Drone Logic - some thoughts

[1]

Like most of you, I am confused as to why drones do what they do. Often times they stand idle when there is obvious work to be done and I wanted to know why, so I started watching. I think what I found explains their inefficiencies. I noticed it while recycling bees to that I could breed silkworms instead.
How to test:
- Build a recycler
- Set its container to demand bees
- Wait for the drones to supply
What you will notice is this:
- Though the recycler has a one slot inventory, between 8 and 15 drones will respond to its request for bees
- If you watch carefully, a compacted conga line of drones attends to fill just that one slot. They are all carrying bees. This can be tested by placing your crosshair over the recycle button and hammering it quickly as they approach. At most, I have managed to recycle 10 bees in one go as the drones fly past.
So, drones are not being assigned individually. If one space in a recycler is being attended by up to 15 drones, I have no reason to not assume the same is taking place everywhere else. This would explain why the drones are not functioning, as they are all being assigned to each item that needs moving, thus meaning that the first one to arrive gets the assigned item and the rest suddenly have no task and have to wait to be reassigned.

Anyway: thoughts?

[Dracuras]

This is more or less what I see, though none of mine sit waiting for new orders. The moment the requests are filled they zip back to their hub if nothing else needs doing.

[Boenedal]

I reconed if you have >200 drones they stop working nearley completley.
I think that the drones only can handle a certain amount of tasks like if you only have 20 Brains for 60 people... so ervery brain directs 3 people at the same time to the same task.
I think its for performance that not every drone is individualy directed.
IMO it got worse with T2 drones.

[starlight78sso]

One thing that may help if you dont mind using mods, is to use the stacking mod, that way they should still drop them off, I havent tried it with the drones so I could be wrong, but I have placed multiple ones in there myself, and then I use the recycler mod that you name a chest to correspond with it and then it will automatically put the items into the chest.

[maestro]

I kinda doubt that the game was really designed to have hundreds of drones in mind.

I wouldn't be surprised if the code that was written to handle the drones' AI was more thinking you had a couple dozen, not 200+ drones all whizzing about.

Also, I would think that the devs probably intended for you to have enough work for all the drones that you wouldn't have several dozen piling up to do the same job.

Might also want to tweak priorities too, especially if it's a job that only 1 drone can do at a time, set it at a lower priority.

[glennc]

I am using 25 drones and I see the same issue. Every time one item is used in a container, now there is a demand to fill that one spot. 15 drones are dispatched because there are 15 items in the T2 miner when only one drone should be sent.

Something in the last update is causing this to happen.

[maestro]

Originally posted by glennc:

I am using 25 drones and I see the same issue. Every time one item is used in a container, now there is a demand to fill that one spot. 15 drones are dispatched because there are 15 items in the T2 miner when only one drone should be sent.

Something in the last update is causing this to happen.

I wonder if it's related to the bug that's causing machines to lock up?

I had a T2 Ore Miner in the Uranium Cave lock up on me and I don't even have drones on this save yet.

I went there and noticed that the ambient sound effect was playing, but the drills on the ore miner were not moving.

I went back to my base, figuring it'd be fixed next time I exited the game (I was planning on doing that soon).

So, I exited the game, and the next time I started it up, I went there, and... it was still frozen. I was like "huh, weird..." and I got distracted with something unlocking, and eventually ended my session.

Went back there, AGAIN, and saw it STILL wasn't up on the 3rd session, so I deconstructed and reconstructed it and suddenly it started working again (and has continued to do so over 2-3 sessions).

I wonder if maybe it's the same bug or similar bug, only it's happening to drones? Maybe they're forgetting to update their status? Maybe the machine doesn't know a drone already hit it and is still asking drones to come to it?

EDIT: Before anybody asks, I don't, and have never used mods.

[Brice MijuGames]

Thanks for the feedback !

We uploaded a patch today that should fix this problem :

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1284190/view/3684556169315380060

[glennc]

Thanks Brice.