How to use Drones | Satisfactory Logistics Guide

This video highlights why I decided not to use them until after completing the main game. I evaluated the logistic requirements to make a drone system work, it was not worth time\effort during my first playthrough of the game. This is not criticism of the use of drones, just that using drone is more complex than other options that are simpler to implement. Using belts over long distances might not seen like a good idea, but it is simple to setup and works flawlessly until it can be replaced later in the game or post game. But overall, it is about how each person wants to play. There is no wrong way. 🙂

I cba with trains, think I'll skip entirely and go full drones, lol.

Drones are such a dissapointment for me. It is much easier to put one train station on the output, feed all the items to it and forget about it and just put stations that get items from it
With drones I would need to also build a system for fluid distribution. Nuh. Unlocked it and forgot about them

WTF stop yapping and show the process from start to finish? Came here looking for a step by step and found this utter dross

Thanks for the guide, this will be a huge help when I unlock drones.

I like using drones to fetch exotic materials for factories. They are also really fun to use to make batteries.

Wow! I had no idea Satisfactory had drones! Amazing!
Great explanatory video on these. This is a ways out for me in my current game, I just unlocked Oil and I'm getting that setup.
I plan on using Drones for Nuke waste and other hazardous materials, and of course for battery distribution for the whole Drone setup.

nu-cle-ar, not nuk-u-lar

Like your channel, but you did a lot of simply reading things I can find in the wiki, thoroughly discussed what I might used them for, but I still don't understand how to actually use them.

There a guy who put 384 drones under the maps and Leads to one drone port

Very wordy video on something that should have taken 30 sec

The big problem with the drones is the supply of batteries. In addition to ports A and B, you would also need a port C (at the battery factory), which supplies one of the other ports with batteries. And if they aren't used up fast enough, Drone C will block the entire logistics. So it's not really well thought out, because complete automation of the drone ports is not possible. You always have to intervene with batteries yourself. Or do I have a misconception here?

Is it really impossible to ride a drone? Man I really want to ride one, is there some techniques so I don't fly off?

9 min video and 6 advertisements. WTF

Would love to see this revisited now that drones and droneports have been given a quality pass and have been updated!

Now I just wanna try using drones to transport all the raw nodes to one location and build one mega factory with only 2 exceptions 1 fuel power plant 2 battery factories transported by train to drone ports.

How to use drones - doesn't explain how to supply the batteries reliably to the drones (given that we can't do circuits). Do we really need a as many ports at the battery making facility as we want to power elsewhere? So drone energy cost is at min 2 depots if you only want one battery factory?

Edit: unless you have one central storage where you target that one from the battery factory to supply it with batteries and all other drone ports target it also (picking up batteries there)... That would be nice. I guess you could hybrid these and supply multiple drone ports with one battery delivery port as long as they're close enough for conveyer belts once there... hm. Circuits really would be nice.

is it possible for me to have a single drone loop between 3 ports, like, 1 to 2 to 3 or something of the sort

i really cannot figure this out

What if the drone port input is empty? Or has just a few items? Will the drone wait until it's full before heading to the destination? Or will it wait until it hasn't received any items in a while?

"HOWEVER" FOREVER !

out of curiosity; if i set my drones up to recieve items from port 1 but port 1 only produces X amount of items, then send it to port 2 to finish filling up it's cargo, then ship to port 3 with a programmable splitter, would that allow for drone circuits or is there something other than load size preventing them from running the circuit?

Trying to setup a single nuclear reactor, drones are transporting uranium, fluid canisters, packaged nitric acid, and electromagnetic control rods

since its a 3x3 space and DRONE HUB and DRONE itself and on average 3 Storage containers with 5-20 belts attach for per port. Based on if you want to get fancy or Like Storage directly below and Threw the Floor lifts could make more Tighter build. But using these what (9+2+3)x2 2 represent the 2 ports. 28Total item could for a rough build. Now think of tracks from location to location yes they carry a ton of supplies. personally i like packages my Products and Ship them somewhere else for processing, yes the builds come with greater forethought but it is highly more satisfying....

A bit late to the party, but what if the inventory of the destination is full... and I don't want to sink the items. Will the drone stay at the destination until it unloads? Will it fly back still full? Or does it "know" the demand of the destination before leaving home and stay at home? I wanted to know if I should build dedicated destination (or home) pads for those items. Thanks in advance!

"We'll be covering information about the drone, as well as it's uses..."

Never gets into why you'd use a drone instead of a train.

Got drone port 8 at my collection point of materials it won't accept inputs or outputs when I add a drone to the port is says it is unloading even though it has not left yet
cant figure out what the problem is when I make a port at the factory it works what is going on

why is my drone stuck on unloading? it leaves the first port and lands at its destination and then wont take off again it has batteries and everything

Ty for the info. Wanted to know if both ports needed batteries and anything else I may of missed. You answered that and more

I just created a 65k Mw nuclear set up that’s all fed by drone ports across the world I have over 100 drones running off a battery supply of 250 per minute they are literally bringing in everything from uranium ore all the way to iron plates. If you make a strong enough battery system drones are extremely useful they do however create a backup system as they do bottleneck the flow naturally but if the drone is docked long enough it allows the supply to refillBefore heading back for another trip try it out you’ll be surprised

First thing I did with drones was make a port that shipped out batteries to other bases. So far I've found that drones are wonderful at moving uranium and surprisingly at moving liquids. Normally the problem with shipping liquids is getting the empty cans back after shipping but with drones this is a non-issue as they can ship the same empty cans one way, and the full ones back. The throughput can be pretty fast as well when running more packagers as 9 stacks of packaged liquid is quite a bit for most processes.

I end up using drones probably a lot more than I should just because they're easy and quick to set up. Then I can go to the far corner of the map and build a supercomputer factory and all I have to do is build a drone port, put some batteries in it and a drone and walk away. No need to build a train station and connect it and all that fun stuff.

This video is so helpful thank you lol

I've got 2 drone ports ATM. 1 takes lizard doggo waste the other pressure conversion cubes to my plutonium processor all the way across the map

The drone ports on the sloping roof look really good, as do those on the sides of buildings (I will definitely nick the latter idea). Awesome video 👍

I really hope that they will add "throughput counter" to freight stations too.

A great role I envision for drones is for distributing batteries to other drone systems that might need refueling.

I never realized that the drones have both outgoing AND incoming inventories. This should make item transportation much easier than I envisioned. 👍

Good idea to make a Drone bay for Battery distribution.

Maybe something useful like : How to play Satisfactory without getting divorce

I preshot the thump up button since I didnt play the update yet and seeing this on video gave me anxiety xD
So a tutorial would be awesome to my lil' brain xD