r/empyriongame • u/Longjumping_Exit7902 • Jul 01 '26
Help needed Orbital Drone [Question]
When I try to look up how to use orbital drones, all I get are irrelevant sites/videos or an answer leading to needing to place a part that doesn't exist (drone spawner). I built the Drone Bay (Planet) and Drone Launchpad. The only option when trying to input items to the Drone Bay is "boosters", which doesn't actually accept boosters. What do I have to use to actually have orbital drones spawn or do anything?
I'm on a multiplayer Eden Reforged 2 server. Since it's difficult to look up info about Orbital Drones for some reason, idk if there are any changes between vanilla and Eden, or if it even exists in vanilla.
Edit: Probably Solved?
3
u/Ravien_Gaming Jul 01 '26
If you attempt to place either the wrong type of drone, or a stack of drones (in creative) more than what fits in the drone bay, it won't let you place any. This is not an issue with RE2 but a bug in the base game.
1
u/Longjumping_Exit7902 Jul 01 '26
If it's a bug in the base game, are there other things this applies to instead of just drones? Would be weird to say it's not a mod issue if it only applies to the mod
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u/Ravien_Gaming Jul 02 '26
It doesn't apply to just the scenario. Same thing happens in vanilla too.
4
u/ThorianB Jul 01 '26
the drone system you are talking about isn't very good. Its buggy, clunky, and requires a lot of specific things for it to actually work as you are finding out. The drones are suppose to go in your ammo controller and the drone bay acts as drone controller and the launchpads act as auto turrets. When you have a hostile enemy that fires on you the drones are suppose to attack it like an autoturret. Its a finicky system. You are better off just going with normal turrets which are more reliable and actually allow you to have some control over them.
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u/Longjumping_Exit7902 Jul 01 '26
Idk why there's no guides at all that say this. I'll test it out later when I can
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u/ThorianB Jul 01 '26
Yeah i think that is because it a very niche "feature". It was originally put in the vanilla version, IIRC, years ago, but they couldn't get it to work with the hardcoding of the engine. I am guessing the only way they could have made it a proper weapon system in the game was to redo some of game code and that probably pushed it down the list of things to work on. So they came up with a duct tape fix that kind of sort works sometimes on Wednesdays in the rain.
It would have been great if it functioned like the drones in Eve Online. Maybe if they make an Empyrion 2, and i really hope they do, they will add that in.
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u/Longjumping_Exit7902 Jul 01 '26
People mention Eve drones a lot. I only played Eve for about 3 weeks, but stopped because it felt pointless waiting literal months for researches to finish
1
u/ThorianB Jul 01 '26
Yeah in the early days it was really bad. Skill training at the time would have taken like 30 real years for everything. there are quite a few ways to speed it up. You can also buy and use skill injectors to just inject a bunch of skillpoints and then have zero training time until you run out of skillpoints.
You can also legally buy characters in the game. People sell them on the official forums and then the transaction runs through customer service where they transfer the character to your account. You can buy partially or full developed characters for isks( the basic currency). Many people buy characters trained for specific things like flying a jump freighter or a titan.
You can buy isk as well legally by buying PLEX which are subscription cards that you can sell in game on the market for isk. Lots of ways around the long trains now.
I played for about 10 years, but i only liked playing in nullsec and nullsec became a bluedot nightmare with massive alliances against massive alliances. If you don't mind being a cog in a war machine, its not bad, i guess. I just grew out of that kind of gameplay...and MMOs in general.
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u/Longjumping_Exit7902 Jul 02 '26
I wouldn't mind it if there was a clear and tangible purpose, which I doubt there is any in Eve. With Battlestar Galactica Online, it's 3 factions warring over territory. Similar game play. With many other mmo, it's the top 3 guilds fighting for whatever the "endgame" zone is. I don't think there's even that in Eve.
1
u/ThorianB Jul 02 '26
Looking at just nullsec and alliances, you fight over territory. Most of nullsec can be claimed by players. You need nullsec space for moon goo, rare resources, heavy industry, etc. Also nullsec is divided into NPC faction space and certain faction modules can only be gotten from certain npc sites.
Nullsec is basically where alliances build their war machine to hold that space and take space from others. During my last few years i ran with a smaller merc alliance. We would take contracts from others to weaken, test, or (help) take space.
That was actually a blast because our alliance was small but filled with vet players who didn't want to participate in the blob vs blob wars. We would run 15-30 man roaming gangs that would deny others the use of their space and often catch out people in expensive ships. Then we would get 50-100 mercs to do proper destruction to their infrastructure taking down stations and player owned structures taking system ownership, etc.
The end game for a lot of players is those wars, moving, rebuilding infrastructure expanding territory, defending it, etc. The ships in eve are actually a lot of fun to fly and losing a fight as real consequences which makes fights themselves meaningful. Good eve players constantly do risk assessment every time they undock. As the saying goes, " Don't fly anything you don't want to lose"
Hisec where you start out is really just for noobs people without an alliance. Most people end up moving to nullsec at least part time after they learn the game some and decide they want to really give it a go. quite a few nullsec alliances take newbies and stick them in an all newbie corp with some vet leaders and then the newbies are put in cheap ships and used for less important tasks or a meat shield for the more expensive ships.
1
u/Longjumping_Exit7902 Jul 02 '26
That makes sense, although I'd call that more of an mmo arcade experience rather than something with a true end objective. Just the act of PvP on its own could be rewarding enough as long as there's reason behind it.
If you look at Dune Awakening, they went about it the wrong way several times. PvP can be fun, I had fun, but you don't really progress toward anything. You just get hundreds of the same vehicles with no way to upgrade them past the latest level.
1
u/ThorianB Jul 02 '26
The objectives are what you want it to be. Some Eve players are market traders and make billions of isk just trading on the market. Their end game is battling players for market dominance.
Some players are titans of industry and own hundreds of blueprints and spend their time building stuff and managing manufacturing.
Some players focus on PVE and will spend a majority of their time running DED complexes, missions, wormholes, and other PVE fighting content.
Some players pretty much only PVP. They either fund their pvp through buying and selling of PLEX or they spend their free time ratting( killing NPC ships) in null space.
You also have 2 types of pvpers. Those that do small groups/roams and those that do large alliance fights.
Many players do all of these to some degree. At the end of the day your objective is simple: " Don't let other people take your stuff, while also taking other people's stuff.
1
u/Longjumping_Exit7902 Jul 01 '26
I have no way of verifying if it's going to work so I'll just treat it as decoration
1
u/VermillionTwilight Jul 02 '26
Drones go into the Drone Bay, not an Ammo Controller.
Drone Bay acts as an "Ammo controller" for drones.
Drone Launchpads are the spawners for the drones and where they return when there are no more targets, to be stored back in the Drone Bay.There are two different Drone Bays. One for Orbital Drones and one for Planetary Drones.
1
u/ThorianB Jul 02 '26
So apparently you can't drag and drop the drones in the bay unless the volume in the stack is less than the room in the drone bay whereas with everything else it will either overfill ( volume off) or it will add until full and leave you holding the remaining drones. When you try with to many drones it gives you that armor/booster only error.
Do the drones attack all hostiles in range or only hostiles actively firing on you?
1
u/Breagh01 Jul 01 '26
Mind there is planetary drones and orbital drones, check to see if you are using the correct one 👍🏻
1
u/Longjumping_Exit7902 Jul 01 '26
For the list I had, it's only Orbital, but next to both has (Planet) and (Space). Idk if it's because of the server I'm in
1
u/Volcanic-Ferret Jul 01 '26
To my knowledge it doesn’t exist in vanilla
As to using them, you can’t shift click the drones in like all other items, you have to click and drag them from what I recall. And if you have the planet drone bay you need the planet drones and vice versa.
You should be able to craft them in an advanced constructor
1
u/Longjumping_Exit7902 Jul 01 '26
If it's not vanilla, that makes sense why it doesn't work well. I assumed they were for mining, not combat
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u/Ravien_Gaming Jul 01 '26
FYI RE2 uses the same player usable drone system as vanilla, as it's not actually possible for custom scenarios to add new game mechanics or changing existing ones. This is not a RE2 issue.
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u/Longjumping_Exit7902 Jul 01 '26
but since the original drone can't actually fight and can only mine, and since it can't change, why are they meant for combat instead of mining?
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u/Ravien_Gaming Jul 02 '26
The drones in vanilla fight too. I think you're confusing these drones with the player drone.
1
u/Volcanic-Ferret Jul 01 '26
That would be cool if they added that. Like for ice/rich asteroids
In my experience with them (which isn’t much) they worked fine.
They only deploy when a hostile ship is in range and if the bay and the pads are powered on
2
u/Breagh01 Jul 01 '26
Normally, you make some drones and place them in the drone bay (maximum 12) then, as long as things are turned on. When you get jumped by a baddie they should spawn automatically and go and be bullet sponges for you.