VoltairesPuppet

@animai : I think I might have a crack at coding this, unless you have found something since?

Who says crime doesn't pay? ::)

As an alternative they could also have drones that can pickup and shuttle back "fluf", maybe even mine too. I realised there are ships and at very least mods that enable them to act as mining ships, but I'm talking tiny tiny ships that probably have more in common with missiles and don't require ship bays, only launch turrets (??), boarding ports are assumed - how else do you get stuff onto your ship?

How about we make the case to the developers for making the editor LUA based or at least significant parts exposed via LUA (i.e. manipulate blocks via C exposed API, basic GUI in LUA code). One addition would be the ability to add meta data to saved ships and blocks, which isn't removed but marked as broken if edited by a non-conforming editor. i.e. so curves can be changed at a later date because the curve data is saved along with the blocks (if editor is smart enough it could compensate for individual blocks that may have been tweaked, or just not allow editing of such composite shapes). A plugin mechanism would be cool, but as moders we could figure that stuff out while not distracting the devs from the more important stuff.

Is it possible to replace the drone model and/or give more of a choice as to the drone model / ship used by default when dis-embarking / re-spawning?

On this one I think you have out done yourself! Breathtaking.

Why does it need to run as administrator? :'(

I think docking should be limited to smaller ships. Beyond a certain size you should have to use shuttles or smaller cargo ships to ferry items. There is a mod that provides this ability via fighters, though I haven't played with it yet. Will have to play with this to see if it is actually fun or not. That would be my only gripe about adding something like this. Hell if its automated, that would be a bonus.