"Drone heavy load" concept

[valenti_scott]

Hello-
I was wondering if someone could explain the "drone heavy load" concept. It seems like a complaint from a drone hub that it does not have enough drones?

I am working on an "easy start." I just told a transport rover to go to a surface metal deposit about one sector away.

A lot of my drones are following the rover to the metal deposit (I guess it's because the deposit is in their range, and they decided to "help out" the rover?). And now I have this "drone heavy load" message coming from my drone hub.

I have 14 drones, and four are assigned to the drone hub. What difference does it make, where the drones are assigned?

Some of the drones making their way over to the metal deposit are assigned to (commanded by) the rocket, and others, the drone hub. Also, I am getting this "drone heavy load" message, but when I examine the hub, it says "drone load: low." That seems odd. Thanks for your help!
-Scott

[klingon]

Click on the message icon, that will take you to what's triggering the message. As far as what heavy load actually means, it probably has something to do with how many tasks are queued up for the drones controlled by that controller. i.e. if all drones are tasked and have follow up tasks after their present tasks are done, etc. I really don't know the specifics, but that's what it looks like to me.

[Thoogah]

to simply put it if a hub gives heavy load warning it means that hub while functioning does not work optimally, it won't cause you any trouble but it's the way of the game telling you if you want to get this and this job done faster add more drones here

imagine if there were several deposits and a construction job: ideally maybe 30 drones would do it best but since you only have 14 drones the hub shows a heavy load warning. The job will still get done but slower. In the early game it wouldn't have catastrophic results but imagine later where you have to maintain a dome, you always want enough drones to do repairs and fetch things.

the drones in the rockets usually go to the nearest drone hub when the rocket takes off, or you can simply select them and give them to a hub yourself, rockets don't need drones so don't worry about sending them back empty

[valenti_scott]

OK, thanks.

[NoGaR]

I have several drones which do nothing and I still get Drone heavy load. Any suggestions, please?

[digi_al]

You probably need to re-assign the drones that are sitting around to the hub with the heavy load. They will then get to work and the load at the hub will ease. I always try to shift drones from being rocket controlled as soon as I get a hub running. I the hub is placed in range of the rocket, they will still unload it when assigned to the hub.

[maiden4meldin]

Originally posted by NoGaR:

I have several drones which do nothing and I still get Drone heavy load. Any suggestions, please?

Your idle drones during a heavy load warning, are likely due to lack of materials for drones to work with. This can become a problem as tasks are queued up and materials are unavailable, then when the materials show up, and lets say you have pipe leaks suddenly, typically those would be fixed asap. But since that idle drone was waiting for metal, to go build something at lower level, I think, but not 100% sure, the idle drone will take the metal to the building project before repairing the leaky pipes.
Otherwise, I don't have issues with heavy loads.


If you are using shuttles for colonists to move to and from distant Domes, and the shuttle is on heavy loads, then I suggest setting One Hub to transport people only. The other three Hubs set to Materials only. This will help the colonists that are moving around via Shuttles not end up dying due to starvation issues.