Doloc Town Automation Drones: Types, Stations and Setup

What each drone actually does

• Agricultural drone: plants, waters, fertilises and lays mulch across the tiles it can reach. Ten cargo slots, 500 power capacity, one power per turn.
• Harvesting drone: harvests crops and picks up drops, then deposits them into a Small or Large Wooden Box whose label matches. Ten slots, 500 power, one per turn.
• Logistics drone: moves goods from an output-flagged container to an input-flagged one, filtering by label and colour. Thirty slots, 1,000 power, half a power per turn—the only drone built for volume.
• Processing drone: pulls materials, finds a processing station, runs the recipe and returns the output. Up to five recipes registered at once, drawn from categories including metal, products, seeds, cultivation, food, brewing, cooking, baking and drinks. Ten slots, 500 power, one per turn.
• Filling drone: refuels generators, tops up feed troughs and feeds fish tanks against a threshold you set. Ten slots, 500 power, one per turn.

Build order: nothing works before this

1. 01

   Finish the New Model tutorial quest. It unlocks all five drone types in one step, which is why players see drones long before they can use them.

2. 02

   Push the Industrial branch to Commander—12 Tech Research plus 1 Tool Operation. It is the terminal node of that branch and it is what unlocks the Automated Workbench.

3. 03

   Craft the Automated Workbench: 1 Titanium Ingot, 2 Steel Ingot, 1 Chip and 5 Electric WireWireA crafted material; farm devices share a power pool rather than manual cable drawing.. Titanium is the real gate here, not the tech points.

4. 04

   Build a station. A Large Drone Station is 3 Titanium Ingot, 2 Metal Frame, 5 Electric WireWireA crafted material; farm devices share a power pool rather than manual cable drawing. and 5 Battery, a ten-minute craft; a Small Drone Station is 1 Titanium Ingot, 1 Metal Frame, 2 Electric Wire and 2 Battery. The large station's blueprint is bought from Mody for 10,000 G.

5. 05

   Buy the matching Automation Component at the Drone Store—5,000 G each, one per drone type—then assemble the drone from the component plus the drone type, a five-minute craft.

Where the two references disagree

The English structured reference lists the station recipes at an Automated Workbench but puts drone assembly itself at a separate Drone Workbench. The Chinese wiki documents the Automated Workbench and we did not find a matching page for a separate drone bench. The recipes and times agree; only the bench name does not. If you are following an English guide and cannot find a Drone Workbench, check the Automated Workbench before assuming you are missing a building.

Labels, colours and the rules that trip people up

• The colour swatch in a container's top-left corner is what drones filter on.
• A container's label controls what a harvesting drone is allowed to put in. It does not restrict logistics drones, and it does not restrict retrieval from that container at all.
• A logistics drone will pull any item out of a label-matching container, whatever that item actually is—so a mislabelled box quietly becomes a source of the wrong goods.
• The input and output flags on a container only affect logistics drones. Other drone types ignore them.
• Crops, Feed and Fruit are separate filter categories even though the game groups all three as agricultural products.
• Manure falls under no category at all, so a filling drone servicing it has to be set to Any.
• A filling drone tops its target up to maximum regardless of the threshold you set; the threshold decides when it starts, not where it stops.

Station placement and range

A Large Drone Station has to be outdoors and projects a 28 by 18 signal area. A building counts as in range if any part of it falls inside that box—the door does not have to. A Small Drone Station is indoor-only, holds one drone, and covers the entire room no matter how large the room is, which makes it the cheaper answer for a single greenhouse or barn.

Station behaviour is still being adjusted. A player guide records, checked on 19 Aug 2026, that harvesting drones on an outdoor station now only collect from buildings in range including sheds and tents, and that processing drones will now enter tents and animal sheds. Re-check your layout after a patch rather than assuming last month's routing still holds.

A layout that scales

The pattern that works is small stations inside buildings doing the local job—one harvesting drone per greenhouse or barn—and a large outdoor station running processing and logistics drones that move intermediates between them. Give logistics the volume work: thirty cargo slots and half the power draw per turn make it the only drone that shifts stock efficiently, and it is the one type labels do not constrain.

Drone specifications

Stations and components

Item	Cost or recipe	Where	Note
Automated Workbench	1 Titanium Ingot + 2 Steel Ingot + 1 Chip + 5 Electric WireWireA crafted material; farm devices share a power pool rather than manual cable drawing.	Unlocked by the Commander node	Commander costs 12 Tech Research + 1 Tool Operation
Large Drone Station	3 Titanium Ingot + 2 Metal Frame + 5 Electric WireWireA crafted material; farm devices share a power pool rather than manual cable drawing. + 5 Battery	Automated Workbench, 10 minutes	Outdoors only; 28 by 18 range; 3 drones
Small Drone Station	1 Titanium Ingot + 1 Metal Frame + 2 Electric WireWireA crafted material; farm devices share a power pool rather than manual cable drawing. + 2 Battery	Automated Workbench	Indoors only; covers a whole room; 1 drone
Large Drone Station recipe	10,000 G	Drone Store	The blueprint itself, sold by Mody
Automation Component	5,000 G each	Drone Store	One per type: agriculture, harvesting, filling, processing, logistics
Drone assembly	Automation Component + drone type	Drone workbench, 5 minutes	Named Drone Workbench in English records, Automated Workbench in the Chinese wiki