Construction Drones

Construction Drones

⚠️ Requires BepInEx and StationeersLaunchPad to run ⚠️ In multiplayer, the host and every player must be on the same version of the mod ⚠️ First release: please report any issues

Plan it, press BUILD, and watch the drones put it up.

This mod adds construction drones to Stationeers. At a Planning Terminal you fly a camera round your base and lay out structures as ghosts, with the game's own placement cursor. Drones from a Drone Bay then fetch the kits, materials and tools from a Construction Storage and build every ghost, step by step, the same way a player would. They can also take things apart, repair damage, and paste whole blueprints, including ones from the Steam Workshop.

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Features

Three new structures

• Planning Terminal: a desk console with a big screen and three keys, PLAN, BUILD and CLEAR
• Drone Bay: three landing pads and three drones
• Construction Storage: twelve open cubbies for kits, sheets, cables, pipes, ingots, circuit boards and tools
• Each takes one power-and-data port at the back, and they find each other on the data network
• Turn them as you place them with the rotation keys, or hold C and scroll, like the game's own machines

Planning

• Press PLAN on the terminal and the camera lifts away and flies freely, up to 60 m from the terminal. Your character stays where it is
• Move keys fly, Space and Ctrl go up and down, Shift is faster, the mouse looks round
• Press K to choose a kit from the game's own list. The game's own placement cursor appears, with its grid, rotation keys and checks, and a click lays down a ghost instead of building
• Ghosts cost nothing. You can stack frames on ghosts, and a click on a ghost with no kit chosen removes it
• Right-click to put the kit down, right-click again to stop planning
• Planning ends if you walk away from the terminal, get hurt, or the terminal loses power

Planning tools

Press Z to step through them:

• Build: lay ghosts, as above
• Remove: click a built structure to mark it for the drones to take apart (purple). Click again to unmark it
• Copy: click two corners, and everything built between them is saved as a blueprint
• Paste: K picks a blueprint (Shift+K goes back), the mouse wheel turns it, and a click plans the whole thing as ghosts

Blueprints

• Blueprints use the format of JacksonTheMaster's BlueprintMod, in the same folder, so one library serves both mods
• Every blueprint you subscribe to on the Steam Workshop shows up in the Paste list. BlueprintMod does not need to be installed
• Drones build structures only: loose items in a blueprint (a battery, a circuit board, ore on the floor) are left out, and the message names them
• Logic settings, names and paint in a blueprint are not applied

The drones

• Press BUILD and every Drone Bay on the terminal's network goes to work on the ghosts in range. The key turns to PAUSE: press it and every drone flies home
• Each drone flies to the storage, picks up what the next step needs, flies to the ghost, works, and comes home
• They build with the kit's own placement and then each build state in turn, using the same tool clicks a player makes
• Order of work: repairs first, then removals, then building, frames first and from the ground up
• Drones fly round walls, windows and shut doors, and through open doors
• A ghost the drones cannot build turns red and says why: a missing item, a flat battery, something in the way

Tools cost what they cost you

• The tools must be in storage. Power tools need a charged battery and use it up; welding torches need fuel and burn it
• Anything the game accepts in a tool's place works too: an Arc Welder on its battery does for a welding torch

Taking apart

• Marked structures are taken apart one build state at a time with the right tool
• Everything that comes back goes into storage, onto stacks of the same kind first, then into a free cubby
• A drone waits while the storage has no room. Anything that still does not fit is set down on the floor beside the storage
• Walls, windows and doors are taken apart like anything else, so the room will vent

Repair

• Damaged structures in range of a terminal set to BUILD are repaired on their own (teal ghosts)
• A drone brings the tool and material that structure's repair needs, and nothing is healed for free
• Broken structures cannot be repaired: take them apart and build them again

The terminal's screen

• A map of everything in range: ghosts in their colours, bays, storage, drones in flight and the planning camera
• How many ghosts are planned, being built, started and stuck
• The bays, drones and storage on its network
• NEEDS: what the drones are missing, most wanted first
• CLEAR, pressed twice, removes every ghost in range

Making them

• All three kits are made in the Autolathe
• Kit (Planning Terminal): 10 Iron, 5 Copper, 2 Gold. 50 W
• Kit (Drone Bay): 20 Iron, 10 Copper, 4 Gold, 4 Silicon. 50 W, plus 150 W for each drone that is out
• Kit (Construction Storage): 15 Iron, 2 Copper. 10 W
• Taken down with the Hand Drill

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Settings

• Planning.PlanRange (60): how far in metres from the terminal the camera may fly and ghosts may be laid
• Planning.CameraSpeed (8): the planning camera's speed in m/s
• Planning.ShowGhostsAlways (on): off shows ghosts only while planning