would have no value basically) then doing them everywhere regardless of the efficiency would be worth it. Right now, naturally best is to run them on Gammas and second best are some natural beacon pits that have formed on Betas. That makes gamma players dictate the price and puts Alpha players to the situation of either supplying the beacons for the people that are willing to pay more or do them themselves with less efficiency. I don't think it's nessecarily bad since everyone benefits from that relationship if they pick the right option.

(Just adding that they actually nerfed the explosion damage effect of beacons quite a lot with the last beacon update so that could put Alpha back on the map with beacons.)

Either way, this sounds like a discussion for some other thread because 3-stripe Star beacons would probably be only supplying a really small amount(10%?) comparing to Betas, given that Beta islands attract enough reasons to go and live there/farm them.

About the items, I partly agree too. There should be some more options in that regard.. but that's something that can hopefully be added in the future. When I first started playing Perpetuum, I felt the MK2s were done wrong too and they should have followed the EVE principle of just giving roles to the bots. Years later I've started to enjoy the blank canvas state of those bots. You can use your creativity and play around with fits.. if only there were more module slots on all of the bots and less restrictions with item placement.

Another suggestion about the MK3-s: Make them all with 100/100 detection and masking, making them both capable detectors and capable maskers. Just not the best.

Gun slots mean more work on the mesh meaning more work in art department. Not sure exactly how hard would be adding 2 more turrets to Kain but it sounds a lot harder than just new texture, not to mention you get a new light, assault, mech and hmech bots per faction.

Either way Xadhoom, the whole purpose behind this idea was to make it as easy as possible to implement while keeping the bots general usability high and embed the production deeply to beta and gamma. We already know they can change textures because they did it with prototype bots. Siege bots mean new models and thats something I know they can't do right now.

Yes do something they have been working for ages, Hybrid robots, something new like mk3 with high damage will make it too OP for PVE and to balance it might take longer than the actual development.

Other things, is find a work around for bigger robots larger that a single tile.

They could do it with the scarab because it glides , legged bots , I am not sure they can atm, hell yeah bring more gliders small and big. Large siege bots should attract many more players old and new. Mech game as this is, should make you feel big, it fails at that, the perspective is out of whack too.

It just occurred to me that a very old idea of mine, once voiced on IRC to a dev, might come in handy here. If one would like me, have Mk3 be specialists for either range or siege, then anything you do will cause balancing issues with existing roles. Like NPC farming or regular PVP.

A solution is to introduce a new type of siege weapon, that does focus on delivering a new damage type (phasing, whatever) at long range. Now allow those weapons only to fit into specialized slots and only allow them on Mk3 versions of bots.

This way you can balance very specifically their role in taking down structures from range. Either by manipulating the damage/range stats of the weapon/ammo or the defense of structures against that specific damage type.

The legs being on different tiles is a visual effect ... the coding of the 2/4/6/8 legged "multi" tile bot can still be centered over one tile. .. its really not that hard to do many games have done it.. there is no reason to try to make it harder than it needs to be by trying to "break" the game engine and cram multi tile robots into it.

"break" as in trying to do something you are ill equipped to do.

Dev Zoom, we dont care what the issues are, we just want them to be fixed and in the game.

No need to break anything, just work the problem, and fix the dam issue.

I do apologize for being a bit harsh however, this is something that will fundamentally change what can be done in game.  This IS a game changer, if it can be figured out how it can be done. 

If that is what it takes, then start moving to that end.  Begin to think of ways to rework the system to the goal at hand. 

With that being said I fully understand that I have zero, not a clue, how much work that will be, and I am quite sure it will be quite a bit of work.  It still doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.

A suggestion, no idea if it could even work, is to make the tiles smaller so that instead of one tile the current bots stand on, its a collection of tiles.  EI 1 tile is split into 4 tiles.  You can then go down to any size you want 1 tile into 50 tiles ect ect. 

I dont care how its done, just make it happen in a relistic way.  That isn't just a band-aid that you have to keep ripping off every time something changes.

I have to agree here, creating a greater diversity in bots and more end game content/goals for players is probably way more important for most players than having a 100% realistic and graphically correct visualisation of hitboxes and the robot models interface towards the surroundings etc.
Sure taking it to the extreme, making bots the size of an outpost is pushing it, but if there was a super hauler five times the size of a scarab, and it was able to hide behind a tree, I dont think many would complain.