Cargo drones

[Shomey]

Hello,

I`m a fairly new player(played untill devries with the campaign) trying his hand on a new game with the war and conquest mod.

I`m currently breaking my back over cargo drones. My station, a construction shop needs 5 cargo drones(mission) but I cannot seem to get them there. S dealers just link to my property menu when selecting upgrade>drones with everything grey`d out, L dealers like to an empty selection list that is not the property list(which I seen in tutorials) and XL shows my taranis and construction ships. However, I want it installed on a S ship or the skunk to bring it to my station.

Am I missing something here?

Also, my station is in need of all resources to start production. I assigned a Nyanae of the class Bulk, Container, Energy and Liquid to the manager but so far I only seen the Container ship transporting some chemical stuff which seems to be my stations.

Could it be that it`s missing the cargo drones to pickup required items? Shouldn`t NPC traders supply me?

Ship range for manager is set to the full sector(OL)

Thanks in advance

[Snafu_X3]

Cargo (& construction & other drones) are only buyable from a factory with a capship (Container) storage. You can equip them directly to your factory via the 'transfer wares' option, or if the manager has the correct supply options enabled they can be sold to the station/CV using the standard trading menu (a capship can also equip them by buying from shipyards, but this is expensive & only available if a free suitably-sized dock is available, so best to use the transfer wares method with another player-owned capship/station unless it's your very first capship)

Your station will indeed need cargo drones to buy/sell wares using caphips (S/M traders can dock internally, so don't need them); likewise your capships will need them to manually trade with other stations/ships that don't have such drones (or are in use at another dock)

Skunk-equipped drones must be bought from a drone dealer NPC; they cannot be equipped from a factory

[Ezarkal]

It is also a good idea to put more than the suggested 5 drones on a station and capship to allow faster movement of wares. I usually put at least 20 drones on stations (depending on station type), and between 10 to 25 on L/XL trade ships depending on the type of ware I expect them to carry.

[Snafu_X3]

FWIW I tend to standardise on 40 cargo drones per station dealing in bulk/liquid/nrg wares; 20 otherwise for stations dealing only (mostly: ecells & food tend to be supplied by AI NPCs, excepting some specialised cases) in container wares

Don't forget to put some (I usually go for at least 5, or 10 for FIGHT ships) construction drones (cURVs) on /every/ capship to speed up repairs via their Engineer!

Fight drones for ship protection I don't usually bother with, except maybe for miners (with DOs, as they sit in one spot for a long time), but fight drones may help to allow the ship to escape before being killed. If you're trying the above DON'T use only one type of drone for convenience as they will be easily outmatched & destroyed: use a mix of types. Effective ratios are available if you search the forum, or I think I put a link on the Wiki..

[RodentofDoom]

I just set limits on the supply panel and leave it to the manager to source them

[Nanook]

Cargo (& construction & other drones) are only buyable from a factory with a capship (Container) storage. ..

Medium-sized freighters, such as the Giguram (container), can transport and sell drones to stations, too, using the trade menu. If you look around, you'll see NPC's doing it all the time.

[Snafu_X3]

Medium-sized freighters, such as the Giguram (container), can transport and sell drones to stations, too, using the trade menu. If you look around, you'll see NPC's doing it all the time.

My omission, but you still can't /equip/ drones to a capship using S/M ships, which was the point I was focussing on..

[Nanook]

But the OP was asking how to equip his station, not his ships.

[radcapricorn]

Also, my station is in need of all resources to start production. I assigned a Nyanae of the class Bulk, Container, Energy and Liquid to the manager but so far I only seen the Container ship transporting some chemical stuff which seems to be my stations.

Check your station's manager settings, namely the range and budget. They will only trade within the specified range, so if there are no suppliers there or no resources available, they won't trade.
NPC traders from outside that range may come though, provided your manager sets up trade offers and has money.

Also, IIRC Construction Shop needs raw materials, such as ore. To collect those, you need to assign a mining ship to the manager. Mining ships can be either M or L traders, need to have appropriate storage type (i.e. Bulk for ore, Liquid for gases) and have appropriate drones equipped (Surface Miner URVs for mining solid rocks, Scoop Collector URVs for mining gases). And of course, there needs to be a zone with the appropriate resources within the manager's range (you can check the resource yields on the map).

Of course, ware transferring rules still apply: M miners can just dock to unload, while to unload large freighters either party (station or freighter) needs to have some cargo drones.

[Snafu_X3]

But the OP was asking how to equip his station, not his ships.

Oops; conflated two threads there. My bad (again!)

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

And of course, there needs to be a zone with the appropriate resources within the manager's range (you can check the resource yields on the map).

Small correction, when ships assigned to a Manager are mining, they adopt System-wide range and prioritise the nearest Zone to the station with the required resource.

It's still a good idea to take this into consideration though as it can potentially mean being able to select what Zones such ships would mine in for their Manager.