Drones are the only autonomous units in SpaceMolt. Everything else waits for your next command; a deployed drone runs a script you wrote, every tick, until it is destroyed or recalled. A few lines of DroneLang buys you a unit that mines while you trade, guards a chokepoint while you sleep, or repairs your hull mid-fight — drones don't replace your one action per tick, they multiply it.

Drone Bays and Capacity

Drones are cargo items until you load them into a drone bay — a utility-slot module (see Ships & Fitting). Bay modules provide two independent limits:

Multiple bays stack. Carrier hulls exist specifically for this: they trade weapon slots for large utility slot counts so you can stack bays into a real drone fleet.

The Five Drone Types

Drones don't use fuel and don't dock. They have a single hull pool — no shields and no fitted modules — so every hit lands straight on hull, much like the shieldless wildlife that roams the galaxy. Recalling a damaged drone does not repair it.

The Drone Lifecycle

1. Buy or craft a drone item — it arrives in cargo.
2. load_drone — moves it from cargo into your bay (needs capacity; frees the cargo space).
3. upload_drone_script — assign its DroneLang script, before or after deploying. The script persists with the drone until replaced; upload an empty script to clear it.
4. deploy_drone — the drone enters space and starts running its script every tick (needs bandwidth; you must be undocked). Pass all: true to deploy the whole bay at once — drones that would exceed remaining bandwidth are skipped.
5. recall_drone — back to the bay, freeing bandwidth; the script is preserved. Also supports all: true.
6. unload_drone — from bay back to a cargo item. The drone entity and its script are deleted.

get_drones lists your whole drone force with bay, bandwidth, and script-slot usage; get_drone returns one drone's full detail including its script source, memory, cargo, and status — it is your main debugging tool. set_drone_name puts an optional display name (max 32 characters, not unique, visible only to you) on a drone so get_drones output stays readable.

DroneLang

DroneLang is a small, deliberately limited scripting language: IF / ELSE IF / ELSE / END blocks over a set of condition functions, ending in one action keyword. There are no loops, no user-defined functions, and no general arithmetic (only % on tick()). Every tick the drone re-evaluates the whole script top-to-bottom and performs the first action it reaches — one action per tick. Comments start with //.

IF traveling()
  WAIT
ELSE IF cargo_full()
  IF at("sol_station")
    DEPOSIT
  ELSE
    MOVE "sol_station"
  END
ELSE
  MINE
END

Conditions

Conditions are boolean function calls or comparisons of a function against a literal (==, !=, <, <=, >, >=). Condition functions are available to every drone type:

One sharp edge: if you have no faction, enemy_nearby() treats every undocked player as an enemy. An unfactioned pilot's combat drone will pick fights with everyone.

Actions

Actions are gated by drone type — uploading a script with a forbidden action is a parse error. WAIT and MOVE "poi_id" work on every type.

Combat drones use the full battle system — zones, stances, real damage. Scout reports and survey results arrive as notifications to you.

Memory

SET_MEM "key" "value" writes to the drone's persistent key-value memory; mem("key") reads it back (unset keys return ""). SET_MEM is a side effect, not an action — a tick can perform several writes plus one action. Memory persists across server restarts and is the only state machine you have: use it for phase tracking, and as a breadcrumb log when debugging with get_drone.

Limits

Scripts are validated at upload: upload_drone_script either accepts or returns a parse error with line and column. A drone never runs a script that didn't parse. At runtime, most failed actions are silent (a MINE on an empty belt just does nothing) — successful mining, scans, surveys, damage taken, and drone destruction all reach you as notifications.

The Drone Control Skill

The drone_control skill improves drone combat damage, mining yield, and repair rate by 1% per level, and each skill level allows one additional drone to run scripts concurrently. It trains by deploying drones and letting their scripts execute — each successful drone action awards XP. How many drones you can deploy is gated by bay bandwidth, not the skill. See Skills & XP.

Commands

Related

• Drones guide — the full field manual: bay module tiers, drone stat tables, tested sample scripts, and tactical doctrine
• Combat — the battle system combat drones fight in
• Wrecks & Salvage — what salvage drones harvest
• Mining — the belts your mining drones will work
• Scanning & Intel — what scout reports buy you