Drone Port

The Drone Port is a late-game building used for long range, low-throughput item transportation. A Drone can be built on it. Dismantling the Drone Port also removes its nested Drone.

Usage

Main article: Drone

Drone Ports are used for nesting a Drone, as well as to load/unload Drone cargo and supply fuel to any drone that interacts with that port. It has one input port, one output port and a separate input port for fuel. The Drone Port's inventory is divided into two separate inventories of 18 slots (twice as much as a Drone's 9 slots) for outgoing and incoming cargo.

The Drone Port's UI shows information about its nested Drone:

• Drone status (No Drone/Docking/Docked/Loading/Unloading/Cannot Unload/Insufficient Fuel/Takeoff/En Route)
• Destination port
• Fuel consumption per trip and per minute
• Round trip duration
• Cargo throughput (maximum, outgoing and incoming transfer rate)

The nested Drone's destination port can be configured in the second tab. The status of other Drone Ports/Drones can be viewed and configured in the third tab.

Drones only fly between their respective home and destination port. Only one Drone Port needs to supply fuel. In case it's the Drone's destination port, it needs to temporarily be loaded with fuel from its home port. A Drone Port can be the destination port of any amount of other Drones. If multiple drones arrive at the same Drone Port at once, they will circle above the port until it frees up. As fuel is only consumed by distance, prolonged waiting times don't increase their consumption.

Similar to Truck and Train Stations, Drone Ports can be renamed.

Fuel

Drones must use  Batteries,  Packaged Fuel,  Packaged Turbofuel,  Packaged Rocket Fuel,  Packaged Ionized Fuel,  Uranium Fuel Rods, or  Plutonium Fuel Rods as fuel. Drones will use different fuels at different rates depending on their path, the given fuel's energy value, and the speed of the drone, which also varies based on fuel type.

Use this table below to compare the different fuels' energy density (and thus how long one lasts) to each other. The table also lists the approximate speeds Drones go with the different fuel types.

Fuel Type	Fuel Value (MJ)	Speed (m/s)
Packaged Fuel	750	25
Packaged Turbofuel	2,000	30
Battery	6,000	37
Packaged Rocket Fuel	7,200	37
Packaged Ionized Fuel	10,000	45
Uranium Fuel Rod	750,000	42
Plutonium Fuel Rod	1,500,000	45

Tips

• A Drone Port always consumes 100 MW regardless if a Drone is docking or not. This makes it the third highest power consumer not considering overclocking, only behind the Resource Well Pressurizer and Particle Accelerator.
  • To remedy this, turn off unused Drone Ports with the standby switch (or cut their power supply entirely).

Trivia

• The platform of the Drone Port is 4 meters above the base. Additionally, its base is 2x3 foundations while the whole structure is 3x3 foundations. This allows it to be nicely integrated with foundations and Walkways.

Gallery

• 

  Drone Port interface, showing the first tab with Drone status and inventory.

History

• Patch 0.6.0.5: Fixed an issue where inputting text on the Drone Port search field could result in the player losing all input
• Patch 0.4.0.10: Fixed bug where the distance between drone stations wouldn’t be calculated properly, causing incorrect round-trip time estimates and battery consumption, Battery consumption should now properly increase over larger distances.
• Patch 0.4.0.7: Fixed clients not being able to see Information in Drone Ports
• Patch 0.4.0.6:
  • Fixed Drone Port inventory not working for client
  • Fixed crash related to Drone Ports when loading the game
  • Drone Status should now show the proper name
• Patch 0.4.0.5: Drone Port names cannot be blank anymore
• Patch 0.4.0.4:
  • Fixed a bug where Drones would teleport when dismantling a Drone Port they are about to dock on
  • Fixed Drone Ports allowing duplicate names
• Patch 0.4.0.0: Introduced