Hello again survivors,

We are incredibly excited about the upcoming Robots and Guardians DLC, as well as the new free update! As you know, the free update adds an exciting new feature to the game: automated resource delivery. The new DLC will offer up new servant robots, to help your survivors carry out mundane day-to-day tasks.

Today we're bringing you a new developer journal featuring our friends from Haemimont Games to talk about these new additions.

Let's dive right in:

Hello! We are absolutely thrilled to have you here with us. Could you please introduce yourself to everyone reading?
Kalina Kirilova and Bisser Dyankov, producers for Stranded: Alien Dawn

Exciting times for Stranded: Alien Dawn with a new DLC and a free update coming out. What's the general vibe over at Haemimont right now?
This year has been amazing! Besides coming out of Early Access and into full release for Stranded, we also released console versions of the game and now we are about to release a great DLC for Stranded with a lot of content for the players! This has been one of the most enjoyable DLCs ever to work on at Haemimont Games – and it shows.

Resource automation via Delivery Drones is coming in the free update, and is a highly valuable addition to Stranded: Alien Dawn - could you briefly talk about the new Delivery Drones and how they work?
The delivery drones take away the carrying of resources from the survivors. Our guys spend a lot of time and effort into moving those crates around. The Delivery Drones take those tasks, and once you have them, they will take care of the carrying . They'll need to be maintained, of course. If they break down they won't be able to take care of transportation.

What made you decide to add Delivery Drones?
Resource management and resource allocation is an important part of Stranded: Alien Dawn. With the coming of robots into the game world, we decided to ask ourselves what will be the one robot that survivors will want to have. The delivery drone was the most probable answer. On a meta-game level, ultimately what the players manage is the worktime of the survivors. Taking one of the core tasks away really increases the output of your survivors. So this decision made a lot of sense to us from both in-game and meta-game perspectives.

What do you need in order to keep running at peak performance?
The delivery drones will come at early to mid-stage of gameplay since they require electricity and electronic components to be built so prepare to do some scavenging if you want one of those in your base! Delivery drones will not consume a lot of electricity, you need just one electricity producer to fuel it and watch it take care of all those resource piles that are lying around.

For players looking to automate their resource delivery, how much can they carry?
The drones can carry the same amount as most of the characters, but even one drone is sufficient to make a huge difference in a small to medium sized base since they move faster than the characters. They are top performers mainly because they will tackle the mundane delivery tasks such as moving resources from one storage to another, place the required resources for construction sites and will even carry manure to the farm fields without complaining (they will not do the fertilizing themselves though.)

They zip around pretty quickly and their range seems to be quite large. How far can they travel to pick things up? Can you tell from looking to see what their range is?
There is no known limit. They can reach piles in a 200 meter radius without the need to explicitly draft them, but drafting them can take the drones to almost any point on the map.
Is there any limit to what these Delivery Drones can carry and where they can take them?
They can carry every resource to any storage available in their range. 

What's the one advice you'd give players for when they build Delivery Drones?
Now that you have the best possible helper for the deliveries, you can go to the Activities tab and restrict all characters from the Deliver activity or set it to lowest priority. 

Speaking of automation, for people who pick up the DLC, there are new Servant Robots! Can you talk a bit about them?
Once you manage to get your hands on an AI core, you can research even more advanced technologies that will allow you to create your own bots for almost all non-complex tasks. The Harvest bots will plant, fertilize, harvest crops and also mine, scavenge and chop.  The Service bots will be able to cook, handle devices, repair, and dismantle stuff. Both of these will also do some delivering of resources if such tasks are available but maybe it’s best to use them for the more complex activities such as baking Buttermelon pies and planting Clothblossom fields. Last but not least, you can also research Defence bots that will protect your base and can be drafted and sent into battle. Just don’t forget to equip them with weapons. There even might be an improved bot left unmentioned that we’ll leave for the players to find.

What made you decide to add servant bots to the DLC?
Pure conviction in the human superiority ????

Are there things these robots can't cook or harvest?
The robots will cook and harvest anything the characters can - those amazing looking chef recipes are now just a matter of having the resources and the service bot will handle everything else, even store them in the fridge.

What's the best way to utilise the new servant robots?
The correct question should be “Is there a bad way to utilise the bots?” – we cannot think of one. The more - the merrier. Even if you think you ran out of tasks for them – you can always plant more crops, chop more sticks, make more pickled vegetables, and bake more bricks.  All those things can be handled by the bots and your characters can focus on the more complex and time consuming crafting, building and researching tasks.

There are some cool new weapons and items coming in the DLC as well, could you talk a little about them?
The weapon that the Robots and Guardians players will experience first-hand is the carbon crossbow, since some robotic enemies can come equipped with them. The players with the free content update will have to craft it but it will be available for them as well. This is an improved version of the normal crossbow but still not as powerful as the laser pistol. The new enemies will come with cool new weapons, one of them Is the laser sword that is going to be the new favourite melee weapon since it deals more damage than the laser pike. The robots will not hesitate to use all the advanced technologies in their search, so we also added new EMP grenades to help you immobilize them by stunning them for a bit.

Any final advice or tips to players about to jump into the new Guardians scenario, or checking out the items from the free update?
Scavenge the fallen robots; they contain valuable loot. And good luck out there!

On 6 November at 15:30pm GMT, the community team will be joined by developers from Haemimont Games for a run-through of the new scenario, and the rest of the new update on Twitch and YouTube. We'll see you there!