Question on retrieving drones.

[DeBoNed]

I have tried retrieving drones from the surface of a planet by assigning an undesignated waypoint and ordered the shuttle to retrieve drone at that waypoint. The shuttle either lands while the drone keeps mining and does not retrieve it, or the shuttle keeps flying around at 5mph, trying to catch up to the drone, which does not stop moving. Is there a way to order the drone to stop?

The other problem is that I cannot find the location of drone when observing a planet surface. The drone or the shuttle does not show up when they are on the surface. The closest I got to successfully retrieving a drone was with the above method. The book does not explain how to do this task, or did I miss something. I read every page of the manual and could not find out how.

Please help.

[Guest]

make sure the shuttle you send to collect the drone doesnt have a drone loaded in it.

And dont send people with less that 10% AI to pilot the shuttles, it'll cost you money to repair them shuttles when they bump them on stuff.

[DeBoNed]

Actually, the shuttle did return to the ship before I sent the same one out. Does a shuttle automatically get loaded with a drone if the shuttle returns to the ship without one? And I did not pay attention to the AI percentage. Thanks for the tip.

If there are any, do vehicles show up on the planet topographic map when you are observing a planet?

How do you locate a drone you deployed?

[Soback]

SC will add an option to target the drone you deployed on the planet in some later patches. As for now, you can zoom in close to the surface, pitch the cam level with the horizon and rotate in 360 degrees, see if you can spot it that way.

[Supreme Cmdr]

quote:

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Originally posted by Soback:

SC will add an option to target the drone you deployed on the planet in some later patches.

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This option is already in the RC9 patch.

[DeBoNed]

You can target the drone, but I could not find out the bearings or the region on the map the drone is located. I got the shuttle to fly to the location of the drone by assigning a waypoint command to retrieve the drone, but I did not tie in the waypoint to any location on the map. The route consisted on only one waypoint, and the shuttle did fly to the drone's location, but did not pick up the drone, probably because, as TAC suggested, my shuttle already had a drone. It would be more interesting if you could see the location of your planet side vehicles on the topographic map.

Another suggestion is to be able to assign commands to a drone, or, if the drone is fully automated, when a shuttle is ordered to pick up the drone, the drone would automatically drive itself to the drop off point or stop in place, awaiting the shuttle pickup.

When the shuttle was on it's way to pickup the drone, as it entered the atmosphere, it descended at a snail's pace. It was descending at around 5 mph at 5000 unit height, (can't remember the units of height in the game). Could this be due to the fact that there was a drone in the shuttle and there was a bit of a command conflict? Low pilot AI? Would having two crewmembers in the shuttle make the shuttle fly ÔÇ£betterÔÇØ?

[Tyrn]

quote:

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Originally posted by DeBoNed:

You can target the drone, but I could not find out the bearings or the region on the map the drone is located. I got the shuttle to fly to the location of the drone by assigning a waypoint command to retrieve the drone, but I did not tie in the waypoint to any location on the map. The route consisted on only one waypoint, and the shuttle did fly to the drone's location, but did not pick up the drone, probably because, as TAC suggested, my shuttle already had a drone. It would be more interesting if you could see the location of your planet side vehicles on the topographic map.

Another suggestion is to be able to assign commands to a drone, or, if the drone is fully automated, when a shuttle is ordered to pick up the drone, the drone would automatically drive itself to the drop off point or stop in place, awaiting the shuttle pickup.

When the shuttle was on it's way to pickup the drone, as it entered the atmosphere, it descended at a snail's pace. It was descending at around 5 mph at 5000 unit height, (can't remember the units of height in the game). Could this be due to the fact that there was a drone in the shuttle and there was a bit of a command conflict? Low pilot AI? Would having two crewmembers in the shuttle make the shuttle fly ÔÇ£betterÔÇØ?

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It is possible that the shuttle picked up the wrong drone. The drones are numbered 1-4 but there is no way to know for sure which drone is which unless you are in the shuttle and use the target drone X command or you remember the general vacinity where each drone was placed. TACOPS displays the drones without id numbers.

[DeBoNed]

I probably had a drone loaded in the shuttle. I tried retrieving a drone on another planet with a shuttle that did not return to the cruiser and it worked. I also deployed the drone in one of the mission areas on a planet and made note of what mission area it was. When checked later in the mission area, as I zoomed in I could see the icon of the drone moving around in the mission area. So I set a watpoint on the surface of the planet, near the drone for theshuttle to "land", and a second waypoint for the shuttle to retrieve the drone, and it worked; the shuttle did retrieve the drone.