Docking and Launching Automatically - Getting Started with Drones

In the first in a series of tutorials focusing on the content from the Automatons update I cover how to make a drone automatically land and dock on a connector, launch and follow a path set by the player. This should get everyone started on being able to do all sorts of cool things with their drones :)
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[@kayzejones]

Begun, the drone wars has...

[@StarWarsNerd1465]

Lmaoo

[@Tutt318]

Space engineers :the drone wars

[@captainwinters6909]

You two probably made someone gain hope for humanity. Just by being awesome!

[@Y1SY]

Magnificent aren't they?

[@DjigitDaniel]

Possibly the single best SE comment I've ever read. Thank you.

[@Argomundo]

Been waiting for this

[@neon4070-yf1gz]

The legend is TRUUUE

[@Gracefulwarrior2124]

Maybe you could find a way to use this to make you're own drone intercepters in assertive acquisition

[@benjackson8731]

Im guessing you can't set this up to a mobile grid. for example you have a cargo skiff attached to a miner, the skiff is full, heads to base to drop off and returns. I think you might be able to do follow player for the return journey, but would need to manually dock.

[@Splitsie]

You should be able to but I was already at 20+ minutes for the tutorial so I planned to include the how to of that in a future one, probably on how to set up defense drones :)

[@benjackson8731]

@@Splitsie So i may have jumped the gun. Fair enough, i look forward to your other tutorials, they should help with me as more of a solo player.

[@nickdunn7362]

Thank you for creating this! BUT, what if I have a mining rover with an AI drill drone that needs to land on a connector that is constantly in a different GPS???

[@Xero1of1]

13:37 It occurs to me that the reason why the connector wasn't in range of the base connector was because the ship was turned away from straight, thus putting the ship connector to the side and out of range of the base connector. If the flight points are centered on the 'Move' block, then I think the safest thing would be to put the 'Move' block directly centered on the connector in whatever orientation it needs to connect. So, in this case with a vertical connection, the 'Move' block should be centered above the ship's connector. If it was a horizontal connection to the front or rear of the ship, then the 'Move' block should be either centered directly in front or behind the connector.

[@isibboi]

I had the same impression. Hope they add an option to make the ship end up with the correct yaw on a waypoint. Maybe this is something for precision mode?

[@mthemstandsformilk1965]

Turn off planetary align and it will force the orientation of your waypoint

[@knightlygeorge6459]

You should also make sure the recorder is centered over the connector on the drone. My drone works much better that way.

[@ShiftyshadowTV]

Thought the same right away. Placing the AI Recorder directly above the connector is a good solution for this setup. If that's not an option, reduce the approach speed and set up a path that forces consistent orientation of the drone each time. A combo of the two is probably best. (This is the same problem/solution for old Remote Control drone setups)

[@Ariethefloof]

hello again :)

[@saltr2413]

Imagine making a drone from Land Base to Space Station shuttling supplies that you cant get readily in Space. Or Splitsie, make a drone that follows Capac. On the other hand, Capac could make a drone to follow you Splitsie, that plys your favourite Fun song constantly 😂 LOVE YOUR CONTENT SPLITSIE! DONT EVER STOP

[@HamadaHamada-qx9bx]

The drone that follows capac could have its own dedicated survival kit for instant and infinite orange bullet shields. 😂

[@daz8405]

I think Salt'r might be on to something... A drone that follows you or Capac and has a low chance of randomly firing it's weapons... The Roulette Drone! You can't leave base without it! (It follows you, everywhere...)

[@HamadaHamada-qx9bx]

@@daz8405 the one following capac could also remind him to take his ship off recharge/stockpile. Although I guess the even controller will now do all that automatically.

[@armastat]

Nah they need a drone that leads Capac around that way it takes the inevitable bullet meant for Capac.

[@armastat]

On the other hand I could see someone building a simple remote controlled block ship that could travel randomly around a planet until it detects a Capac and then slams into him from out of nowhere

[@SalamanderBSC]

Pathing and automatic docking are not just good for drones. I've already started sticking them onto mining ships because I'm too lazy to fly back to base myself.

[@armastat]

Yes AUTO-DOCKING procedures. love it.

[@mthemstandsformilk1965]

FOR ANYONE STRUGGLING WITH SHIP ORIENTATION TURN OFF PLANETARY ALIGN IN THE FLIGHT AI SETTINGS. It overrides the recorded orientation unless you switch it off

[@jeffrochester355]

Just saved me from watching an entire video that probably wouldn't have answered my question.

[@mikevwca6211]

Capac: “how do you make this drone move on its own?” Splitsie: “i made a tutorial about this, didnt you watch it?” Capac: “No. why should i? Whats in it?” Splitsie: ”……..” capac: “now where can i put a solar panel on this thing”. - Is how i see this playing out in the future

[@armastat]

I also see Capac parking on a drone's connector and then complaining when it tries to land on him.

[@ryba3491]

Just as I started experimenting with drones... Perfect timing as always

[@shakeabledrip8127]

Super cool if they added a "force orientation" for waypoints. That way waypoint 3 can have that selected and between 2 and 3 it rolls spins and turns untill the recorded orientation is established.

[@algorithm-artisan]

the block could plot a path between the two waypoints and add some thrust over a period of time so that the trajectory changes accordingly.

[@DemTacs]

Can you test, if you can send to player. EG: Capac has crashed his Paprika. Can you send him a new one?

[@biocode4478]

i like that they are discrete blocks. a broken drone should have predictably janky behaviour

[@alphawolfgang173]

i was really hoping they were gonna make it so the ai ships can just auto detect docking points and do all this on their own.

[@truejoshi8569]

For when you get around to building missiles, I experimented with it myself a little and ran into the problem of warheads not detonating on impact. A pretty reliable fix I found for it is to be found in the event controller: Distance to locked target

[@yamatokurusaki5790]

You didn't use scripts?

[@valeon7303]

15 meters has been the general consensus from what I've seen, and sometimes proximity detonation does more damage

[@truejoshi8569]

@@yamatokurusaki5790 none

[@yamatokurusaki5790]

@@truejoshi8569 ah

[@armastat]

I am not sure how I feel about reliable long range missiles. while cool and all, trying to figure out how to get close enough was not only an engineering challenge it was fun. Case in point. Splitsie's bombing run over mountains onto enemy bases with his decoy tossing ship.

[@Harrkin8775]

I think if you turn off align with planet gravity on the flight block you'll have better luck since it seems to remember orientation of your grid when that setting is turned off

[@mthemstandsformilk1965]

IT DOES????

[@mthemstandsformilk1965]

I tested it you're a genius

[@armastat]

Nice Tip.

[@TheMitts]

I remember following your original tutorials years ago, they got me over the initial learning curve and paved the road towards my 2k+ hours in game and a bunch of relatively successful workshop uploads (Mitts on steam). I haven't hoped back in for probably over a year now and it's great to see you're still doing these, I still recommend your initial tutorial series to new players, looking forward to your next one!

[@LethalOwl]

I’d love to see this sort of docking set-up done for a mobile large grid. Can we make these drones return and dock with a large ship hangar if it has moved from it’s point of origin by a few kilometers in space, for instance? Think I saw something about the drones being able to pursue particular beacons etc and move "relative" to these blocks.

[@MediumRareOpinions]

Assuming it's set up as with the Beta, yes. You can set the recorder block to be relative to a Beacon.

[@Stoney3K]

@@MediumRareOpinions So... automated carrier operations? Sweet.

[@dalemorgan8263]

Concept: mass-produced drone kinetic torpedo swarm. Multiple simple kinetic missiles, predeployed and set to follow home until an enemy triggers an intercept protocol.

[@mementomori5580]

The biggest problem, that you didn't address, when it tried to connect to the base and failed, was that your Recorder block was not in line with the connector on the drone. Because it was not that the connector was close enough to the connector hight vise. It was that the drone was rotated around the waypoint so the connectors didn't line up on the horizontal plane. So your change of adding a timer and such didn't actually address the issue that you had when it failed the first time and it could still fail.

[@arismilonas]

Great tutorial , seems very complicated at the moment but Im sure after playing around will be much easier.

[@davyrando1203]

I am going to use this not for a fully automated ship, but for a automated docking. Docking with a big ship can be a pain in the batooski!

[@Yull-Rete]

When you get to event controllers, I've found an airlock system that is substantially more user-friendly than the officially-released example. My design is crafted with multiplayer in mind. It should be intuitive to use, as there are no buttons that need pressing. All a user has to do is open each door in their way like any uninitiated Capac would, and the design is mostly idiot proof, for the set of all idiots who don't have weapons or grinders. Idle setup is both doors on and closed, and the airlock vent set to 'depressurize'. Each controller looks at one of the doors, and as soon as that door opens, it starts a one-second timer, and turns the other door off until it closes. (You can also have the inside door opening switch the airlock vent off depressurize, but that isn't strictly necessary.) All the timer does is wait a second and then close both doors. (You could do this with two separate timers, but you can also have both controllers start the same one.)

[@Chronostra]

Does the recorder block also maintain the craft heading precisely? Does that locking problem can it happened because the drone yaw left and right? As you said before the waypoint were created with the recorder block as the centerpoint, and you have it slightly off forward from the connector? Gah I'm really want to go home to play the update but I'm stuck at my research location...*sigh*.....

[@davidmartensson273]

Excellent tutorial, not to long and covering one concept, perfect to get started with before diving into more complex things. And even with just this, combining multiples of these solutions you can create very complex behaviors. One thing though, orientation, will it try to retain the orientation it had during recording, or will orientation depend on the direction it came from? In the later case it could be important to either make sure the recorder it exactly on top of the connector, or that you have the waypoints setup to force it into the right orientation, especially if its a side or front/rear connector. If direction is only governed by the recorder, switching to a recorder oriented so that the side//front/rear connector is facing forward in regard to the recorder could be one way possibly?

[@Splitsie]

I believe it records orientation of the block, but I've had some mixed behaviour that makes my belief less than absolute :P In general though, you're right, should put the block directly in line with the connector anyway as it'll help the ship line up properly :)

[@shanekorbel7381]

Don't use a timer block to lock connector! Use event controller!

[@draconas109]

You want time to have the magnets align the ship

[@amaidolce2x660]

I got stuck all day figuring out how the AI works and the best I got was a drone that had an IQ of a newborn Dog.

[@prfatum8008]

A very useful guide. I would like to add that 2 AI Flight (Move) can be used on the drone. The first one is for low-speed flights (for docking) The second (with high speed) for flights outside the stations.

[@LugborG]

You do know Capac is going to make a jukebox drone to follow him around, right?

[@mailleweaver]

My biggest question is: Can subgrids control the main grid? Needing to have a separate block per docking station would be very bulky in large grid. It would be nice to be able to put all of the intelligence in small grid blocks connected via rotor or hinge.

[@mandyspence1599]

That was a brilliant and helpful tutorial, looking forwards to more advanced stuff, especially those focusing on making big 💥

[@Spartan0381]

Looks like this update finally puts automation in the reach of us poor fools who can't figure out scripts 🙃

[@MediumRareOpinions]

and for servers which don't allow scripts

[@ShadowDrakken]

The connection failing had nothing to do with the vertical distance. The yaw was way off, so the connector was way out of horizontal alignment. Sucks that the waypoints don't save orientation.

[@AlphaOfCrimson]

Yaaaaay! Splitsie is still doing tutorials! I came back to the game after a long time when I saw the new AI blocks. (I always sucked with scripts)

[@tonyg5113]

I feel this game is not for all the kids who grew up being medicated cause mom couldnt even and was ok with the doctor saying being hyper was adhd and autism .

[@daniellagergren2227]

Awesome tutorial! This is so cool! can't wait to start playing around with the new blocks.

[@bigmitchy4026]

it seems like one of the issues that caused the connecters to not line up was that it doesnt record its orientation at the set waypoints. So if you have it place its recorder block over the waypoint, but it's turned 180 degrees then it obviously wont have the connecter lined up. You could do some weird shenanigans with multiple waypoints to force an orientation, or you could just have the connecter and recorder block close enough together that it doesnt matter

[@mthemstandsformilk1965]

The wiki says the recorder block saves the orientation, but this is clearly not the case unfortunately. The worst bit is that it makes rear-mounted connectors impossible even with multiple waypoint shenanigans because drones can't back up. Very frustrating

[@mthemstandsformilk1965]

Nvm I just had to turn off planetary align in the move ai settings. It overrides the recorded orientation

[@MatrixQ]

I think this can be improved a bit if you put the recorder block directly above the connector. That way, there's no way to have rotation be a problem, because the rotational axis is the recorder block, and now the connector is also inside that axis.

[@rob679]

Another pitfall I came across is that drones have no problem is setup like this where the connector is facing downwards on the bottom of the drone, but if you want to make a connector on the side instead (because you have something under, like drills) the flight controller freaks out and refuses to reorient the ship to the orientation it was recorded. You can somewhat force the orientation with additional waypoint that is forwards on the same elevation before the point that will make the drone descent, but still makes the drone somewhat buggy. This was not an issue in the beta, so I don't know what is going on. And this is not a mod interference because I haven't enabled any.

[@mthemstandsformilk1965]

Thank God someone else has the same issue as me. I thought I was going insane. This bug completely prevents my design from working and I am very sad

[@mthemstandsformilk1965]

Nvm just turn off planetary align you're welcome :P

[@party4lifedude]

I'm trying to design something that I'm calling a "blackbox flight recorder" where it's basically a heavily armored box that contains the blueprint projector and a few other blocks. And it's meant to be a core starting point for any ships that I make. I made it so the projector was the first block I placed down, so the blueprint of whatever I build around it automatically lines up (a trick that I think I learned from you) and I never have to mess with the blueprint projector offsets. But the more I think about it, the more I feel I should add to it. Especially with all of these new blocks. Originally I intended it to just be the projector and a small backup battery, so if the entire ship is destroyed and the only thing left was the projector or the box itself, I could still rebuild it. (I could just print a new one, but where is the fun in that?) But there are a lot more possibilities and ideas to consider now.

[@_motho_]

wonder if there is a limit to how many waypoints a recorder can have. If it's unlimited, you could technically set up an actual flight recorder. IE you could recover the blackbox and see what route the ship followed. Maybe with like a minute or so between updates

[@aracron]

Thank you so much! I always love your tutorial videos. I am also looking forward to trying out your salvage mod.

[@Anubis1101]

event controllers wouldve been perfect for those timer blocks. you can set it to connect automatically when its in range, and disconnect when the batteries are fully charged

[@Splitsie]

Unfortunately the event controller is a bit buggy with connectors at the moment so I chose to show another method that works reliably 🙂

[@Anubis1101]

@@Splitsie ah good thing i havent been relying on it too much for that then, ive mostly just been using it to turn off my engines when landing gear locks hopefully they patch that stuff soon, im really eager to make use of it

[@Jose-Sousa]

Just wondering... isn't it easier to create the waypoints while taking off and then invert the order? At least the alignment should be spot on...

[@mthemstandsformilk1965]

Yes

[@championhook3372]

OMG, the OG tutorial space engineer is back!!

[@npenick66]

You still make the best tutorial's that I've seen for any game. I'm going to have to get some caffeine and rewatch this to get it to sink (early morning here) in but you always explain things in a way that I can 'get it'.

[@canadianbacon2542]

Up late unable to sleep AND NEW SLPITSIE! Thank you I have needed something to dive my brain into all night

[@lockleargames1628]

In my own experience putting the recorder block on the center line of your connector works best for any orientation

[@MrCool-lo3ls]

I've just bee experimenting with the event controller and it allows you to automatically activate your batteries when you disconnect! Thats awesome!

[@MrCool-lo3ls]

you can also use the event controller to automatically retract a custom landing gear, upon unlocking fom the ground (and even turn it off to avoid clang in tight spaces)

[@Dragonheng]

Catpac replacement block?

[@blacknight6147]

I'm imagining a swarm of fighter drones that will dynamically flee if damaged or depleted, then parking next to some welders and activating a projector to be fully repaired, refueled, and resupplied.

[@khamseen]

I wondered how long it would take for you to explain to me how to use the new blocks. I'm not disappointed! Thanks for the helpful tutorial, Splitsie!

[@Umeshu365]

Yes a splitsie tutorial. I was waiting for this. No other streamer/youtuber can do a space engineers tutorial better than splitsie. Trust me others have tried and they aren’t as great as they think they are.

[@LethalOwl]

Okay, this was very swiftly done, Splitsie! Thanks!

[@jasonbonhomme1]

Nothing that I did not manage to accomplish with a remote control block and a couple timers before. I have yet to see a real useful purpose to these new "ai" blocks. Other than the event controler, it's disappointing. Edit: Ok, the follow player and grid is new and useful. I responded too fast. Or rather, I reacted. And it was with two remote controlers, three timers and a sensor that I could do the same very well. Except follow player.

[@Splitsie]

I had similarly achieved this stuff with the old autopilot, the downside of that one was that it was far less reliable and required a lot more care in the setup (it also had some serious bugs that meant it didn't work properly with hydrogen thrusters). This is in a lot of ways a less buggy way of doing the same things. In the next tutorial I've got coming out for this I've done a bunch of things that the old system very much could not do though :)

[@jasonbonhomme1]

@@Splitsie I'll keep an eye out for it. Thank you very much for your great videos!

[@Ju-lz1ug]

​@@Splitsie have you found out how to make a practical autominer yet? All that I can find is kinda much worse than scripts

[@c.jvangreuning8862]

IT DOSE NOT WORK EVEN WHEN SWITHING OFF THE CONNECTOR AND ADDING A WAYPOINT AGAINST IT AND LOWERD THE FORCE FOR THE CONNECTOR TO HIGH OR LOW ... IT KEEPS LEAVING A GAPE ... and cant conect even with a timer block .... i have been tying for 6 hours and im done lol... i found if you place the recorder block close to your connector its very accurate . i just cant seem to get it go that extra 1mm lol to get connected and yes the collision is off .....

[@felixsbert9163]

OH MY GOSH!!! I finally made a working elevator!!! 🥰 Thanks for explaining. So good to be back in the game after a while and have a reliable source of "FU*K this sh*t aint working. Someone put this in understandable pleazzzzzzz!" ...did I mention that I love your tutorials? Anyhow, thanks👍

[@scelonferdi]

One thing that would be useful, is if we could program multiple behaviors within one AI block and trigger them separately. Thus we'd only need one block for a more complex schedule.

[@KCatch22]

Really unimpressed with this update. Most of this functionality already existed with remote blocks, sensors and timers. Drones are just as dumb with these blocks. Scripts like Path Auto Miner (P.A.M.) by keks do a much better job of navigating AND can do useful tedious work like mining and grinding.

[@southernbella6535]

I love the video (its a year later for me) . I came back to the game and build my drone to cargo haul ore from a drill site to my base and discovered these "new blocks" for movement and was confused. I always used a remote block with a few timers and had great success. someone tell me what they changed that made these so good? I dont see a need for these new blocks. They to lazy to just update code in the old ones? seems way more complicated for no reason. Thoughts? Great video enjoyed the information.

[@Conta_Minated]

This is a super complex tocpic. I've been playing around with this for hours and I've found out that this type of setup has like hundreds of ways things can go wrong. There are also lots of things that don't really make sense. Everything is set up perfectly, but it still doesnt' work... Also, most buttons haven't been documented properly, which is why it's impossible to fully understand what I'm doing here.

[@KeeseGaming]

I'm hoping someone can help me accomplish something. I recently started playing and I started on Earth. I've got a massive space station directly above my base on Earth. The thing I want to accomplish is to make a airtight shuttle that automatically takes you to the other station and then wait until told to bring you back. I need it to set its batteries to recharge, refill it's hydrogen tank and shut off it's thrusters automatically after connecting to the station. I'm curious where to point the connector, and a big thing I'm curious about is having the autopilot turn on and off the dampeners and specific thrusters at certain points during the flight (to save fuel and power). Also I'm thinking about downloading a small grid gravity generator mod which I want to turn off when current Gs is at 1. Tall order I know.

[@CMDROldDuck]

Didn’t you do something similar using a simple remote control block back before AI? This feels incredibly complicated for what ought to be a simple autopilot task...

[@davf973]

@Splitsie I know royalty free and good CC0 music can be difficult to find.. But I have got to say.. The music at the beginning made me feel like I was watching yet another corporate or startup presentation. No hard feelings.

[@Tomyironmane]

I have found on previous editions of the game, especially with more maneuverable small ships, you're going to want to set downward thrust in a gravity environment even with manual flight controls, just to keep the flight controls from getting confused. Otherwise sometimes your gravity counteracting thrusters won't properly let you fall.

[@Frumps59]

For some reason, the drone I built is moving painfully slow in 0g gravity. I know the speed limit is not affecting it, because that's set at 50. It's just moving slow with both basic task and recorder task. I still have a remote control on it, could this be affecting it?

[@unclesamuk8687]

It's like courseplay in Farming Simulator, well the old courseplay on FS19 that is.

[@Lianitt]

That's a very well done spotlight! Regarding AI system itself... SAMv2 is still better

[@stefan9922]

Hope they get rid of all the blocks and just make one that lets you make programs with a function block type language, Scratch or whatever Lego Mindstorms has.

[@armastat]

Splitsie ... you do know that - now you can install automated docking and landing procedures on your ships? No more landing and take off mishaps. Not sure how I feel about that however. I will miss the occasional 'what happened' moments as u guys get resurrected at the med station.

[@HashknightGaming]

So can I have my GPS higher up, does the drone climb all the way up to the GPS altitude before moving towards the GPS?

[@BabylonFPV]

interesting...but... keen needed 1 yeah to split the PAM-script into 5 blocks and auto-mining is no included... hmmm... ok its nice to have the blocks on a server, where scrips are not allowed.... lets see how this will work out when i get used to this or what crazy configs the future will bring.. how ever, thanks a lot to your tutorial and all your other contant.. keep on like that Splitsie ;-)

[@mleise8292]

Great introductory tutorial! 8:55 While the method of adding an action to a waypoint is certainly the intended way, the AI navigation doesn't reach the connector reliably in all instances (point in case 10:35). Especially if you also want to set batteries to charge, it is safer to use an event controller and wait for the connector to be ready. That also streamlines the setup of the drone for a new docking site a bit, as you don't have to remember to add a waypoint action. 8:33 What did you mean by "if your recorder block is a long way off the center of mass"? Does it behave differently then?

[@kampkrieger]

I just can not get it to work, it always ends up "somewhere" near the port but always 5m or so off. I turned on prcision mode...

[@_CJ_]

I want to see drone landing on moving mothership :) I have to say that gps is and will be pretty annoying the way game use it... I already hate myself when I mark 20 veins of iron "just in case" :D

[@voidseeker4394]

I'm kinda disappointed in this update for obvious missed opportunity: event controller is not detecting most events from AI blocks. No event for combat block target detection and activation, distance to target, etc. Blocks that came out in same update for some weird reason barely can interact with each other without scripts. Also yes, AI recorder is not respecting orientation. Why? What's the point?

[@luthman2]

Imagine if they also added base attacks. Every 7 days for example. Like the classic 7dtd. Oh well, maybe one day.

[@Thiloyeah]

Does someone know how far away you can be away for the basic AI Task setup to execute the landing? I also like to try to use an event block to execute a task after reaching a certain GPS. Unfortunately GPS locations reached is no preset condition. Is there a way around?

[@stuntpuppy8557]

12:35 I just wanted to point out that timer blocks can not use floating point values, so the value you give to the timer will round to a whole number. Why keen allows you to input a floating point number while the block is incapable of using them, i don't know. Seems like it would have been easier to just not allow floating point for input. Thanks for the tutorial!

[@jparis92100]

My goal is to make a space carrier and launch tie fighters/interceptors from the bridge....:) I have yet to mess with the ai blocks yet.

[@markbrown9765]

For the nice straight path you're talking about at 6:00 minutes in. Perhaps you could come down connect to the connector then release and come straight up off of it then hit the add waypoint. Then come down and connect again for the last waypoint. Also wondering...could you use this for the last part of docking big/heavy ships. Sort of like they do for big ships in real life. When they get near port a harbor pilot comes onboard and brings it in as they are more familiar with the local waterways. In this case your fly your big cargo ship to a safe point away from the base then click the button so it flies in and docks itself. Perhaps safer since once you have it set up it shouldn't make any "human" errors.

[@Abrogator91]

So you have vertical alignment with gravity. But how would you handle a situation where you need the drone to go somewhere specific, but also need it to face a certain way? For example, if you had the connector on the back? Or it you were doing this in space? Can you set up multiple recorders to operate at the same time so that the ship has to match all recorder waypoints simultaneously so that alignment can be specified?

[@janedoe4586]

but how do you set up a cargo drone going from Your fixed base to.. let's says a moving asteroid mining ship witch can change positions all the time ? even docking in flight?

[@thorivaldic]

Now we need a "flatbed" drone/ truck thing... Always need a flatbed!

[@unclegreybeard3969]

Why they thought these blocks were needed amuses me, several content creators successfully programmed remote drones using GPSs years ago.

[@brandonjpinto95]

not sure if its just me but the drones don't work. i have tried everything to get my drone to get close to the connector but never does consistently. then there is the issue of path finding. the drone seems to get to the last point at take off and is supposed to activate a AI Basic block to go on patrol, but when it gets to the last point, it just stops. the basic block is triggered because the AI behavior is on but the drone doesn't move. i need to manually go into the drone and turn off and then on again the AI behavior of the move and basic block and then it will start doing what its supposed to do.

[@ArgelTal_]

damn i was kinda absend from space engineers for such a long time i instantly felt like coming home with splitsies intro music. :D What i wonder and did not try yet is: are the paths movable in relation to a moving object, like a carrier ship - so the fighter drones can come back and dock without setting new paths every time you stop. Or mining drones on a rig ship. or like in the presentation video where the rover had a flying container to unload its cargo. looking forward to figuring that out. i wanna make escort gunships to patrol a range around my main ship that come back to refuel when a certain battery or hydrogen level is reached, while moving around with my main ship. if i can do this in space, i certainly can do it on land with like a base rover would be my guess, where i can send out drones to patrol a certain range, and being able to observe the area through its cameras etc.

[@MANU-dw9dh]

My drones end up crashing, how frustrating they don't always fly well.

[@phoenixfire596]

Will you be doing a video about getting a drone to land on a moving ship? I've got a drone carrier ship that I've been working on, and I'm having trouble setting up the drones properly.

[@markop.8854]

Nice drone. Where you get it? Blueprint please 😀

[@armastat]

I noticed that because u set up a recorded way-point offset from the base that the AI ship approached the base pointed in the same direction each time (except once when it was turned to the right somewhat). AND you mentioned that the recorder block is the align point for each way-point. if u did not offset that first point (IE., the first was directly above the connector) a ship could come in from any direction and theoretically if you then tried to set down on the connector it would not be aligned because the recorder block is offset on the ship and the ship is not in the same orientation as when u recorded the way-point. I hope that visual is clear because I said all that to ask this question. Does the reorder also record the orientation of the ship at each way point? If not then is it also good practice to place the recorder block in such a spot to avoid such issues? IE., in this case placing the recorder above the connector would allow connection and alignment no matter which way the ship ended up pointing.

[@johnkuly1065]

Wouldn’t it be more precise to have the block triggering the connector lock and landing waypoints directly over the connector? It looked like the connector struggled to lock because the drone twisted slightly in air before landing causing the orientation to be off.

[@averagekriegsman8133]

Hi could you make a tutorial explaining cross platform please🙏🙏

[@honeyy79]

The script sam is just far more superiour to keens waypoint bs. I excepted more. Not that you have to record waypoints.

[@YoStu242]

I did like in this vide but my drone refuses to replay recorded path. It only turns at the direction of waypoint 1 and then just hovers there and eventually recorder block turns itself off. I don't get it

[@XGalaxy4U]

Oh, the new logic block. I need to get that new DLC. May help with my elevator project.

[@ffwrude]

Only problem now.. is the UI. it's divided in three pannels and everything happens in the middle which is very small

[@christophsouthwell7518]

I had an epiphany, you could make a ship that recovers itself if you die :O (perfect for Capac)

[@DeanStoller]

been trying this a few times, the ship just starts wiggling and gets spastic moving point to point, then eventually shuts off or flys off at random. also seeing waypoints in the gui are numbered differently then what i see in the world