[2.2] Station drone management FUBAR - Fixed in 2.50

[mr.WHO]

Can someone fix the station drone management menu in station Logical Overview?
This menu is FUBAR broken and the station manager seems to do everything else other than I want him to do - he ignore my orders, he ignore my limits and even (!!!) ingnore statino storage limit and buy/produce more drones that station suppose to hold.


See here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 1677451222

I set target amount for cargo drones to 20, combat drones to 20 and repair drones to 10. The station could hold about 60 drones at that time, yet my manager bought 100+ of each drones (I added more dock later on).


What is that "target amount"? I'm very confused how it work. Let say I set target amount of cargo drones to 20, does it mean:
- make sure that station has 20 cargo drones
- add 20 drones to current amount of drones

Usually when I first build my stations and I set cargo/combat/repair drones to 20/20/10 - station manage will buy them in ordered number and set "target amounts" to 0. See here at repair drones:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... 1677451190

This would indicate that "target amount" actually mean "amount to add". Unfortunately beyond the "first drone supply", If I want to change/add/remove drones then station manager goes crazy FUBAR.


P.S. There is also tiny bug on this screen - if you click the "right arrow" on Cargo drone "target amount" it will also sometimes click "right arrow" on Repair drone "target amount" which will make you sometimes add repair drones when you want to add cargo drones.



The drone maangement screen is currently either bugged ro highly confusing please make that:
- target amount is the amount of drones that should be kept on the station (and should not zero after manager bought specified amount).
- if drone amount is below then station manager buy/build drones.
- if drone amount is above then manager deconstruct drones.

[Imperial Good]

I am also running into this problem in 2.00. Station managers randomly ordering over 20 cargo drones when I requested just 6, etc. Especially a problem with build module stations since one needs a lot of construction drones for them to operate efficiently and they also have all the wares needed to build drones instantly and will do so even when paused.

For example when I was raising construction drones with automatic restock enabled for them, it would raise the limit by one, say 1/2, then immediately drop the limit and build a drone, like 2/1, then if one raised limit again it would go to the correct value, 2/2. Sometimes doing this effects other drone stocking orders adding some amount to either drone number or drone limit, which is why I suspect I suddenly ended up with over 20 cargo drones when I only wanted 6.

It would be nice if station managers could deconstruct excess drones. Currently I am unsure how to get rid of these unwanted and impractical drones.

[SPiDER]

Is the bug for drone supply on the list to be squished yet?

Just finished a new 'Yard and was adjusting the slider to add "Building Drones" when the Cargo Drone jumped from 364 ( which it was set to ) to 2022 which means I have no space left to add my Building Drones.

Need to implement Recycling of Drone Components Guys....

Brand new shipyard now no point in letting NPC's build Constructors.

[mr.WHO]

Can someone from Developers confirm if this has been investigated/recreated?

None of my existing stations buy/build additional drones via "Logical overview" past the inital run (when you have 0 drones on freshly build station).

[Imperial Good]

Still an issue for me as well. My station has now ordered over 260 cargo drones when I only every ordered 9 at most. Instead of the 200 construction drones I want I now have to use just 100, which required save scumming to get, to build ships inefficiently.

At least allow us to scrap station drones...

[SPiDER]

All posts relating to this issue have never been acknowledged..at least can we have some feedback as to you are aware and it is in a queue to be looked at?

Please and Thank you

[Alan Phipps]

I'm sorry but this Tech Sp forum does not work like that and does not attract an automatic right to dev feedback of intent and progress reports. That is the reason that an element of the first Announcement on this forum specifically discourages bump posts in the style of 'When will this be fixed?'.

I can personally say that the attention of the devs had been drawn to this thread well prior to the bump posts. When and if the devs need further information about a reported issue it will be requested in the thread by one of the devs investigating, or by a forum official on their behalf. Naturally, any new and additional evidence and information about the issues reported is most welcome to be posted in the thread at any time.

[BurnIt!]

So far I have been unsuccessful trying to reproduce this issue.
Does anyone have an unmodified save that shows the problem? (preferably shortly before the number goes up again)

[Imperial Good]

2.21 seems to have removed the spontaneously ordered cargo drones from my stations the instant I tried to alter any of the drone settings in logistics view. Not stopping there, it seems to have removed all my cargo drones from such stations.

However I now cannot seem to reliably order any drones on such previously effected stations. Specifically my Shipyard and smart chip factory, both of which had the bug. The Shipyard, being a shipyard, should be able to instantly build the drones from the wares in storage. The smart chip factory should need to order in drone components. No matter what I do with the drone restock logic, the shipyard will not build the requested drones and the smart chip factory will not even try to order the required drone components. An Paranid food complex of mine which never was effected by the bug restocks drones perfectly, ordering in smart chips and drone components as required. A common factor between both of these problem stations is they deal with at least 1 other drone ware than just Energy Cells, with the smart chip factory making its own smart chips and the shipyard using both for ship drones and making its own drone components.

Originally the Shipyard had 300 cargo drones. When I upgraded to 2.21 and tried to modify drones all the cargo drones vanished. The smart chip factory had 99 cargo drones, all of which also vanished when I touched the controls after the 2.21 update.

The following save link is used in another report can be used to see this issue as well. It is an unmodified save running latest release version (2.21) with ventures enabled.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2vtfjxw8wic81 ... ml.gz?dl=0

The Shipyard that has the problem is the "Pious Mists II Shipyard I". The Smart chip factory is the "Trinity Sanctum III Refined Goods Complex II". The Paranid food complex which appears to be ordering drones correctly (for now) is the "Pontifex's Claim Agricultural Goods Factory I". One can change the Drones in Logical Overview for both the effected stations to try and build new drones and nothing will happen, with no drones being made for the Shipyard and no Drone Components being ordered for the Smart Chip factory. If one changes the Drones of the Paranid food complex then it will immediately and correctly try to order in the required Smart Chips and Drone Components to make the requested number of drones.

While writing this post I just managed to trigger this bug kind of. With the Smart chip factory spontaneously ordering 100s of drones, both cargo and repair, up to the target amounts however doing so without needing any drone components and then corrupting the target amounts.

• Load the save linked above.
• Pause game.
• Open Map view (m).
• Open property list tab.
• Right click "Trinity Sanctum III Refined Goods Complex II" for menu.
• Open Logical Overview for "Trinity Sanctum III Refined Goods Complex II" using that menu.
• Scroll down to Drones. I used mouse wheel.
• Expand Drones to show stock target amounts.
• Select the Target amount field for number of Repair Drones and edit it.
• Input 100.
• Press Enter to confirm the change.
• 32 Cargo Drones were instantly built, with Target amount being changed from 32 to 0.
• 100 Repair Drones were instantly built, with Target amount being changed from 100 to 1.
• The station has no Drone Components in storage to build any of these drones with. It should need to order some in before any drones can be built.
• Logical Overview will show drones as 1/525 until the window is reopened, despite there being 132 drones. Closing and opening the window fixes this display bug and shows 132/525.

This is recreated each time one tries it. I just repeated the above steps 3 times and always got the same results. Note that messing with the Drone target amounts in any way other than described above may produce different outcomes, some of which are more reasonable than others.

It seems the spontaneously ordered cargo drones may be fixed, at least in their previous form, but the drone ordering logic still is broken as this test case shows. I do think this is related at least since it is spontaneously modifying the targeted amounts. If it is lowering them like in the above case, nothing stops it from also raising them and hence ordering insane numbers of cargo drones and such.

[SPiDER]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fSrki ... qtmRKQweod

Argon prime shipyard goes up and down like a yoyo but wont restock what has been used...everything ( yard /wharf ) SW of argon prime had to be flown in by Mamoth/osprey/ceberus.
Newest one open Sacred Relic II appears to have stocked what was asked for.Once set and supplied none of the stations appear to restock or be able to add to what is already there




Also please note the collection of M class ships that is parked in the NE of argon prime ..that is the collection of unendingshipspawn ..that I have collected and dumped....in excess of forty have been already put to use..Glance around the map dozens more to collect...but those ones I did manage to remove along with the mines using a colosus as a minesweeper. The majority were in SCII at last count 46




NB leave the game running for a few hours and you will also get to see the new bug that 2.21 introduced...Fog of War and Hexagrid Display disappearing from Black Hole Sun V on map view

[Imperial Good]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fSrki ... qtmRKQweod

Argon prime shipyard goes up and down like a yoyo but wont restock what has been used...everything ( yard /wharf ) SW of argon prime had to be flown in by Mamoth/osprey/ceberus.
Newest one open Sacred Relic II appears to have stocked what was asked for.Once set and supplied none of the stations appear to restock or be able to add to what is already there




Also please note the collection of M class ships that is parked in the NE of argon prime ..that is the collection of unendingshipspawn ..that I have collected and dumped....in excess of forty have been already put to use..Glance around the map dozens more to collect...but those ones I did manage to remove along with the mines using a colosus as a minesweeper. The majority were in SCII at last count 46




NB leave the game running for a few hours and you will also get to see the new bug that 2.21 introduced...Fog of War and Hexagrid Display disappearing from Black Hole Sun V on map view

What does this have to do with bad Drone target amount logic?

[SPiDER]

AP shipyard defense drones fluctuates...and wont replace cargo/build that have been used...out of 70 odd stations I think there is less than 10 that have accurate drone requirement/supplied

[BurnIt!]

Thanks for the save and a special thanks for the very detailed description - that was really helpful!
Station drone management has been fixed for 2.50.

[Imperial Good]

Still not fixed in 2.50 Beta 1. Messing with Drone target amounts of a station I managed to get the station to magically produce drones without any raw materials (no smart chips or drone components). It is better, but still there are issues. I am unsure if this is the original issue or not, but it certainly does not feel like correct behaviour.

[Alan Phipps]

That last report should have been in the Public Beta forum.

[BurnIt!]

Still not fixed in 2.50 Beta 1. Messing with Drone target amounts of a station I managed to get the station to magically produce drones without any raw materials (no smart chips or drone components). It is better, but still there are issues. I am unsure if this is the original issue or not, but it certainly does not feel like correct behaviour.

In this case this most likely was correct behaviour. When drones are dismantled because the wanted amount is reduced the resources are not lost but kept around in the drone assembly bay. When you increase the amount of wanted drones again, as long as the resources are sufficient they will be used and the drones will be assembled right away without the need to buy more. What you describe sounds like exactly this may be the case.
Due to (pre 2.50) issues that could lead to drones being dismantled when they shouldn't have been we've opted not to remove these leftover drone resources.

[mr.WHO]

Still not fixed in 2.50 Beta 1. Messing with Drone target amounts of a station I managed to get the station to magically produce drones without any raw materials (no smart chips or drone components). It is better, but still there are issues. I am unsure if this is the original issue or not, but it certainly does not feel like correct behaviour.

In this case this most likely was correct behaviour. When drones are dismantled because the wanted amount is reduced the resources are not lost but kept around in the drone assembly bay. When you increase the amount of wanted drones again, as long as the resources are sufficient they will be used and the drones will be assembled right away without the need to buy more. What you describe sounds like exactly this may be the case.
Due to (pre 2.50) issues that could lead to drones being dismantled when they shouldn't have been we've opted not to remove these leftover drone resources.

Question - how should I prepare for 2.5 release?
If In my station for cargo drone there is 100/0 (100 drones in station, but target amount set to 0) will the 2.5 deconstruct those 100 drones?

[BurnIt!]

If the target amount is 0 then it should dismantle the 100 drones but since it will keep the resources you can set the slider back to 100 and will immediately get them back.
To "prepare" you could set the target amount to 100, then it shouldn't change at all and be correct going forward.

[mr.WHO]

One more question - is there any kind of functional cargo drone limit?
I mean if I have 6x Large ship docking ports on my station then what would be optimal amount of drones? or sky is the limit and the more the better?

I also found this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/ ... t_feature/

is this working only IS or also OOS? where I could find what amount of drone would be needed for this?

[Imperial Good]

That last report should have been in the Public Beta forum.

I will go into details there when I have another fully reproduceable test case. I bumped this to make it clear that it has not been fixed by 2.50 currently.

In this case this most likely was correct behaviour. When drones are dismantled because the wanted amount is reduced the resources are not lost but kept around in the drone assembly bay. When you increase the amount of wanted drones again, as long as the resources are sufficient they will be used and the drones will be assembled right away without the need to buy more. What you describe sounds like exactly this may be the case.
Due to (pre 2.50) issues that could lead to drones being dismantled when they shouldn't have been we've opted not to remove these leftover drone resources.

Except it happened to a station that was not effected by previous versions drone deconstruction. In other words not a station I mentioned in my previous demonstration of the issue, one of the other working stations.

If drone bays hold resources, rather than them being returned to station wares storage as one would expect, this should be shown to the user in station information tab of logical overview window. Otherwise such behaviour might be confusing to players as they have no indication that it may occur.

The fact still remains that the construction is not instant, but rather happens spontaneously upon modifying the target amounts but only after doing so many times. The game is paused during this time so either construction should always happen instantly with every modification one makes to the target amounts fields, or it should never happen until unpaused as some period of time is required for the change to come into effect. I am looking into finding a reproduceable example in 2.50 beta.

One more question - is there any kind of functional cargo drone limit?
I mean if I have 6x Large ship docking ports on my station then what would be optimal amount of drones? or sky is the limit and the more the better?

I also found this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/ ... t_feature/

is this working only IS or also OOS? where I could find what amount of drone would be needed for this?

You can measure this by looking how many cargo drones are in use while the ship is docked and exchanging a lot of wares.

If you want a scientific estimate then get the cargo capacity of the Shuyaku Sentinel and divide it by the cargo capacity of a cargo drone. This will give you the maximum possible number of drones that need to be in flight at a given time to move cargo off the largest L trade ship. Multiply this by L dock count.

The reason you may want more than that is for zone station to station trading. Only the selling stations needs to worry about this as they will generate the trades. Same logic applies as above except 100,000 applies to the capacity of such a trade and this is multiplied by the number of such trades that can happen in parallel. This will use the most drones as such trades keep drones busy a very long time due to their slow speed and long distances travelled.

I suggest creating a discussion topic about this since this is not really part of the bug report.

EDIT:
Seems like it might actually be fixed in 2.50 and it is just a case of an unknown amount of hidden drone resources from the previous bug. Still would be nice to see these resources. Additionally I did find a bug when trying to deconstruct drones with 0 target amount that I have reported in the beta forums.