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X4 Modding Wiki

Drop

A Drop is the abstract base class for free-space pickup items — anything floating in space the player can fly over and collect. Drops are spawned by destroying enemy ships, by mission cues, by asteroid mining, and by recyclable processing.

Inheritance: component → destructible → object → drop. The drop datatype declares no own properties (scriptproperties.xml:932) — it’s a class label used for filtering. All meaningful state is on its Collectable subtypes.

Subtype hierarchy

Section titled “Subtype hierarchy”
drop
└── collectable
    ├── collectableammo      .ammo.count, .ammo.macro
    ├── collectablewares     .money, .unbundle, .isdroppedcontainer
    ├── collectableblueprints .blueprints
    └── collectabledata      .timeline, .audiologs

All subtypes inherit class.drop and class.collectable — filter with class.collectable for “anything pickup-able by the player”.

Properties

Section titled “Properties”

There are no drop-specific properties. Use:

  • Inherited from object: .sector, .zone, .position, .owner, .macro, .knownname
  • Inherited from destructible: .hull, .hullpercentage

Drops are typically faction.ownerless and have low hull — easy to “destroy” via collection.

Finding drops in a zone

Section titled “Finding drops in a zone”

Vanilla rml_collect_crates.xml:202-208 uses class.collectable (not class.drop):

<find_object
    groupname="$PickupTargets"
    class="class.collectable"
    space="$PositionObject"
    multiple="true"/>

class.drop would technically work but is uncommon — vanilla treats collectable as the practical “is this pickup-able” class.

Common gotchas

Section titled “Common gotchas”
  • ⚠ drop declares NO datatype properties. Same pattern as Bomb, Checkpoint, Welfare module, Defence module — class label only.
  • ⚠ Vanilla uses class.collectable for filters, not class.drop. They’re hierarchical (drop > collectable) but find_object queries use collectable. Same outcome — collectable inherits drop.
  • ⚠ Drops don’t equal “loot containers”. Lockbox and Crate are separate classes. The “any loot holder” idiom is class.lockbox + class.collectablewares + class.crate — see Lockbox for the canonical multi-class filter.
Section titled “Related”