could you replace the need for iron gears with steel gears so cargo ships, lifting bridges, and oil tankers so they can be made all in the steel-tier section of the factory in stead of having to belt just iron gears all the way to the steel section of the factory?
also, ports need bouys, but bouys are later on the tech tree, so the recipe isnt useful until you unlock bouys, not a gamebreaking issue but it is a little wonky

Ok, I will take a look at this.

I think that having iron gears was intended to match the original cargo ship recipe, but after some thinking and playtesting and based on how real life ships work, I think locking automated ship transport behind the steel tech makes sense while having the free ship being iron only makes sense. I think I will change it to steel gears in the next update. In that case, ports should also use steel beams.

I think using buoys in the port is a bit wonky. Train stations in IR3 require the train signal, so I made ports require buoys to match that symmetry. I might move ports to be in the same research as buoys in that case in the next update.

Thanks for the report.