Some tips/tricks for those new to Drone transport.

[Honorable_D]

Drones are great, super convenient and easy to set up. You can just slap a drone port on top of a building or hell, even hanging off the side of a building and plug resources into and out of it right there. No giant bulky train stations or laying track needed.

There is just one issue: fuel. By far and away the best bang for you buck fuel will be packaged Rocket Fuel. What type of fuel you use matters—not only are better fuels consumed at a slower rate but they also make the drones travel FASTER. I would not start investing in a drone network until you have Rocket Fuel production up and running.

Once you do have packed Rocket Fuel the rest is very simple. Build a single Drone Port and name it something like "Rocket Fuel Load". Have Rocket Fuel belted into the input AND the fuel slot input but DO NOT build a drone on this port—you want this port to refuel the drones landing on it while they load up the Rocket Fuel to take away. Now, anywhere you intend to build a hub of several nearby drone ports you can get them all fueled with a dedicated fuel distribution port. I like to call these ports "Fuel Unload A/B/C/D" etc. and DO build a drone on these ports. There is one last thing you have to do though, but you only have to do it once. These Unload ports don't have fuel to begin with, so the drone on them will never take off—you need to manually load a stack of fuel into the fuel slot but ONLY ONCE. Once these drones have enough fuel for their maiden flight they will henceforth AUTOMATICALLY start refueling at the "Fuel Load" port once they run out of fuel at their home port. With your Fuel Unload port ready you can now belt fuel to all nearby drone ports that you want. Building another drone hub somewhere else on the map? Place down Fuel Unload B, build a drone on it and manually load it with enough fuel for its first trip, have it fly to the same Fuel Load port—multiple drones can all take turns loading up at the same port.

Now, how about a trick to conserving fuel? The key to conserving fuel lies with the fact that drones DO NOT take off again until they have unloaded ALL their cargo. Drones can hold 9 stacks and the ports themselves can hold 18 stacks. Lets say you are making 25 motor per min and flying them somewhere where you consume 25 per min. This means the drone will constantly be making trips because it will immediately unload its cargo and take off again because the line never backfills. This isn't ideal, you DO NOT want your drones immediately unloading if you can help it as it will mean they are constantly consuming fuel. What you can do is allow the ports to backfill—that is to say let the load port AND the unload port completely fill up and saturate the belts. Now, here is what happens: the drone loads up 9 stacks and flies them over and....STAYS PUT because it will not take off until it has completely unloaded its cargo. By the time it finally gets to unload all 9 stacks, another 9 stacks were produced back at the load port (because you're producing and consuming the same 25 motor per min). This is ideal—the drone picks up another 9 stacks, flies back to unload and then sits, not consuming fuel, because it can make the trip dramatically faster than 9 stacks @ 25 per min of something is consumed.

How much can drones transport per min? This depends on 4 things: the type of fuel you use because better fuel means the drone flies faster, how long the trip is, how big the stack sizes are and how many drones on the route. My longest drone route is about half the map—the uranium node in the red bamboo forest to the very northwest corner of the Rocky Desert near the nitrogen. I have two drones, one on the uranium load port and one on the uranium unload port tag teaming this route—they go back and forth both picking up 9 stacks of uranium from the same port and then unloading at the same port. These two drones, with rocket fuel and from halfway across the map can keep up with 400 uranium per min being consumed. The stack size of uranium is 100—if uranium stack size was 200 they could keep up with 800 per min, but alas, stack size is only 100. So once again, you need to factor in the distance of the trip, what fuel, stack size and how many drones are running the route. If one set of load/unload ports can't keep up then simply add another set to double your throughput. A lot of late game parts are produced and consumed in small amounts which means drones will have absolutely no issue keeping up.

Hopefully some of ya on the fence about drones will find this useful. The biggest hurdle is just the packaged Rocket Fuel, once you got that going drones are incredibly powerful and convenient logistics tools that make the late game so much less of a hassle. I have 60+ of the bastards flying around now.