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Drone Ports

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Dario Maselli edited this page Jul 1, 2026 · 1 revision

Drone Ports

Drone Ports move items point-to-point and between separate networks using drones. They are standalone and RF-powered — they work with no network at all — and they are also the sanctioned way to bridge two controller networks.

How it works

  1. Craft and place two ports. Sneak-right-click a port to toggle it between export and import (it tells you the mode in chat).
  2. Craft Drones and place them in the port's drone slots (right-click to open the GUI). Each installed drone is a lane — the more drones, the more the port carries (throughput = drones × per-drone capacity per window).
  3. Feed items into an export port's cargo buffer (hopper, duct, or by hand). It dispatches drones to an import port; the drone flies there and drops the cargo into the import port's buffer, which you then pull out with a duct/hopper.

Routing — name or Auto

  • Auto (default): an unnamed export port ships to the nearest import port in range.
  • Named: rename the Drone Port item in an anvil before placing it (for example "Base A"). A named export port ships only to import ports with the same name — so naming pairs specific ports.

Hyperspeed upgrade

Put a Hyperspeed Card in an upgrade slot and that port's transfers become near-instant — and, crucially, no drone entity is spawned or rendered. This is the performance path: a base full of hyperspeed ports moves goods with zero drone-render cost. Without the card, drones are visible entities flying at a watchable speed, capped per port by the number of installed drones.

Bridging networks

Because a port's cargo buffer is a standard inventory, a duct on network A pushes items into an export port and a duct on network B pulls them from the matching import port. This is how you run multiple separate controllers and still move goods between them.

Configuration

Key Default Meaning
enableDrones true Master toggle for drones (shared with the legacy drone hub).
maxDronesPerPort 8 Hard cap on drones (lanes) a port counts.
dronePortRange 256 Max distance an export port ships to an import port.
dronePerDroneCapacity 16 Items each drone carries per dispatch.
dronePortEnergyPerStack 256 NE charged per dispatch.

Roadmap (Stage 11 follow-ups)

  • In-GUI name and destination editing, and an explicit destination picker (currently: anvil-name + Auto/nearest).
  • Fluid / liquid / gas / energy upgrade cards so ports ship those media too.
  • Core SPEED / RANGE / CAPACITY / EFFICIENCY upgrade tuning.
  • The terminal's Drone Ports tab (lands with the tabbed terminal) for central naming and monitoring.

See also

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