My suggestion is that the RD starts out with a single research analyser, a specialist device which is basically a purple mining scanner for all intensive spriting purposes, that can assess and store tech level information on unique objects as the intended purpose like the practice lasgun with a short timer (about as long as it takes to apply a medkit) without having to deconstruct them for materials. This is wildly useful for maintaining resources if they are sparse (scan the plasma in the test lab and give it to xeno straight away for instance) and aquiring new tech from larger objects.
> Information from scanners are stored in specialist disks that can be removed with a alt click hotkey, putting them into the R&D console and upload the data to add tech levels, the information uploaded will always be reliable as unreliable items will be blocked from being scanned unless the scanner is better or top tier.> both destroyed and complete mech and borgs give off levels, though destroyed only give a lower output, but enough to work with on limited designs, death ripleys and syndieborgs can be scanned multiple times with a level 3 to level up illegal and combat, any syndie or admin mechs above that like maulers will require a tier 4 scanner. Xenos can be scanned for tech too for some specific upgrades availible at super high bio tech levels depending on caste with the queen offering the highest same rules on corpse integrity and alive/dead status apply for drawing research.( replacing direct organ implants with watered down mechanical xeno implants for a neural human hivemind etc)
> The scanners and the disks are 'expensive' to stop abuse of multiple scanners for the same function, the RD roundstart/latejoin scanner comes with a single disk free installed already, but the research to print more disks needs to be acquired first.
> Board tech can be scanned from already existing machines without deconstruction, and said tech can stack with level 2 scanners for multiple scans of precious boards within the reliability range. (Autolathe board meta)
The caveat is that you need to have a good level of self organisation, since you may go to the effort to scan something halfway across the station and they already have the research done in the lab, also stealing the RD scanner or a scanner with specific tech disk of a specific object may be a objective. Losing disks and scanners to explosions/space/whatever is disastrous, and at the end of the day your protolathe economy, and organisational skills when the floor is littered with disks will suffer if you neglect the decon machine (which by design can't happen, even if it goes on the backburner)
The analyser is initially limited within the same scope of reliability as the default decommision machine unless new ones are printed off, each represented at levels, the go-to scanner will be level 3 since it will have the broadest scope but requires silver (balancing purposes maybe uranium/gold too), and level 4 bluespace quantum scanner (diamonds but your resources should have came in by now) can scan everything without penalty relatively quickly.
> Level 2 scanners let you scan a object multiple times to extract tech levels and speeds up the processing by a fraction of a second.
> Level 3 upward scanners have two disk slots, and you can switch via the scanner UI between which disk you want to use in order to not overwrite your data and carry around more research. (Only the active disk will be removed via alt click)
Feedback on the idea would be much appreciated.
