Understanding drone behavior

[tpg0007]

We all know that drone programming needs a lot of work but if anyone could explain the current rules in place that'll at least help us workaround plainly stupid behaviors, after taking into account controller/power/range etc., such as:

• The amount of drones that will deliver material to construction site seems limited. Like when you are building a new dome or spire only a handful will deliver concrete while plenty of others sit idly within range.
• When manually assigning drone to a construction site that needs material, it does not always head for the nearest material, again when multiple materials are available within its controller's range.
• Not 100% sure about this, but it seems that only one drone can repair a broken cable/pipe at a time. If it goes off to recharge another idle one won't take over unless manually assigned. Also not sure how to prioritize some to maintenance tasks or repairs, outside of manual assignment.

My only lesson learned so far is there's probably no need to get a bunch of drones in the beginning since many of them will be idle for unknown reason.

 

[Chaon]

Yeah I have found I sometimes need to move my drone controlling vehicles around a bit to get their drones to build or maintain things.

 

[Thalassicus]

Drones work more intelligently and intuitively in Factorio, though to be fair, that game's continued development for half a decade.