Hi I have what may be an odd request.

It seems to me bizarre to have a mundane cargo truck with a bunch of high tech alien items. It seems more at home in a pure vanilla playthrough, or as a part of a tank convoy.

I would like to ask it be made standalone, or minimum with the tank platoon mod where it at least has those tanks to protect it.

Thanks for your feedback. Before making a decision, let me tell you my story about introducing cargo truck first.

My prime motivation of using cargo truck is to provide a new option on carrying alien ores, artifacts (from Alien Loot mod) back to base, without having to lay rails and trains all the time. I don't think elsewhere would need such a vehicle.

Cargo truck was firstly introduced in Tank Platoon mod. I had that because I felt it fits in the mod theme.
However, a user has complained about increasing the file size a lot (because of sprite sheet for cargo truck, which is unavoidable). So I decided to move it out. (Current version of Tank Platoon mod is 271 kB in total, adding cargo truck will quadruple the file size.)

Then I thought of where to put the cargo truck in. I had also thought of standalone mod. But there were already a bunch of large capacity vehicle standalone mods available (e.g., 1 and 2) at that moment. So I thought it was not a good idea.

So next comes to Alien Tech, the current solution. This mod is the main "user" of alien artifact (& science pack), and also have particle tanks. So I decided to put the cargo trucks here.
End of storytelling.

There are no other van/truck mods updated to 0.17 so far. But I wonder any use of cargo truck elsewhere, apart from transporting alien loots?

Could possibly add it to Alien Loot proper? If it's for transporting that then with the mod that introduces it would be best if not standalone.

Perhaps with remains and pickups, as a way to pick up and put away all that loose stuff falling out of chests?

Even as a companion to pickup tower, and a way for the truck itself to auto pickup loose items like the tower? A mk2 version maybe? Or the pickup tower being an equipment item?

Those I think would be thematically appropriate, lightweight enough, and without feature creep.

Thinking about it I think pickup tower would be best. You could drive the truck out towards the tower, unload any ammo or repair packs you brought along, load it up with ore and head back to base.

Looks like you know my other mods a lot. Thanks for your love in my mods! :D

Those mods have nothing to do with vehicles, so not convincing to me. I have to think about that...
Maybe I should put the cargo trucks in a standalone mod, seizing the opportunity that other truck/van mods are not updated to 0.17...

Do you have any suggestions on what types of auxiliary vehicles wanted in game? (Such as a low power but also low weight shuttle locomotive for personal transportation.)
It would give me a much greater motivation in combining them into a bigger "Schall Auxiliary Vehicles" mod. :-)

Troop transport with more than one passenger seat. Like an APC, and as the passenger train car below maybe 3 players not including driver. They could fire their personal guns, or there could be a turret they could use.

I have no clue how difficult this would be to make, but a diesel truck with a trailer that can haul other items. Kinda like a semi-trailer truck with an attachable trailer that has a huge inventory. Maybe a trailer that can carry vehicles like the vehicle wagon mod but not held to rails. Oh yeah and a fluid transporting trailer would be awesome.

For the above an artillery tractor that can attach to the truck and be set up for mobile artillery cannons.

Again I don't know if this is possible, or how hard it would be but it's a wishlist.

Passenger cars for that transport train that more than one person can sit inside. (maybe 4-6?)

Personal jet pack? Lol

For PvP an ambulance and special medkits that can heal nearby players like a fish lol

A motorcycle would be awesome, but I'm not sure how that would work graphically or if it would ever look good.

Oh I thought of one, a "land mover" that automatically places landfill ahead of it.

Great! You just thrown me nice directions to look into, although not all of them are really feasible under current game API limitation.

I also wanted to add an APC to my vehicle list when I was making Tank Platoon mod. Not a real "Panzer Division" without the mechanized infantry accompanying! :D
Sadly, since long time each vehicle can have only one driver. After some time and players' request, the devs add one passenger seat to vehicles. But it is hardcoded, which means may need heavy scripting (=prone to errors, multiplayer desync).
Trains and their wagons do not support the passenger property at all, so even worse than other vehicles.

I love "Vehicle Wagon" mod too, bringing my heavy tank around. But looking into the code, actually it uses heavy scripting and is very complicated. (And it's not updated to 0.17 yet.) And I wonder what to be towed by such haulers, apart from other vehicles and tanks? And I wonder there is any need to drive a "fluid truck" around?

I tried to make an mobile artillery vehicle, or artillery pod equipment, but they cannot be fired like normal artillery turret or wagon (like fired by remote, or automatic firing on spawener only). Ok, the pod form will auto fire on biters and spitters (wasting ammo). Mobile artillery vehicle's gun can be fired, but only manually when driving and only targets those within screen (like normal tank cannon). Conclusion from me and other modders is that, artilleries are all hard-coded, can rarely do anything to it apart from adding shell types.

Ambulance can be thought of, but I wonder how much use in it. Currently players rely on shields to take the hit. Maybe they will simply go death to grab the free pistol :P, rather than wasting resources to build the ambulance, and also to protect the relatively fragile vehicle?

I already have a kind of "repair gun" as a battlefield vehicle in a mod I am developing. But I think this feature alone is too unattractive. Consider in multiplayer game, every player online time is precious. They would rather drive an additional tank to kill enemy faster, rather than a dedicated non-combat vehicle.
Therefore, I have thought of several more features, and turn it into a combined "Command Vehicle". But it is a big project, so it won't be included in such "Auxiliary Vehicles" mod.

Motorcycle would just be another vanilla car. Not good control as it does not turn so good as well PA2 + exos. And suffer from collision to buildings and trees a lot.

But your last idea: "Land Mover" landfill vehicle is a very good idea, could be very useful. It needs light scripting. I cannot promise for now, but I guess it is greatly doable! There is another mod named "Land Mover", although it is about manual digging and landfilling. So the only problem is it will need a better name. :-D

There is a technical term of Bulldozer that handles moving dirt as well, but there's a mod called bulldozer that destroys everything in front of them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldozer

Could call it a crawler?

If not an APC then an armored car? Between the current car and tank, heavier armor and bigger gun but faster than a tank and slower than a car. Nice intermediary.

Also thinking about it a tank destroyed. With a gun specific for "armored targets" like PvP tanks and bases?

As for the semi trucks, it's not a question of why you would need to but posterity.

I just personally like Semi-trucks and wanna drive one around for fun lol

To avoid conflict, and not destroy or pick up things in front of them, it's better not to use "bulldozer" as name.
Crawler is too generic.
I would rather call it "landfill vehicle", "bridging vehicle", "bridgelayer". These names are more direct. The latter is a in-use term for a category of military vehicles.

The light tanks are greatly redundant in features with the "armoured car". What you requested can be done by light tank already.
Actually in modern military, people consider them highly similar. And most chose to drop "light tank" and pick "armoured car", because it is cheaper to use wheels than tracks.
In Factorio it's opposite. Most of the time we drive the vehicles are away from base, not over stone/concrete tiles. Tracks remain the far superior choice.

I guess the classic "cannon shell" and "uranium cannon shell" (I named as "armour-piercing cannon shells") is already doing the job.

Creating a new entity (like vehicles and weapons) consumes my time.
Creating a cargo truck is much simpler. Because the features required can already done by current API. I could just copy from vanilla car or tank, then adjust all the parameters (like weight, burner power, capacity) to make it like a cargo truck. Plus applying graphics from external help. (I am NOT a 3D graphics artist myself. I make only 2D ones.) It is simple enough and a needed integral part of this mod, so I was willing to spend time on that.
A "landfill vehicle" needs a bit scripting for applying landfill when it moved. To my experience, the script will be light enough, so probably not causing multiplayer desync issue. And some players may actually find it useful, so I will try to make it feasible.

Semi-trailer truck is a different story. If you ever take a look of the ZIP archive of "Vehicle Wagon", you will see it requires heavy scripting, on_tick calculations (which can easily cause multiplayer desync if careless). If doing this on my side, I have to start from scratch. Probably needing at least two weeks of all my free-time to do so (which is about 2/3 the development time of the whole "Schall Alien Tech" mod). Would people really download, take a look, and appreciate that as a good addition to their game, for the tons of effort I needed to create it?
Probably you should request such a truck from the authors of "Vehicle Wagon", Supercheese or its updaters. It is much simpler to implement these from their existing code. Also for code copyright concerns.

I hate to write this. I am sorry to inform you that I have decided to give up the project of "Auxiliary Vehicles" mod, together with moving Cargo Truck into it.
I have devoted a lot of time modding in the past seven months, but you can see it is still enough: Your request has been made two months ago, but I still do not have the time to make any progress.
There are more important things I need to attend to in my real-life (e.g., finding a new job), so I have to give up a few ideas or requests. "Auxiliary Vehicles" is just one of them.
I may continue to work on these when I earn some time, but I cannot promise.

BTW, if you think in the way that "Alien Tech" is not a standalone mod, but an integral part of "Tank Platoon" + "Alien Loot" + "Alien Tech" altogether, then you may feel the cargo truck is more natural to show up here.
And "Alien Tech" is not all about hi-tech or late-game things. The particle beam research can start quite early, and accumulation of alien resources for alien science packs can start right from the beginning, although it may need a few levels of research and some resource accumulation to become useful.
Since there are no real applications of cargo truck except for bringing back loots, I still feel cargo truck is acting good as an integral part of "Alien Tech", even better than showing up in "Tank Platoon".

That's all good. I'm not too incensed as I realize it was mostly a nitpick anyway.

Hello,
why Cargo Truck doesn't move backwards (while consuming fuel) ? Is it by design?

I just tested with latest version (game 0.17.48 and mod 0.17.6), can drive both forward and backward without any problem, for basic cargo truck to MK3.
So, what is your game and mod versions? Can you disable all other mods (except Tank Platoon & Alien Tech) and see if you still have this problem?

PS: BTW, this post is about having cargo truck in a separate mod, where your reply is not related that idea. So for next time, please create a new post instead.