Drone

### Description

Transports materials from supply inventories to corresponding demand inventories

## Description

*Transports materials from supply inventories to corresponding demand inventories*

An automatic logistical drone created in Drone station

## 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

## 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 Aluminium 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.

When assigning priority orders to storage containers, the higher the number, the higher the priority the drones place on that container. If you select "5" for Algae and "2" for Iron, Algae will be given a higher priority.

## 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 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 Drones Visualisation 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

## Bugs

* As of patch 0.8, there is a bug that causes some or even all Drones to freeze mid-air without completing their tasks. (Use the Mapping screen to confirm whether this occurred.) This can be fixed by saving and restarting the game (simply exiting to main menu and reloading the save is not sufficient).