or they could be solar powered, recharge 5 fuel per 15 ingame minutes (not rl) during the day, and actions cost "fuel", le't say they have 2000 fuel points, and every AP spent consumes 1 fuel point, therefore the bot's usability is limited all the time to make it balanced, and i would agree with michael, but in a different way, to get 1 bot follower "slot one needs 5 intelligence, for 2 you need 7, for 3 it is 9, and 4 bot slots needs 10 int, just as a bonus "reward" for having such intelligence, and I'd also suggest a special encounter, an underground "garage" with a couple of bots, like 2 Mr. Handy's and 1 Robobrain, all of them are deactivated, these bots act like mercs, in other words they level up. There is absolutely no need to bring a tool for these bots, and they can receive engineered upgrades, like targeting software (weapons skill upgrade), thicker armour plating(hp, dr, and dt enchancements) and many more.
The ought to be one or two bots in semi-normal encounters around sierra army depot, they are activated. Military Grade preprogramming make them hostile to all nearby animals (humans included, for all you religious nuts), however, one can "knock out" them and use a hacking tool to reprogram their targeting data, this process requires your science skill, because of a failure will render the bot under your control, but with a small surprise, since the result will not show whether or not you were successful, only a critical fail will show, which will trigger the bot's self.destruct mechanism. Standard failure attempts will turn the bots hostile again, even if they are in your base, after a while to show that the targeting data has been restored to the bots due to your earlier failed attempt, the higher science skill you have the londger you can delay a failure from 1 RL day (24h) - 2 RL weeks.
Comment guys, I'd like to see some feedbacks, and not just replies like: no; no, don't like it; you suck; and such shit goes where...?