[TC] freight drones?

[dougeye]

how do i use buy/use freight drones with TL's?

this realy bugs me and id say im fairly experienced at x3tc with over 350 hours on the steam account clock but i just have never got found / got these to trade for a TL.

[AusSkiller]

how do i use buy/use freight drones with TL's?

this realy bugs me and id say im fairly experienced at x3tc with over 350 hours on the steam account clock but i just have never got found / got these to trade for a TL.

The only use I found for them was to transfer goods between ships while OOS... then I saw the "Freight Exchange With..." menu item which has since rendered them useless. But maybe I'm missing something too, this game is just so frigging huge I love it

[Gruber1232002]

I used them to transfer 4000 silicon wafers at a time from my oreplex to my atmospheric lifter, then from the lifter to my crystal/chipplex. Also useful for moving ridiculous amounts of energy across the universe in a hurry. Great for jumpstarting fresh complexes, but overall you could live without them.

[dougeye]

i realised what they are used for lol

i am asking how do i make them trade/ pick up freight from a npc station to resupply my tl for example?

+ do u need to buy them?

[AusSkiller]

I used them to transfer 4000 silicon wafers at a time from my oreplex to my atmospheric lifter, then from the lifter to my crystal/chipplex. Also useful for moving ridiculous amounts of energy across the universe in a hurry. Great for jumpstarting fresh complexes, but overall you could live without them.

You can get them to buy stuff from stations/complexes? How, specifically which commands?

[Catra]

buy them from any of these locations

once inside the cargobay of the TL and said TL is close to the factory / complex you wan to trade with, eject them from the cargobay.

order em around like a regular ship(warning: has a 2 hourish lifespan). the freight drone also has a special trade command called fetch freight, which, IIRC acts like a manual trade run(TL --> factory --> back to TL).

[Rapier]

There should be an option in the trade menu; 'Transfer freight via drones...'. It's pretty self explanatory from there. just remember to make sure you have enough space in your TL or the drones won't return but will just follow the ship (until they run out of energy and die).

[AusSkiller]

(warning: has a 2 hourish lifespan)

Is the lifespan reset after it docks with the TL again?

[Teladidrone]

If the ship you launched the drone from has a hangar bay the drone jumps back into its cargo hold if you issue the order to "return home" (or order it to dock at any other ship you own).
From there you can reuse it again.

If the big ship has no hangar the drone itself will be lost after the timer runs out; make sure to transfer any wares the drone may still hold away with a transporter device before that.

[Nanook]

...
If the big ship has no hangar the drone itself will be lost after the timer runs out; make sure to transfer any wares the drone may still hold away with a transporter device before that.

You can save them simply by running over them and collecting them like normal cargo containers once they stop moving.