Can't milk a robot, others

[SunshineDistillery]

Describe the bug
As far as I can see, there are three ways a monster can be friendly: being defined as belonging to the player's faction (slimespring), becoming flagged as a pet (cow), being flagged as controlled (turrets presumably). These three friendlies don't have the same behavior. A trait like milking is available for a tamed creature, but a milkable robot can only be turned off.

To Reproduce
Feed a cow and release a manhack. "e"xamining them brings up different menus/options.

Expected behavior
One 'friendly' state and a standard menu for interacting with them. Monster traits, like milking, to work consistently no matter how the monster was tamed or deployed.

Versions and configuration:

• OS: Windows 7
• Game Version: 7619
• Graphics version: Tiles
• Mods loaded: None/ testing mods

Additional context
By itself, a pretty inconsequential problem, but there are other things like putting a bag on a robot or tying a robot to a leash that could be useful. Things like the flag PET_WONT_FOLLOW doesn't work on deployed grenade-hacks, which would be really nice.

[ItsJustAlexC]

uhhhh what

[ItsJustAlexC]

no offense but, I've read this over 2 times, and besides the friendly units mechanic, this seems very nonsensical

[kevingranade]

It's a infrastructure issue that is impacting ability to do modding I think. The feature ask is that no matter how a creature gets a "tamed" flag, they can be treated the same way with respect to interactions.

[SunshineDistillery]

Yeah, exactly. There are several 'friendly' states, but there should be one. Currently, useful features for pets don't apply to turrets/robots just because those monsters are spawned from items.

Obviously, milking a robot is silly, but I thought I could hijack the feature to mod robots to produce mutagen or other chemicals. From there I discovered a few other issues resulting from having separate flags.

[scorpion451]

This is a brilliant idea that would open up a ton of potential, needs suggestion and interface flags too, maybe game mechanics change as well.

Kevin's comment nails it- a single interaction window for all friendly states, that dynamically generates interactions based on flags. (and ideally a single friendly state as well)

Say, I'm a modder and I create a robot that produces clean water. I give it a "HARVESTLIQUID" flag, and indicators that it produces clean water, how much, and how fast, and the appropriate fluff text for "milking" it. Said robot also has a flag that it can be hitched, so the option to tie it in place appears in the list. I want this robot to work as a carrier, too, so I flag it as being a valid target for saddlebags or a backpack.

Another robot has the ability to mount weapons, so a flag gives it the menu option for giving it a weapon. NPCs also have this flag, for easy weapon swapping.

I have a spider NPC follower. They get "HARVESTITEM" flag with the web rope production mutation, so I can interact with them to have them produce some rope or thread for me.

All friendly creature interactions go through this same menu, everything is dynamically generated based on flags, totally plug-and-play.