Gonna need them to build the place so the ArcArk has a place to dump the thousands and thousands and THOUSANDS of people, with no way to scrape out a living on their ship.
15 people won't make that much of a difference.
We are going to do that anyways, but we only have somany people, and somany entertainment options. Plus, not everyone will like the options we have available anyways.
This is actually kinda stupid. Why do we need to spend so much time and so many resources on VR pods and gyms and such when we can just give each sailor their own future PSP with (functionally) unlimited numbers of games? We can even make private rooms using some wood/cardboard and some curtains. Besides PSPs, we can get some hard-copy books, magazines, board games, anything! We could fit a whole suite of entertainment options with nothing but a wardrobe!
I get the size thing, I'm just saying if you want mouse sized you'll be rather disappointed . Plus, I'm not sure even with advanced tech a mouse sized bot would be very good at burrowing through rock, even with swarm logic
As for the Multi-purpose Care and Habitation bay, I'll rule the spare cryopods can be moved to the CBLS, but since trying to do without those spare pods would be a modification to an existing module, that would be a research action(though, a not terribly difficult one)
(you don't HAVE to fill those pods, might be a way to give extended breaks to a portion of crew)
Let's just research it and see what we get. The aim of the game is to get cavern-builders that create air and are small enough that we can lose some of them on the drop pods without too much hassle.
Do the existence of the cryopods actually help the bay function or are they just a drain on resources? If it's the latter then I'd find it pretty strange that they had the tech to build the bay WITH the cryopods but not WITHOUT.
(Cool idea. Thanks.)
EDIT: So what's humanity's policy on artificial and genetically-engineered humans? We can make humans that don't need as many resources to survive, we can make more humans in cloning facilities once we get there, and we might even be able to make special types of humans that are excellent at working and are entirely, 100% ok with being slaves.