If your scientists picked up strange readings from the moon of one of your new colonies, you have probably triggered Ancient Drones. It is a small colony event about a bunch of old drones that mistake your species for their long-dead masters. Most of it will play out by itself, but there are a few things you should know before it happens.

Requirements

• A colony that is 2 or 3 years old (the chance is very small, like most colony events)
• The colony needs an uninhabitable moon
• Not available with the Wilderness origin
• Only happens once per game

It starts with the Left Behind special project on that moon.

The drones wake up (briefly)

When the project is done, you will find out that the readings are “a gaggle of wayward drones, of course”. They get quite excited about you for a moment, then go back to sleep, and you cannot wake them or take them apart. The only option is to keep an eye on them.

Blocker or space elevator

About a year later the drones become active again. What they do depends entirely on the state of your colony, and you do not get to make a choice here:

• The colony still has at least one Blocker: the drones land and terraform a small area, which removes a Blocker for free.
• The colony has no Blockers left: the drones build a “space elevator” next to your main settlement. You get between 90 and 10,000 Engineering Research (it scales with the game’s progress), but the colony also gets the Inconvenient Space Elevator modifier, -20% Minerals from Jobs for 10 years.

As such, if you would rather have the free Blocker removal and no minerals penalty, do not rush to clear every Blocker on that planet while the drones are asleep. On a mining colony that 20% hurts for a whole decade.

The pirates

The chain can continue later on with a pirate threat, where you get to decide how to deal with it. Depending on which of the three options you pick, a pirate fleet shows up about two years later:

• First option: 3 corvettes
• Second option: 6 corvettes (they rallied their allies)
• Third option, the preemptive strike: 2 corvettes, since your strike damaged them

None of these are a real threat by the time they arrive, but make sure you have at least a few ships or a decent starbase in that system so the colony does not get raided.

Two other colony events with lasting consequences are The Doorway and the Subterranean Civilization.