[2.2] Station drone management FUBAR - Fixed in 2.50

[BurnIt!]

There is no specific time requirement for the (dis)assembly of drones when the target amount changes. It will happen when the amount is changed even if the game is paused. (may take 2 or 3 frames to show the update but does not take time)

You recommendation for cargo drone numbers seems pretty good. Technically you are not going to need as many drones for (un)loading large freighters because there can only be so many drones flying the short distance between the pier dock and the ship, so throwing more at that won't accelerate the transfer. However you are of course correct that potential station to station (or station to build storage) trades involve longer distances and thus keep cargo drones busy for longer periods of time.
Also keep in mind that trade ships typically bring their own cargo drones to the table so even if a station doesn't have enough to fully saturate the cargo throughput of all docked ships the trades will usually run at max capacity regardless. (station and ship share cargo drones for a single trade operation, you can see this happening when empty and full drones launch from both parties at the same time)

As for displaying the drone (and missile) resource amounts: I agree, however for now the focus was on making sure it is functionally correct first. Improving the user interface for this scenario is on the list.

[Imperial Good]

After further testing I am fairly confident this bug is fixed in 2.50 and my prior post was due to the hidden drone wares amounts that accumulated on some stations as a result of the bug.

There is still the bug of target amount 0 not deconstructing drones but that is being handled by a separate thread in the beta forum.