Mars First Logistics: How To Build Your Own Flying Scout

For this to work, you will have to have progressed with some of the main missions. Namely the one that will unlock the Ore Hauler, for the unlocking of rocket engines. After that, you could try to make your own version in any way, but unlocking the spinner will give you joints and weights that I personally feel to help bring stability and control to your flying drone craft.

And in order to control your flight, be ready to dock down 600 credits for the three additional rockets to achieve that. Which means, before you can afford it, you may need to mess around a bit with different kinds of setups.

In the end, all this is simply an idea to share if you haven’t gotten any inspiration to mess around with flight on mars. (Personally I haven’t really found any indications of being able to generate lift by means of wings)

Without further ado, here is the humble drone. Mind that types of blocks used and coloring are all up to you, same as the way this one has been set up with the controls.

For the purpose of balance the CPU is surrounded by a block grid to make it 3×3 blocks with a rocket thruster that’s on the default [Spacebar] setting. Using 90 degree connectors was done purely for the aesthetics while the legs are solely there in order to have it capable of standing up. Front and back thrusters have the additional blocks with 10kg weights at the end of hinges in order to give it more stability when you take off.

The four thrusters on the side that initially were meant in the earliest design for lateral movement have been changed to the standard aswd directional controls you use for driving.

In all, the most expensive part of it (again) is the rockets that will require you to be in the money to afford it. So be mindful if you create your scout right before you try to do missions that would see you flat broke when you additional things. (YES! It happened to me, when I built this thing!)

I’m not kidding, it may turn into you doing a lot of crashing with this thing to get the controls down. And even when you do and get a bit confused despite the color coding when you try to make a quick course correction, odds are you’ll face plant into the ground plenty. Thankfully stuff won’t break on impact (at least your vehicle doesn’t).

In order to use this thing, you launch by pressing spacebar (or whatever you put on the main flight thruster). With aswd controls, my experience is that I can easily control this thing with one hand, and use the mouse to move the view.

The key here is to use spacebar and the bottom thruster to keep yourself in flight, while using the directional four thrusters to turn your drone in the direction you want it to go. Not doing so and you’ll soon watch that thing spin out of control. So THRUST is key in order to maintain a stable flightpath.

Faceplants needn’t be an instant reset, and the reason that the left and right thrusters don’t have an additional block or weights. If you end up rocketing into the ground, thrust in one ditection (without main thrust) and then the other direction will generally allow you to spin it over once again, after which you can use main thrust to get back into the air.

Happy flying (or modding this sucker)!