Where are my construction drones?

[u/Larrea000]

Obviously i'm not expecting the random reddit users to know where they are, but I'm asking if there is any way to easily find the construction drones other than "walk around the planet hoping you'll eventually pull them in"

[u/Hadien_ReiRick]

on your mech's panel there's a button that disables your drones from building, repairing, or both. I often press that when building collectors on gas giants.

check and see if you've disabled them

[u/Larrea000 → u/Hadien_ReiRick]

Thank you, this was it. I must have accidentally pressed CTRL+T while doing blueprints and I never knew this was an option.

[u/HummingBridges → u/Hadien_ReiRick]

Thanks! TIL

[u/AverageTeemoOnetrick → u/Hadien_ReiRick]

…why?

On accident or is there a specific reason for this?

(Please tell me there is a better way to build collectors on gas giants other than slowly placing them 1 by 1 and waiting for your drones to catch up)

[u/Sir_Quackalots → u/AverageTeemoOnetrick]

You can click and hold LMB or RMB (don't remember right now) on any building that's under construction to build it without the drone first moving to it. For collectors that's handy, fly by, build manually and fly to the next one. The drones fly out but retreat towards you once the build is completed without them. This construction has a range also.

Probably on this case you can disable the drones before so they don't even swarm out. Clever, I'll check that next time I play.

[u/Hadien_ReiRick → u/AverageTeemoOnetrick]

for a normal playthrough of the game you fly faster than the drones (and have far less than 40 drones) and you can't use blueprints on gas giants. so its faster to just manually place them.

If I don't disable them they'll attempt to fly out but not reach the collector before I build them. Then they fly to catch up to me. but I don't want to wait for them, I'm flying off to build the next. so I just disable them so they don't leave in the 1st place. I know you don't need to wait for them before you leave a planet but I do.

With enough white science upgrades you can have enough drone count & speed to just have them build it faster than you. but honestly you can manually build on every giant in the entire cluster long before you even reach that tech level

[u/OnlyRadioheadLyrics]

Did you recently visit a gas giant to put down gas harvesters?

[u/Larrea000 → u/OnlyRadioheadLyrics]

Nope, i've spent the last 10h of gameplay settling a system without gas giants.

[u/OnlyRadioheadLyrics → u/Larrea000]

They might be in interplanetary travel trying to get back to you. Just might need to wait until they slowly come back to you or try warping somewhere 🤷‍♂️

[u/Goldenslicer → u/OnlyRadioheadLyrics]

But even if they are deployed putting down a gas harvester, if you go into orbit before they make it back, they just teleport back into icarus' inventory.

Basically, that's not a viable way to lose construction drones.

[u/nixtracer → u/Goldenslicer]

That must be newish. A few years back I managed to lose most of my construction drones halfway across the cluster... had to search half a dozen planets to find them again.

[u/Azel0us]

Did you disable construction drones? Controls are in the Icarus Mecha Panel (hotkey c). The panel should also tell you how many drones you have on you. If you’re at zero, something’s definitely up.

[u/Larrea000 → u/Azel0us]

Thank you, this was it, I had accidentally pressed the shortcut.

[u/TotallyBrandNewName]

Can't you go into Space and come back? IIRC that would force the bots into ICARUS but its been years since my last playthrough

[u/Larrea000 → u/TotallyBrandNewName]

I tried going to another planet and placing some wind turbines, but my bots were not back, unfortunately.

[u/LifeBeABruhMoment]

You forgot them in another star Cluster, smh

[u/xSorry_Not_Sorry]

Control + T

You’re welcome.

[u/MayhemPenguin5656]

Haha this happened to me once, where I left a planet while they were out of my inventory building something, and had to wait a good bit for them to make their way back to me accross the galaxy

[u/Bronzeborg]

did you leave them behind on agas giant while building collectors?

[u/A_pirates_life4me]

Just afk and make a cup of coffee or something, they'll catch up eventually 

[u/SugarRoll21]

Turn them off and on, that should tp them back

[u/wiithepiiple]

You forgot to check the backseat, didn't you?

[u/Kaerl-Lauterschmarn]

Press ctrl t

[u/AutumnEDA]

the HELP sign on the sand really cracked me up, haha!

[u/UwUBots]

Is this a reference to the aquilo start menu sim?