It’s refreshing that there’s a KZfaqr actually explaining how on earth you play Space Engineers :)

Just dropping a comment here that even 4 years later this video still applies and is being used by people like me to build drones. Thanks for making awesome content Splitsie!

2019 here, i have never made drones before but i would love to see this updated with maybe covering how to do a utility drone like a wielder or a resource collector (drills). you are the best, thank you for all the support on this game!

I've been going through all of these videos and it has drastically made the game more understandable and enjoyable. Thank you

You really deserve more likes and views. Keep the videos up please.

I'm BRAND NEW to this game and your tutorials are a life saver. Because of this video for example I got one of these drones to work out of atmosphere

Easy fix for a remote way off center of your connector is to have a docking approach to your docking approach to ensure the drone approaches from the same direction every time. You can have multiple approaches if needed, then a final approach, lastly with the landed waypoint. You might do this anyway if docking in a hangar bay.

Great Video Splitsie, nice simple intro to drones and their uses. I've experimented with them a few times myself, mostly cargo drones that will fetch supplies form a mining outpost (Scripts to load them at the outpost and a sorter to unload at the mainbase) but I tried some defence drones too, though I added sensors so it could chase the target, first sensor was all directions as a basic "Is there a target in range" which turned off the autopilot (and back on again once the sensor wasn't detecting the target anymore) and then a sensor on each side tied to overriden gyroscopes for the turning / chase behaviour. It worked pretty well actually.

hi. watched this entire series. just brilliant. you have a nack for walking the complex stuff through in easily understandable steps..... thanks

I'm a few years late, but this tutorial is excellent. As are many of your others. I just found this game and am enjoying it quite a bit. Your content is a large part of understanding this complex game

Couldn't you potentially set it up so that at the approach it's speed is slower than the other markers? Make docking more smooth even with precision mode off? Would allow you to increase the over all speed so your drone can have the most efficient coverage of the area (as long as its slow enough to still shoot and kill hostiles). Also my friends and I set up a small/medium sized drone to go between our 4 different bases, so if one of us needed something the others hand plenty of we could share whatever we put in our specified connector. Basically we had one friend near a lake so he gave us loads of ice, another near a huge uranium deposit to give us ingots when we needed, and another near iron and other precious metals. The last guy was in space so we didn't set up a gps for the drone out there, but every once and a while he would come down and deliver platinum.

Think of this on a larger scale... A solar powered drone constantly charging so you only dock for ammunition

I find your videos informative and professional keep up the good work. 👍

Wohoo! Just what i needed. And the new Update is amazing by the way. You should redo the Video where you tested what block you should have under your Ship

Great video, thanks! I wish I had watched it earlier tho. I've spent several hours in stress and despair trying to set a waypoint for my drone by floating my engineer above the connector, setting a waypoint, sending my drone to dock, visually estimate the discrepancy with where the waypoint should have been, re-set it and try again in a loop :) Landing the drone and setting the waypoint from the navigation mode just changed my life :))

Man I just love your defender.Just amazing video.

You have created a great channel Splitsie, keep up the good work! Do you know it there is a way to do “relative” coordinates? A mining ship or truck could have a waypoint in front of a cliff and then, say go north this distance or this time, then drop off load and each loop would add to that distance or time to drill deeper into the cliff. I guess one way of doing that is telling to turn on forward thrusters or turn wheels forward for certain amount of time and just hope that it stays right side up lol. Or if a ship had drills on the bottom it could go to way point and turn off (or lower) up thrusters and just let gravity take it down, cargo full, go back to waypoint... So I guess my question would really be about adding time on timers each cycle or how to use “cargo full” to move on to next step? Thank you!

Solution for not centered remote controls: Add one more gyro and make the "Dock" possition activate it. Set the gyro on overwrite which will make the ship rotate. Set the connector's magnetic force to a higher degree and Voila! You can even add an aditional timer block for convenience

a few things: 0) nice and informative video 1) i'd recommend using the "approach" marker as first point in the route, to avoid any collisions with the base and an earlier ability to turn the avoidance on. 2) i'm not sure about the relevance of the order of the stuff the sorter is allowed to pull. it may set priority, which would be good: the sorter could fill itself up with ammunition and let the reactors pull uranium for themselves (if enough ammo is stored in the base). if it doesnt however, it will end ep the other way around and empty the uranium of the entire base, leaving the turrets to pull for themselves

Awesome! I've been trying to get that sort of thing to work for a while now lol.

Thx for the video it helped explain a lot of what I’ve been doing wrong. Now with this information I can use drones to trans supplies without having to be there, space engineers has come far and your videos with how to properly build and command drones just made it better. Thx I hope you keep giving good tips for us noobies to this game

Nicely done tutorial really helpful! I now got a defense drone

You are right that automatically docking is simple when the drone connector, the base connector, and the remote control are in a straight line for a direct approach. Valuable information and one of the most frequent 'gotchas' that people mess up. It is also important to know that the remote control's piloting skills get derpier the further away from the drone's center of mass it is mounted. If mounted off the center of mass, it may take a long-ish time making incremental adjustments to keep the remote control block on a waypoint (or continually stop turning, move the drone sideways so that the remote control block goes back to that waypoint, and start turning again over and over) whenever it needs to turn to head for a waypoint in a different direction. Incidentally wouldn't it be better to "stuff" uranium into the reactor only, which can hold a limited but still excessive amount, rather than stuffing the entire conveyor junction full, which can hold a whole LOT more uranium than you want to risk to incoming attackers? Also, it's hard to imagine that this needed more than two reactors; why are there six?

Thank you for uploading this because I now have another idea. But sadly/frustratedly I can NOT play right now.

nice ty, i kinda knew how these worked but thought i may as well look up some videos to get a more in depth detailed explanation

thanks for the video, this is amazing. one thing i cant figure out is can you set a specific value on the increase and decrease speed in the actions? it seems like each one you put acts like you hit the button for it, making it go 5 points in the direction you picked. I noticed i need to use speed limit 1 for a gentle landing. so that is hard to manage when wanting to give it gas for long straights. especially when if you accidentally have it go 1 to many times in either direction, it will reset the value you put to 0 or 100, making you not possible to get 1 again cause of the 5 increments. a 2nd note, if i put armor blocks around the remote block, they act like objects in the way when its using collision avoidance. how could i protect the RC block to use this mode? any ideas?

On docking approach you should add an action to turn off turrets, then back on when it takes off.

Thanks for the help and your vids

Greetings! Love the tutorials. Have you done the cargo drone tutorial?

Here's an idea: adjust the speed when its at the approach and re adjust with the timer

@Splitsie, do you know if stacking sorters multiplies their effect as in if you use 2 junctions and place sorters on 4 sides of one and join them with conveyor elbows to the other junction do they "suck" 4 times faster than without a sorter at all? Or does it not matter how many sorters you have they only increase the movement of materials 1x no matter how many there are?

Thats pretty cool. Making the way points lower would probably help with killing the wolves as well.

Could set something up where there is a defence station in space that you want to defend and resupply (not your base where all your resources are stored) then could be sending a small cargo ship between the base and the point (docking and leaving resources) which the defence drone can then use if necessary. Could therefore have a whole automated and resupplied space station away from home

You could mount those turrets facing downwards. I think that would help them with target acquisition. Also, if you're into mods, you could use energy weapon turrets instead. It depends on the mod, but I know at least one that doesn't use any ammo at all, just power. That would be rather useful for a defense drone as it wouldn't require you to constantly insure that it has ammo available. Combine that with the transmission power mod, and you'd actually never need to dock the drone at all. :)

As I was watching the first video, I was thinking that a patrol drone would be great...and here we are!

Cool thing. Will try to make an auto lander, so I don't have to fidgit with landing my ship, of Splitsies design, on my connector. As of now I have an expendable drone to test it out that is herpy derpy. Have seen this clip again and have come up with things to tweak to hopefully be successful.

cool. what about using remote on auto to dock in space? no grav there to tell it how to turn or do i miss something?

I watched the first video when I was like 11 and stuck a bunch on warheads on top and turned colision off to make an effective missile but you would need a waypoint to fire it

Hello Splitsie I followd everything. The info is great. 1 problem i have to fix because the drone have problems to dock ad the docking station. The remote control forward direction i have to change to down. Then the drone dock like in the movie. (Sorry for my english, it is not so good.)

that is definately what i need

Thx bro really good video keep it up

Nice vid! keep it up!

1. This is so awesome. Had my computer be able to survive the requirements I will be playing with this drone concept 24/7. 2. I was thinking what will happen if the traffic is huge. Obviously you don't build hundreds of these (actually a dozen is quite too much considering they might get too energy and ammo hungry), but if you disengage collision avoidance wouldn't the following drone crash onto the drone that is feeding itself with uranium and ammo? Although I can see this being solved by careful route management and more than one charging docks. 3. Things that are slightly irrelevant; is it possible for a machine (say, humanoid mech or an atmospheric fighter-like object) to rotate itself and change its direction without making it like a symmetric block with turrets? Maybe useless but still a fun idea. 4. How is this thing going to fare on space?

Nicely done. :)

VERY NICE

I don't use the small landing gear case I have to lose leave the game it won't be there when I get back unless it's charged I take and put a small connector on top of a big connector and drop it welded up go inside then I go inside and lock the big one to the small one that way whatever I'm doing gets charged and I can feel it at the same time without having to move it or put fuel in it

Can we setup a route in space to bring ore back from other astroides to the main astroide base in space? let say we find a big astroid with large amount of iron, setup a battery/solar panel and a large cargo container, and we would fill up the large cargo container. The drone would transfer the ore to main base and deliver it and fly back again. Does not need to carry much if it's flying 24/7.

I bet if you set your "approach" waypoint to be closer to the connector, the drone will spend less time accelerating, thus, the speed when it actually contacts the connector will be less. I am not sure if it's possible, but you could set up some wheels with a nice soft configuration on the bottom to absorb any sort of impact. For light drones you wouldnt need big wheels I bet.

Is there a way to make a total random drone where it just randomly floats around your base

How to build on top of half block like the sorter? Did it require mods?

This is a nice part of the game. Now I wonder if it would be possible to make such patrol drones, with lets say 50m grav gens, in space to collect space debris from fallen pirate or other wrecks. Is it possible to let the drone detect the presence of debris so it can use its grinder and let it automatically start it's grinder? Or should I just look into a way to drag it all to a depot where it deactivate the grav gen so the debris falls in the grav field of the depot?

I doubt I’ll get a reply here but I’ll ask anyways, I’ve got a drone based of hydrogen and I have a similar path set up but when the drone gets to the “approach” stage it rotates and looks at the connector so that the connector is now facing far away from the bottom of the ship like it’s supposed to. This is also in outer space

Can the vanilla autopilot be used to fly to an enemy? Like how they shoot wolves, but flying to them instead?

The Remote block should have been given a center offset setting (and orientation) option, so the position of the block does not matter.

Is there no mechanism (besides limiting time docked) that limits the amount of ammo and fuel it'll store over time (besides max fuel/ammo capacity of the blocks)? It seems over time that it'll either accrue up to max capacity or will occasionally run out of fuel or ammo.

After considerable time building yesterday I thought I'd share some tips I learned: -Placing the docked waypoint about 1m above the connector got me much more consistent results -I found it best to have the autopilot disengage as soon as the docked GPS marker is reached -To use this with batteries, when you dock have an action set to turn recharge on/off, then 0.5 seconds before undocking set discharge on/off I also have landing legs on my drone so it can go park itself when not needed - the drone has no problem flying with the legs in the retracted position (on single player at least)

Great job you explain it better then i could lol also im working on a new design that should be able to work in either space or gravity getting it to work in space has been a headache but i think ive almost got it.

Could you do a revised version with drones in zero g? I've followed your steps, but it faces the connector in zero g, and just bumps into it. Thanks! Love all the videos

What about in space. When it isn't aligned to gravity? Say if it slightly rotated. And the connector was on it's side?

Very Cool

I feel like batteries are more appropriate for drones like this one. You'll have to extend the time period it sits docked, but overall it should require much less micromanagement than a reactor-based ship. I can't think of any way to prevent the drone from taking much more uranium than it needs without doing something extremely complicated.

hey, i built a similar drone like this but in space. keep having problems for it to make it to the correct waypoint for some reason and then docking it wont orientate to back up into its docking spot

Any ideas when part 3 will be coming out? Im finding this drone series very useful.

so i was wonder if there is a way of automatic drone building? In survival even with projector it takes time and u gotta run back 'n forth for resources. so i come up with projector and welders tools near projected drone from bp. But they do not weld it. Seems like welders weld only started block. So basically i have to start each block with manual weld and only then they are continue to finish it. Is there a way to fix it?

Could you save a little power by using hydrogen thrusters for the downward thrusters to make the autopilot happy, just leave them unfueled since as you said they won't be needed?

you could also use the TIM script to ensure the drone gets it's fuel and ammo

My friends consider me skynet and thank you from this I am bad at making them land and shut off this helped me be even more scary I never used the point things to do

How are you placing more blocks at the same time? I also would like to make that line.

Can we create a ship that can read our GPS coordinates, or somehow we can send it to it, so it starts flying from it's position inside a hangar and land on our position at the range of its antena of cource?

My ship doesn't even approach the waypoint directly it does whenever is out in deep space but when my waypoint is just a couple blocks away from my base it doesn't even come close to the waypoint before it stops And yes collision mode is off and precision mode is on

Im happy someone posted an in depth manner of docking via drone. Im having an issue however, when I try to use a mining drone in space, auto pilot is selective for when it wants to work. If I have a back and forth waypoint it works fine, but if I attempt to include any waypoint that includes docking, the ship rotates and refuses to budge. Is that a bug or am i doing something wrong with the remote control?

Sad tried using respawn ship gps to make mobile drone fleet, seems to freeze when attempting to access rc block

LSG(last stand gamer) use the auto pilot to make his drone move to the target too. You got almost the same design and paint like him.

Could you do an updated one with out using uranium?

Ok, I love the idea, and it gave me an idea! I want to build a drone like that to haul my ore from a container at the mines that I build, back to the base so i can just mine it and then load it into the container for the drone to move it. My question is though what setting would i have the sorter set to for it to drop it off at the connector back at base? I think i should have to have 2 connectors and set them up individually at each point so i can have a sorter on each to drop off and to pick up at points depending on where it is at the time. I know the one to pick up needs to be set at collect all, so that is get all the ore i put into it, but the one where it drops off, how do i set it up?

02:55 Great! ... so where do I get the uranium from? :D

one idea would be to deploy 4 to 10 drones per asteroid and see how they handle things (mostly space pirates).

Hey Splitsie this is a great tutorial! next is sensors right? ha ha

It's really cool that you can do this kind of stuff in SE, but I don't really think it is something that I would personally use. Mainly because I very rarely play with wolves enabled. It may be good though if your on a planet with spiders.

At 11:31 you add the disconnect to the timer hotbar, and then do something to swap the disconnect to position 1 and the autopilot back on to position 2, but don't say what you did. I'm guessing this is a hotkey like control-left arrow, is it? How does the hotkey know what you are swapping?

Super sweet

09:30 I think i would have set the first waypoint to Main Dock Approach, so that it always moves clear of the station before proceeding in the route. Can you add a program to re-dock after a certain time? Can you have multiple remote control docs for different "states"?

I know this is not exactly recent, but I can't get my drone to dock. It touches down but instantaneously moves off. It appears that the 2 second delay of timer 1 triggers after the drone moves off again. I am trying to make cargo ferrying drone and it runs back and forth through the way points but never docks long enough to load or unload the cargo. I'd appreciate any help.

Why is my ship pointing to the dock than lining up with the connector?

Is there a way to limit how much uranium and ammunition it takes on, so it doesn't fly off with the whole base supply, but without having to manually add the missing amount of fuel and ammo? Like a predetermined limit.

ok, at Approach 1 turn guns off, MUCH less chance of shooting your base. Then you need it to go to an "Approach 2" before waypoint 1(after docking), Turn guns back on. (I ALWAYS play with friendly fire ON, it makes one be more careful about such things.)

Regarding placing the remote control "directly above the connector", don't you instead mean have it centered on the connector (assuming looking top down on the connector's conveyor port? For instance, couldn't there be any number of intervening blocks between the connector and remote, just make sure to have it centered on the connector? Being centered seems the important thing, not how close vertically to the connector the remote is (but what do I know, this is all new to me anyway...).

So how does a battery drone work? I don't have uranium on triton apparently

how do I make a drone dock inside a ship, so I can easily transport it. Is it the same procedure or not since the current position of the ship dock can change when the ship moves?

Unrelated to automated drones, I've been cheeky and made a "Retrieval Drone" for Unknown Signals, been funny sending it out to lazily bring me my free goodies xD

If the path way Is slanted would it still aline it's self properly

Help my drone ain't working it keeps stopping when after my docking approach and just freezes even tho the auto pilot is on when in space

When I was watching the last video this came up funny huh. Yes indeed spitse

Following your video, while in remote control I find that pressing K to set the docking waypoints gives a 'Not connected' error. When I set the coords using I/remote/terminal this sets MY position, not the drones so it does not land on the connector. What am I doing wrong, please. As a newbie I find your videos of great help.

Why gatlings? Would interiorturrets be fine too? What about non uranium powerrd drone. That still easy to do?

Hello everyone, What is the mod/option allowing to build several blocs in one clic like featured in the video?

Does the autopilot work in space as well? For some reason my remote control and connector don’t line up correctly while precision mode is on. My ship doesn’t even reach the waypoint and already goes away before even docking. I’ve tried everything and don’t know what to do next...

any chance there's been some significant changes since you made this? i've spend the better part of a few days trying to get autopilot to function - not even for a full drone, just automatically bringing me in to the right spot to connect, and the best i've managed to get is to come in to the right general area, usually involving a crashing, and almost never actually ending up quite where it should be. remote added to a pre-existing mining vessel. placed it directly above the connector, with orientation matching the cockpit properly. put ship onto the connector so it turned yellow. made a docking waypoint, flew it straight up, made an approach waypoint. speed limit is currently 5, precision mode is on, collision avoidance off. there's nothing that should complicate matters in terms of timers: no timers, no actual docking commands, no actions on the waypoints: just straight up trying to get it to make the approach and reliably position itself so the connector goes yellow and... it just doesn't. in most cases it flies too low and then tries to pull it's own connector through the base connector (neither are flush-mounted), or wiggles back and forth like it's dancing while approaching the docking waypoint. i've tried turning things off and on again (the block, the whole ship, the game) i've made the waypoints both while in the cockpit and while controlling it remotely, in case the precise waypoint location varies from that when i make new waypoints, i remote the old ones entirely, and remove and add the new ones, to be absolutely sure it's using the correct ones this is driving me quite insane.

Is there a way I can program a Drone to fly X meters, and stop? Additionally, is there a method you can use to control multiple drones manually (IE have many drones on the same control frequency?). Thanks for any feedback

Is it possible to creat waypoint that are relative to some other object ? As my whole base can move , i'd like to have my drones follow it.