9.8.1 Harvest Drones

Harvest drones, and the module that controls them, are usable on any ship. Only one such module may be installed at any time on your ship, and the module allows you to control up to six drones at one time. The more drones you have in your cargo bay, the faster you will harvest gas clouds.

The exception to this limitation is the superhauler-class ship, which comes with a built-in drone control module, allowing you to install up to two additional modules and control up to eighteen drones at once!

The module is rated as 'small', which means it consumes five points of your ship's installation capacity, which for some classes is not that much but for ships in the interceptor class this may leave not a lot of capacity for other modules or weapons.


Using the harvest drones is simple, SHIP DEPLOY SCOOPS first, if you do not do this you will get a message reminding you that you need to deploy your scoops first. Come to a complete stop near or inside your gas cloud of choice, the drones do not have a long range - this is less to do with signal strength and more to do with protection - and need to be within one SU of the cloud to operate. When fully halted, SHIP DEPLOY DRONES and they will immediately go to work.

The drones work automatically, with no need for further input on your part. They will gather up the entire cloud, regardless of size. The only limitation is the capacity of your scoop. When the cloud is depleted, the drones will return to your cargo bay and you can move on.


Note: Harvest drones are of great use to VI players, and in fact were designed primarily to make mining and harvesting available to all. Anyone can use the harvest drone, as the class of ship most suited for the drones has a turning speed that can make conventional gas scooping frustrating at first, but the primary end use is for VI players.