Love the game; got some questions

[heliostellar]

I picked this game up on the Black Friday sale, and I'm glad I did. It's lots of fun.

I have a few strategic questions though:
- What is the point of shuttles? I expected basically flying rovers here, but that's not what they do. They don't deliver building materials to far off construction sites, and they can't be ordered around individually. Also, I am not able to direct any trade routes. How do the shuttles know what to move?
- Maintenance... ugh. I constantly have far off buildings randomly dying. I can't preemptively do anything about it though. I've resorted to having a designated RC Transport with a mixed resource load out drive around. What am I doing wrong here?
- RC Explorers. Can these little buggers do anything besides research anomalies and passively generate research? Also, why can't I queue commands?

 

[mizushimo]

1.) Shuttles are like large flying drones. They deliver material and people automatically anywhere on the map when there's a need. A few things to consider: They need resource depots to pick up and drop off material, just like drones. They also need fuel to operate. Also, the larger your base is, the more shuttles you'll need to keep up with demand. I recommend running RC transports if you need a bunch of material in one place in a very short time period ( like concrete for dome building) so your shuttles can concentrate on managing smaller quantity resources like the electronics and polymers.

2.) Shuttles are the best at shuffling around resources for maintenance. Without shuttles, you can still effectively set up supply chains using resource depots and drone hubs, but this is resource intensive. Make sure that every drone hub has access to a universal depot that can be effectively restocked by shuttles.

3.) All the explores do is..explore. scanning anomalies is a big part of the game. Later on there's tech you can research to unlock their automatic mode.

 

[SillySMS]

Likely solution to two of your ills is just to ensure you have universal resource depots every so often (such as in between each pair of drone hubs). Drones will shuffle resources between universal depots if one is under the target (default is 3), and shuttles do the same over longer distances.

To put it another way, each depot has a target amount of resources it wants. Default is 3 for universal, 0 for specific depots. If the depot is below this, it puts out a request to be refilled. Drones will carry from other depots, assuming that depot isn't even lower on resources.

Naturally, for drones, both source and destination depots need to be within drone control range. Shuttles can transfer between much more distant depots; if that's not happening, either it's a dust storm, or your shuttles are simply too busy.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

Shuttles can also move people. (There is a setting to transfer people, cargo, or both.)

People sometimes need shuttles if the dome they wish to move to is too far away to walk.

Resource depots can also be set to disallow shuttles if there are things you want them to leave alone.