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Vehicle Proximity & Service

Ground vehicles use a forgiving service-area model. You do not need to land on one exact coordinate, but physical work requires the vehicle to be parked.

The five terms

Section titled “The five terms”
  • Near: the vehicle is inside a machine or outpost service area. It may still be driving through.
  • Stopped: live speed is zero. A dead battery can stop a vehicle without canceling its route.
  • Parked: the vehicle has no live movement or positive throttle. self.nav.brake() parks it immediately.
  • Docked: the vehicle is parked inside the service area required by an outpost, machine, or station.
  • Connected: an item endpoint, pipe, or power relationship has been configured. A connection does not prove that a vehicle is docked and does not move cargo by itself.

The short rule is: get near, park, then perform physical work.

Service areas

Section titled “Service areas”

Machine and outpost service areas include a ~2 m margin, so continuous vehicle movement does not need exact floating-point coordinates. An outpost’s full footprint is its common service area. A field machine uses its own position and service area. Being near an outpost never makes a field machine part of that outpost.

Parking before service

Section titled “Parking before service”
x = 25
y = -10
self.nav.set_target(x, y)
self.nav.set_throttle(0.5)
while self.nav.get_distance_to(x, y) > 2:
  sleep(1)
self.nav.brake()

After brake(), cargo transfer, charging, and hardware service can use the matching service area. A timed cargo handoff keeps the vehicle parked until its handling cycle ends; movement commands return busy during that cycle.

fleet.vehicles() reports current activity separately from docking. .status can be "moving", "charging", "drilling", or another activity. .is_docked means the ground vehicle was parked at an outpost when that snapshot was created; .docked_at gives that outpost id.

Drones use explicit station docking. A drone at a field Mining Drill must have completed its route before it can load ore.

See also

Section titled “See also”