Drone

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Drone
Description	Transports materials from supply inventories to corresponding demand inventories.

Drones are automatic logistical machines that transport materials from supply inventories to corresponding demand inventories.

Obtaining

In Drone station (middle screen):

Drone T1

• 1 x  Rocket Engine
• 1 x  Iron
• 1 x  Circuit Board

Drone T2 (Faster)

• 1 x  Rocket Engine
• 1 x  Super Alloy
• 1 x  Circuit Board
• 1 x  Explosive Powder

Notes

• Drones will not work if you are low on power. They will not transport any resources until power is restored.
• Drones will freely pass through buildings, terrain, and any objects such as Trees.
• Resources about to be picked up by a Drone from the currently open container will be marked with a small Drone icon.
• Drones can be used to fully automate Space Trading by delivering raw materials to Auto-Crafters, and then transporting crafted items to Space Trading Rockets.
• Drone movement can be observed on the Mapping screen after launching the Drone Visualization Rocket. You can use this to identify routes that take too long or require too many Drones.
• The total number of Drones under your control, the number of Drones currently performing Supply and Demand tasks, as well as the number of Supplying and Demanding inventories for each resource can be viewed at every Drone station on its right screen.
• Drones can be transferred to your inventory when they are idle at a Drone station - this allows you to deconstruct them using a Recycling Machine or manually carry them elsewhere.
• Drones can be released into the air from your own inventory by attempting to drop them.
• T1 Drones can travel at approximately 11 units/sec, while T2 Drones can travel at 20 units/sec
• Drones can not be tasked to collect items that are craftable but not yet unlocked.
• The Priority setting: when delivering to Demanding inventories, drones will deliver to eligible containers with higher priority settings first, only delivering to lower priority containers after the higher-priority containers are full. For example, if a Supply container contains Iron and there are two Iron-demanding containers, one with priority 5 and another with priority 3, drones will deliver to the priority 5 container (unless it is full, or about to be full from deliveries). The Priority setting does not affect Supplying containers.

Trivia

• Each additional Drone does not draw any energy at time of patch 0.7. Once built, every building, container, extractor, etc. and, most importantly,Auto-Crafters and Space Trading Rockets can be set to either Demand or Supply. That way the player can make a room full of containers and set them to Demand. Secondly, placing the Auto-Crafter next to them or Ore Extractors and setting it to Supply one can manipulate and create any item in game.
• As of patch 0.8, Drones can now collect Algae, as well as vegetables, Wheat, and Cocoa grown on Outdoor Farm. Simply set the destination container to Demand those resources (no need to set anything to Supply them).
• Although very fast, Drones do take time to travel around the map, and can only carry one quantity of any resource at a time. Transporting large amounts of resources from very remote locations will quickly saturate your Drone network and increase the delays between resource deliveries. Build more Drones or reduce the amount of resources transported to offset this. An effective strategy can be to build an Auto-Crafter at each location mining a resource that can be fused into Rods, such as Osmium, Uranium and Iridium (Super Alloy is more tricky as it will require an additional supply of Aluminum as per the Super Alloy Rod crafting recipe), and craft/transport them instead. You will need to break the Rods down to their base resources at the destination manually with a Recycling Machine, which cannot be automated as of patch 0.8 yet, but it will substantially reduce the number and frequency of trips your Drones will need to make, freeing them up for more tasks. Alternatively, Auto-Crafters for high-tier components can be set up in locations where most or all of their ingredients are local, reducing long-range transport needs to just one or two ingredients, plus the finished product.
• The Drone system can be used to sort and distribute most items found from exploration relatively quickly. First set all of your storage containers to Demand their respective items. Next, build a container and set it to Supply everything by selecting the icon of the box with three arrows pointing up out of it. Finally, place the items you wish to distribute into the Supply container. This can even be done when exploring far away from your base, if you gather (or bring) the materials to set up a makeshift shelter and a container within. If buildings producing water or food are set to Supply back at the base, placing a crate in this shelter and setting it to Demand the needed supplies can provide these resources in an emergency. Using these techniques while far away from your base will occupy many of your drones for fairly long periods of time, however, stressing your drone network.
• If you use Auto-Crafters to make a steady stream of products and find that you sometimes run out of building materials because the crafters have used them up, priority settings can assist. Ensure that you have a "building materials" storage outside the Auto-Crafters' range, set the containers in this storage area to Demand their respective materials, and set all their priorities to a high number, higher than the containers near the Auto-Crafters. While this requires more space, it is more convenient than turning the Auto-Crafters off and waiting.

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