Drone Centre

The Drone Centre is an IV tier multiblock for automatic maintenance repairs, power control, and monitoring of nearby machines. Drones are inserted through an input bus and service any machines within range that have a Drone Downlink Module installed (replaces the maintenance hatch). The Drone Centre does not consume any power and the maintenance repairs are free, but there is a slight chance every second that a drone crashes and voids. There are four tiers of drones in total with increasingly larger ranges and longer lifespans. The T4 drone also unlocks the ability to work across dimensions. The drones do not actually fly around or leave the Drone Centre, unfortunately.

The Drone Centre does not have any tiered components or a maintenance hatch, energy hatch, or muffler hatch. The only thing it needs is an input bus for the drones. The hempcrete can be any color and has no effect on the operation of the machine. Use the Multiblock Structure Hologram Projector to visualize/build the structure.

Unique to the Drone Centre is the Drone Downlink Module which replaces the maintenance hatch on OTHER machines to connect them to the network for automatic maintenance repairs, power control, and monitoring. The Drone Downlink Module searches for an active Drone Centre every 10 seconds until it finds one so try not to have too many without an active connection to avoid lag spikes. Right-click the Drone Downlink Module to rename the host machine for easier identification.

Structure

• Controller: Front bottom center
• 61 Steel Pipe Casing
• 47 Steel Frame Box
• 29 Hempcrete (any color)
• 28 Iron Frame Box
• 20-26 Solid Steel Machine Casing
• 1+ Input Bus: Any machine casing

Wallsharing

Machines may wallshare the same Drone Downlink Module without any issues. The controllers appear separately under power control and monitoring.

Drones are inserted through an input bus on the structure. On machine start, the controller consumes the highest tier drone available to service all machines within range that have a Drone Downlink Module installed. The active drone runs until it "crashes" based on a random chance every second. When that happens, the active drone is voided and the next highest tier drone available assumes responsibility. View the tier of the current drone in the WAILA of the controller and retrieve it by breaking the controller, if necessary.

There are four tiers of drones available. They are all functionally the same but higher tiers have larger ranges and longer average lifespans, as seen in the following table. The T3 and T4 drones are even unbreakable, although they are unlocked much later than the auto-taping maintenance hatch. To enable cross-dimension, the downlink module must have the same key with the Drone Centre.

The range is determined by the Euclidean Distance between a Drone Downlink Module and the Drone Centre controller. Use the following equation to calculate the distance from their coordinates.

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Distance}}={\sqrt {(x_{1}-x_{2})^{2}+(y_{1}-y_{2})^{2}+(z_{1}-z_{2})^{2}}}}}$

• 
  Tier 1 Drone
• 
  Tier 2 Drone
• 
  Tier 3 Drone
• 
  Tier 4 Drone

All machines with a Drone Downlink Module installed appear on the machine list within the GUI of the controller. The machines can be renamed, highlighted in the world, and enabled/disabled remotely. There are also buttons in the GUI of the controller to toggle ALL machines in the same dimension regardless of distance. The power control is extremely useful when trying to re-enable everything after powerfailing, or preparing to upgrade/move a Lapotronic Supercapacitor.