Category:Drones

Drones are autonomous purpose-built ships that perform actions from the domains of defense, attack, surveillance, or transportation. NPC ships and bases can spawn combat drones, and players can build their own as well.

For example, a satellite is a surveillance drone, a tram or shuttle is a transportation drone, and a PBW is a combat drone.

Player-built drones

Typically, drones are small-grid size; large-grid drones are possible but rare.

Currently all drones hover or fly, either in space or in planetary atmospheres. Wheeled drones are extremely rare and require a lot of extra effort to be functional.

The main difference between drones and ships is that drones have no cockpit, instead they use other means of control:

• For autonomous behaviour, make use of Automaton blocks, Autopilot, Event Controllers, and Custom Turret Controller AI
• Manually Remote Controled drones (with the piloting player remaining at a safe distance) are also possible.
• Many drones make use of Cameras.

The same building rules apply to drones as for other ships: Make sure the drone can fly in all six directions in the target environment, by giving it the right type of thrusters, enough power (batteries), and enough gyroscopes.

Beyond that, you can build your drone out of any blocks that you would use in a dedicated space ship, including Block Weapons and Block Tools. Drones are usually built to be compact, lightweight, and purpose-built to extend their battery life to the maximum. If you desire mass-production, follow additional advice on 3D printing.

Manually remote controlling a drone

Players can "see through the eyes" of a drone, zoom in and out, and steer the drone (unless it is on autopilot). You can even remote-control Block Weapons and Block Tools if the drone has any.

Requirements are:

• Drone has Camera and RC.
• Drone is reliably (!) reachable through Antenna (<50km) or Laser Antenna.
• Player has (shared) ownership of the drone.

For details how to view through a camera, see the Camera article.

Caveats:

• The Antenna and GPS distance markers shown on the HUD while piloting the drone are relative to the controlling player, not relative to the drone.
• The drone camera supports only first-person view, you cannot switch to third-person view. Better build several cameras and position them well.

NPC drones

Space Engineers has no personal NPCs, instead, NPC ships and bases spawn computer-controlled defense drones when attacked.

Whether a strange drone is friendly, neutral, or hostile to a player depends on NPC faction standing.