WTF is wrong with the Freight Drones?

[Armpit]

Howdy all,

I have recently come back to playing X3TC after a long break back in reality.

After booting up my old game I realised that I left it needing to collect silly amounts of wares for the HUB (Then I remember why I stopped playing)



To make things easier I thought to my self "hey, freight drones! there's a good idea", leave them filling my transport while I go do other, far more interesting things (clear out xenon sectors, kill all boron, follow the UFO to the hidden base, etc etc)

So I park up one of my mammoths next to my complex, release the drones, whack on SATA, go away for an hour to do RL stuff, come back to check on the progress in my mammoths hold and...WTF??!?

No teladianium in the hold. No drones either. So I launch another to see what is happening.

The drone makes it to the station, picks up the ware, and then goes all OCD on me.

It; aproaches the ship, slows to a crawl, turns around, flys up to 2km from the ship - does this on cycle til it blows up due to lack of energy.

It cant make up its mind if it wants to dock, cos it sure as hell cant be having trouble docking. All its got to do is literally crash into the side of the ship, and that's massive.

Any ideas what I've done wrong?

[Allan F]

Leave the sector yourself.

[DnBrn47]

Howdy all,

I have recently come back to playing X3TC after a long break back in reality.

After booting up my old game I realised that I left it needing to collect silly amounts of wares for the HUB (Then I remember why I stopped playing)



To make things easier I thought to my self "hey, freight drones! there's a good idea", leave them filling my transport while I go do other, far more interesting things (clear out xenon sectors, kill all boron, follow the UFO to the hidden base, etc etc)

So I park up one of my mammoths next to my complex, release the drones, whack on SATA, go away for an hour to do RL stuff, come back to check on the progress in my mammoths hold and...WTF??!?

No teladianium in the hold. No drones either. So I launch another to see what is happening.

The drone makes it to the station, picks up the ware, and then goes all OCD on me.

It; aproaches the ship, slows to a crawl, turns around, flys up to 2km from the ship - does this on cycle til it blows up due to lack of energy.

It cant make up its mind if it wants to dock, cos it sure as hell cant be having trouble docking. All its got to do is literally crash into the side of the ship, and that's massive.

Any ideas what I've done wrong?

They seem to be bugged, tell the drone to stop moving and fly into it so it goes in your cargo hold. it's the only way it works.

[Armpit]

Well that they are bugged is annoying, will just have to buy an EQ and get them to load/offload there.

Will try leaving the sector, see if that works, though not ideal.

Cheers

[p00fer]

if you deal with your own property they seem to work fine 50% of the time, if you try to deal with npcs they will fail miserably 100% of time in my experience. if you deal with your own property OOS they work 100% of the time as long as they don't get killed (TY Capt obvious!!!)

[Prophet1]

Well, you can use them with NPCs, you just can't fully automate the process. e.g.- If I'm jumping a TL around station building and he gets low on ECs, I tell it to jump to position and put it next to a SPP.(IS or OOS). Click on its freight and expell the drones. I have to give each one a manual trade command for the SPPs cells. Then get a message to open its menu when it has the cells on board and command each one to return home. The ecells auto appear in the TLs freight and its ready to jump again.

[David Howland]

When I had problems with freight drones, I found they worked most of the time when loaded with cargo but once returning empty they went on strike. A fair few older hands trying to help did not recognise what was happening to me at all and I learnt more from other players new to F. Drones having a similar problem! My conclusion from this is that this was a sound system that has been corrupted by patches.
It is to be hoped that RB with its more central role for drones, has a more robust system?

[highflier]

you need an open docking bay to make them dock...
else you have to scoop them yourself by command them to a full stop, then drive over.

[TiGGs]

Freight drones are landing normally on my Albatross but they don't do that on any M7 or M1 with docking slots open. They just try to get as close as possible. Sometime it works and the get teleported into the cargo bay, sometimes they can't get close enough.

[Prophet1]

Freight drones are landing normally on my Albatross but they don't do that on any M7 or M1 with docking slots open. They just try to get as close as possible. Sometime it works and the get teleported into the cargo bay, sometimes they can't get close enough.

I have the same problem (playing TC) so maybe there's a bug. Don't know if it's the same in AP but agree with David Howland above - hopefully the drone menu is a little more robust/convenient in Rebirth or its going to be a serious pain until fixed.

[jkjklkl]

My advice for the HUB plot:

Skip drones altogether. Use CLS2 to set up a supply chain from your factories to the Hub, and suppliment it with 3 CAGs buying from NPCs. Personally, I got tired of setting up my own supplies after the Ore phase and simply bought all the Crystals and Silicon I needed. It cost me about 300 million credits and several days, but 5 CAGs get the job done without any input from myself. The microchips afterward were easy as I had stockpiled them beforehand.

[cjlive]

I had the same issue.

I found i had to give them 2 separate commands.

First to dock a station and buy ware, then another command to rtb.

Or tell them to come to a complete stop, and manually picking them up.

Downside to picking them up was that they sometimes self destruct over time, if i didn't get to them in time. And if that happened it was 50/50 if the drone showed back in my hanger (without the product).

Slight bug i think.


Cj

[Alan Phipps]

Freight and fighter drones are intended to have a fixed lifespan and will be lost if not docked/picked up back into ship cargo in time. When deployed, look at their information screen and you will see a heading called 'Energy' showing the % of lifetime left.