[geoschmo]

Well, I think if they ever do "fix" that, then the robo-miner really will be a useless component. The piddling amout of resources produced by a single robo-miner sattelite in an asteroid field won't be worth the time and effort required to research the large sattlite. Usually by the time I get to large satellite, resources aren't much of a problem anyway. About the only use for it I could see would be a kind of low-tech "resource converter". You could put a robo-farmer or robo-extractor in a frigate and park it over a organic or radioactive rich asteroid or planet. You would be spending minerals in maint on the ship, but if you have an abundance of those and need the others, it could possibly be worth it. Not too likely though. Maybe change the miner component size so it fits in a small sattelite. Then it would be available early in the game when resources are scarce.