Deplying Mining Drones

[az911]

This may seem rather dumb but can anybody explain why it takes forever to deploy mining drones?

[DennyMala]

As covered in other topics that I suggest you to search and read, you may probably want to place two waypoints on the surface of a planet.... one in at the planet fall point with and the second some klicks away with the deploy order....

[EbonyKnight]

Yeah, I had trouble with this too initially. Just go into the planet view (name?), add a waypoint to deploy drone and use setpos. Then launch the drone. I've only dropped drones on moons and they drop the drone off quick and return...even if I am across the system.

I tried deploying a drone to a planet once and it took forever.

Also to recover the drone, do the same thing except use the Extract Drone 1 and 2 orders. Then setpos near the drone. Had a LOT of problems with that one, until I did the above.

[mwg]

Had the same problem and encountered the following:

1.Setting a second WP

Worked like a charm

(just like DennyMala suggested, this is also mentioned several times throughout the forum)

2.Setting a deploy point on a steep slope also caused problems

( see forum for the explanation )

Shuttle landed and ÔÇÿsankÔÇÖ into the ground according to the altitude meter. If left alone it would ÔÇÿtake foreverÔÇÖ in completing the op. Yet if I viewed the SC by TACOP it promptly dumped the drone and went on its way, every time. So now I check the SC status ( alt ) and on a negative reading give the crew a peek ( and a verbal scolding on the radio )

Avoid setting the second WP deploy on a steep slope ( if possible ) and the crew seems to set the bird down fine.

[El Che]

In my own experience I initially sent shuttles to deploy drones while I was near a star station, quite a distance from the planet but not far enough for hyper-space. This took quite a long time. I then discovered that if I deployed them from a great distance from the target planet/moon it took far less time. In addition, I've never had to set more than one waypoint although I think I might try that to see if it speeds things up. Also never actually tried to send the shuttles to the drones for extraction. I just pick some random land position on the map and give the extract order and set position. Haven't had any problems with that.