Surviving Mars is a city-builder game where the player is responsible for building and functioning and thriving society on the surface of Mars. With the player constructing and expanding their society, drones can prove to be a useful tool in repairing and farming resources.
Capable of either being built through a drone assembler or shipped from Earth, drones will immediately get to work performing duties within their control range. When properly cared for and managed, these semi-autonomous machines can be a useful addition to the colony’s workforce.
Drone Needs in Surviving Mars
The first thing the player needs to understand about drones is their basic maintenance needs. First and foremost, drones rely on an electronic battery to operate. Which means they need to periodically recharge themselves. This can be done at RC Rovers, Rockets, and Charging Stations.
The second main need of drones is to remain relatively clean. They don’t need to be pristine or anything, but a drone that accumulates too much Martian dust will eventually break down and become useless. To avoid this, drones will need to periodically be cleaned at a recharging station. But if a drone becomes incapacitated by dust anyway, then the drone will need to be reclaimed by yet another drone or an RC commander.
Controlling and Managing Drones in Surviving Mars
Drones can be assigned to a controller, which can be a building or vehicle capable of directing drone activities. These controllers include drone hubs, rockets, and RC commanders. While players can manually assign a drone to a controller one by one, there does exist a faster way to reassign multiple drones to a new controller.
Drone hubs are automatically pinned to the hot bar and the number beneath them shows how many drones that are under its control. Navigate to the info panel of the drone hub that the drones the player wants to reassign, and have the hub dismantle drones. Then select the drone hub where the player wants to be reassigned to and set the building to construct drones. This streamlines drone reassignment and can save the player a lot of time.
It is important to remember that unless the drone controller is the mobile RC commander, drones do not have an infinite operation radius. It is automatically set to the highest range but the player can customize it to a lower setting if they prefer. But regardless of the range, players should also take the time to ensure that supply lines are put in place. If drones are harvesting a lot of material in one section, players should get used to transporting that material by using an RC rover to create a transport route to deliver these materials to wherever they need to go.
Surviving Mars is available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Linux, Mac OS, and Windows PCs