not getting loot from active caves

[caverat749]

this has happened in several occasions - checking the timer, have over 20 minutes till the cave collapses, my basic drones return and have plenty of time, soo turn off the game/pc go on to do other stuff, come back later NOTHING despite no radiation, mud and more than half a fuel unspent when I checked - WTF?

[Irri]

That's a good question. Which level is your manager ? It is possible that their efficiency is halted/reduced when you're offline. It also depends on you basic drone level (The only reliable choice for a drone with magnetic imo). Maybe you set them a too long course and they ran out of fuel. Or one died on a lava pool or radiations and the other one died on that same spot trying to collect the dropped loots at those spots.

[caverat749]

Originally posted by Irri:

It is possible that their efficiency is halted/reduced when you're offline. It also depends on you basic drone level (The only reliable choice for a drone with magnetic imo).

hmmm kinda messed up that you have to have the game online during cave exploration , especially since you can never fast forward -_-
Manager's lvl 2 so is the basic drone; the problem with the magnetic drone is that sometimes ends up dragging everything in lava/radioactive nodes soo ummm not the best outcome lol

[Irri]

Yeah I unfortunately can't confirm if like for mining efficiency a low level manager only bring a portion of the producivity to the drones capacites.stats.
Yeah the magnet drone is only good to pull of loots stuck on radiation/lava and you're usually screwed when 2-3 folow each other. As for laval though you can stil send flying drones. You should never send a magnt drone on long trips anyways only to early branches you're sure pose no risk for loot to be potentially trapped.
I mainly only use the basic drone anyways. At later levels like 3 or 4 he becomes decently fast has up to 5 items capacity and its fuel consumption is the best relatve to its speed.

[Pengukeks]

Drones take a long time, so be patient. In my experience it's better to wait for a Basic Drone to scout than to send out Magnetic without vision.

My cave tactic (this might not work before you have lvl 3/4 drones):
Send basic drones to the furthest points without "overlapping" vision, starting from the furthest. Continue sending them until the first ones are ~5 tiles from reaching the end. Now you can see the main path(s) and plan if it's worth to use magnetic (at least 4 pull-ins).
When there's just 1-2 bad spots for a magnetic, but a lot of 1-depth sidetracks with treasure, I send out another basic or flying for the bad spot treasure and then the magnetic.

If I watch the cave just every ~5 minutes I usually clear all caves with at least 40 minutes left and no accidents. (I can only think of 1 very very rare situation where a basic drone runs out of fuel on a rad spot, but not magma, that has another rad or magma spot in front of it)

[old_Navy_twidget]

Originally posted by Pengukeks:

... Send basic drones to the furthest points without "overlapping" vision, starting from the furthest.

I would suggest using a flying drone. They see further to either side of their path, are faster covering territory leaving more time for the slower basic drones.

Now you can see the main path(s) and plan if it's worth to use magnetic (at least 4 pull-ins).
When there's just 1-2 bad spots for a magnetic, but a lot of 1-depth sidetracks with treasure, I send out another basic or flying for the bad spot treasure and then the magnetic.

...

I can only think of 1 very very rare situation where a basic drone runs out of fuel on a rad spot, but not magma, that has another rad or magma spot in front of it.

That's the only time I use the Healing drone. Let say you have a hazard with treasure to the right of another hazard (lave or radiation) and a "safe" chamber to that chamber's left.
Left to right- safe chamber-hazard-hazard with treasure in it.
Park the healing drone on the safe spot and use a magnetic drone on the middle spot to pull treasure from the rightmost spot to the middle spot. There you can use another mag drone to pull treasure to safety.

The only caution is that the healing drone has very little health and won't make it through a lot rad/lava chambers before it dies. It also moves much faster than other drones and it needs to arrive just before the mag drone to protect it but not so much ahead of it that it uses all it's fuel before the mag drones gets there. I've succeeded only about half the time but I'm getting better at it.