Doloc Town’s drone logistics system can automate farming, harvesting, item transportation, and processing, but several of its mechanics are not immediately obvious. This guide explains how each drone works, how storage container filters affect logistics, and how to build a simple automated production setup.
Doloc Town Drone Logistics Guide – How to Use Drones, Storage & Automation
Drones become available after reaching the end of the Industrial technology tree. You will also need materials from the Old City to build them.
There may also be an opportunity to obtain a Titanium Bar earlier from a crate near the mountain outpost, depending on your progression.
Once drones are unlocked, you can use different drone types to automate everything from planting and harvesting to moving materials between buildings.
How Storage Containers Work
Storage containers are one of the most important parts of the drone logistics system.
Each container has a color filter in the top-left corner. Drones can be configured to interact with containers of a particular color.
The container’s logistics menu is opened from the top-right corner. It contains Input and Output settings for Logistics Drones.
However, there is an important distinction between the container’s item-type label and its color.
Container Labels
The item-type label determines what items the container can receive from drones.
For example, if a container is labeled Agricultural Products, a Harvester Drone will not normally deposit Platforms into it, even if the drone is configured to pick up dropped items.
The label does not, however, necessarily restrict what a Logistics Drone can retrieve.
For example, a container labeled Material could contain fish because the player placed the fish there. A Logistics Drone retrieving from Material containers can still move that fish if another eligible destination exists.
In short:
- Container color determines which configured drones can interact with it.
- Container label determines what type of items drones can naturally deposit.
- Logistics Drone retrieval is less restrictive and can retrieve items from a matching-label container even if the item itself does not match that label.
- Input/output settings apply to Logistics Drones.
- Other drone types can still deposit or retrieve as long as the container color matches their configuration.
You can check an item’s category by hovering over it and looking at the information displayed in the top-right of the item window.
Doloc Town Drone Types
There are several drone types, each designed for a different part of your automated production chain.
Agricultural Drone
Agricultural Drones automate planting.
They can:
- Plant crops using seeds stored in containers.
- Use seeds from containers of the designated color.
- Help automate greenhouse farming.
For example, you can keep grape seeds in a green container and configure an Agricultural Drone to use that container for planting.
The use of Agricultural Drones with outdoor large drone stations may vary and is not fully confirmed.
Harvester Drone
Harvester Drones are useful for collecting crops and automatically picking up items.
They can:
- Harvest mature crops.
- Pick up dropped items.
- Deposit collected items into containers of the designated color.
One particularly useful behavior occurs when a Harvester Drone is assigned to an outdoor large drone station.
It can currently collect items from buildings across the farm regardless of distance, with some exceptions. Animal sheds and tents do not appear to behave the same way.
Harvester Drones can collect items from animal sheds when assigned to an indoor drone station.
This makes indoor Harvester Drones especially useful for automating animal-product collection.
Filling Drone
Filling Drones are designed to handle fuel and feed-related tasks.
Their interface includes filters for selecting the type of fuel or feed they should use.
Their behavior and capabilities may require further testing depending on the version of the game.
Logistics Drone
Logistics Drones are responsible for moving items between storage containers.
They can:
- Retrieve items from containers.
- Transport them to other eligible containers.
- Use container colors to determine their allowed sources and destinations.
- Display an error when an item can be transported but there is no eligible destination.
An important quirk is that an unlabeled container enabled for logistics can act as an eligible input/output destination.
The item label primarily controls what can be deposited into a container. It does not necessarily prevent a Logistics Drone from retrieving an item already stored there.
Outdoor large drone stations also allow Logistics Drones to enter buildings, although their behavior does not appear to be affected by building distance in the same way as Harvester Drones.
Processing Drone
Processing Drones automate production buildings.
They can:
- Take items from containers of the designated color.
- Deliver those items to processing stations.
- Process selected recipes automatically.
- Select up to five recipes at a time.
- Use recipes from different processing categories.
This makes them particularly useful for creating automated production chains.
For example, a Processing Drone could move grapes into brewing casks, move finished wine into aging racks, and move fish roe into pickling jars.
Outdoor large drone stations can allow Processing Drones to enter buildings. They can also enter animal sheds, although some behavior may depend on the building type and size.
Tents appear to be an exception.
Example Automated Drone Setup
A simple way to organize your farm is to separate different production stages using container colors.
Large Shipping Container
Use a large shipping container area for production equipment such as:
- Smelters
- Assembly Shapers
- Workbenches
- Other processing machines
A Harvester Drone can place collected materials into a black container, keeping raw items separated from other products.
Greenhouse
Set up an Agricultural Drone to plant grapes using seeds from a green container.
The workflow becomes:
Green container → Agricultural Drone → Grapevines → Harvester Drone → Green container
This keeps both seeds and harvested grapes within the same logistics color.
Animal Shed
Use a Harvester Drone to collect animal products such as fish roe.
Store these items in a red container.
The workflow becomes:
Animal products → Harvester Drone → Red container
Fish roe can then be transported to your processing area.
Outdoor Drone Station
An outdoor large drone station can act as the central automation hub.
A Processing Drone can be configured to take materials from the green, pink, and red containers and feed them into the appropriate processing stations.
For example:
Greenhouse
Grapes → Brewing Casks
Cellar
Wine → Aging Racks
Animal Shed
Fish Roe → Pickling Jars
This creates a connected production chain without requiring you to manually transport every intermediate product.
Cellar
A Harvester Drone can collect finished products such as:
- Wine
- Aged Wine
- Caviar
and place them into a pink container.
The overall chain can therefore look like:
Grapes → Wine → Aged Wine
while another production chain runs:
Fish Roe → Caviar
Best Way to Organize Drone Logistics
For a reliable setup, give each production stage its own container color.
A simple example is:
| Color | Main Purpose |
|---|---|
| Green | Crops and agricultural products |
| Red | Animal products/materials |
| Pink | Finished drinks and processed goods |
| Black | Raw materials and general production items |
The exact colors are up to you. The important thing is to keep your sources and destinations consistent.
For larger farms, placing Harvester Drones in individual buildings and using Processing/Logistics Drones at an outdoor large station can make the system easier to control.
Important Drone Logistics Quirks
The drone system has several behaviors that are worth remembering:
- Outdoor Harvester Drones can currently collect items from extremely far away.
- Animal sheds may require an indoor Harvester Drone for reliable collection.
- Container labels affect what drones can deposit, but do not necessarily restrict retrieval.
- Logistics Drones need an eligible destination for transported items.
- Unlabeled logistics-enabled containers can serve as flexible destinations.
- Processing Drones can handle up to five recipes simultaneously.
- Processing recipes do not need to belong to the same category.
- Seeds are categorized as Agricultural Products, which matters when moving them through logistics.
- Some drone behaviors may be bugs or unfinished mechanics and could change in future updates.
The key to making Doloc Town’s drone system manageable is to separate your production chains rather than letting every drone access every container.
Start with individual Harvester Drones for your farms and animal buildings. Give each production chain its own container color, then use Processing and Logistics Drones to move materials between those areas.
Once everything is separated properly, you can build automated chains such as crop → processing → aging → finished product without manually carrying materials between buildings.