Drone Port

Drone Port
Drone Ports can have one other Port assigned as their transport destination. Each Drone Port can contain a single Drone, which transports available input back and forth between its home and destination Ports. The Drone Port interface provides delivery details and allows management of Port connections.
Unlocked by	Tier 7 - Aeronautical Engineering
Class name	Desc_DroneStation_C
Building
Power usage	100 MW
Overclock­able	No
Conveyorinputs	2
Conveyoroutputs	1
Dimensions
Width	24 m
Length	24 m
Height	15 m
Area	576 m2
Fuel
Battery
Ingre­dients
20 ×  Heavy Modular Frame
20 ×  High-Speed Connector
50 ×  Alclad Aluminum Sheet
50 ×  Aluminum Casing
10 ×  Radio Control Unit

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  Batteries. It has one input port, one output port and a separate input port for Batteries. 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 Batteries/Takeoff/En Route)
• Destination port
• Battery 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 batteries. In case it's the Drone's destination port, it needs to temporarily be loaded with Batteries 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 Batteries are consumed only by distance, prolonged waiting times don't increase their consumption.

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

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