@Sean: Why waste time inspecting and fixing the damage manually when you can just send your repair drones to do it for you?
Because Anton likes to work with his own hands. Plus, the Party Wagon is his only project right now, and it's
hurt.
You could even design some kind of larger mobile repair mothership/carrier while you're at it. Something that holds drones and spare parts and can maybe tow a large vehicle (or even larger with some help from others of its kind). Then add some primitive health tools in the drone (like half an emergency kit) and some more and better health tools (like replacement limbs\organs) in the repair carrier itself (where the drones will bring those too heavily injured) and you got a very good mobile fleshtech platform. Not as multipurpose or as good in the frontlines as a fleshtech sod, since it's a larger target that can't shoot back, but it should be way more efficient, especially if you keep them off the frontlines and give them the capability to assemble new drones. Unless of course sods are so good at their job and so cheap there's no profit or benefit in setting up production lines for specialized repair units.
Congratulations, you've pretty much described the R2 variant of the Artee.
Of course it's smaller, about the size of a Sod, and can't quite carry a
fleet of repair drones, much less produce new ones, but it can act as a supply pad for one, carries medical and repair supplies, and is trained in medical and mechanical repair both.
And may I state my opinion once again that if you're doing your job right, then the exact number of troops you have won't matter, because you'll have millions with thousands more produced each day.
About that. How many active Sods can Hephaestus even support? Do we have the facilities to put a million Sods into stasis until they're needed? Even with the reduced upkeep of robot bodies and the size of the current facilities, how long until we have to build whole new factories, just cranking out daily rations for the army of troops we have sitting around until they're due to be shipped somewhere?