Would it be possible to have a config setting that allows players to set tiles as acceptable road tiles? Say for example you're using the Asphalt mod that adds a number of placable tiles which makes beautiful roadways. Or if it'd be simpler just to add support for the Asphalt mod?

The problem is, the tiles need to have a very very specific collision mask for the drones to use them properly,

And I don't know how to solve that with other mod tiles, you could load a save game with the drones enabled, and any tiles from the asphalt would suddenly change masks, and break your factory.

Also there is some hackery around placing road tiles, so I actually have 2 tiles just for the 1 road tile,
and doubling all asphalt tiles will quickly hit the 255 tile limit

Edit: I just realized this was essentially stated in the first post, my bad. I tried to delete this comment but the option seems to be missing.

What about doing something like you were suggesting for alternate drone skins? Like having an option for the player to select the sprite being used for the road. If the sprite was changed to the basic black asphalt then the players could just blend it in with the rest of the asphalt mods assets without needing to have a double down for every tile in that mod. This would also mean that the other sprites in the asphalt mod would behave like boundaries for the actual road. Would that work or is there trickery that would still disagree?

Any chance you could add a function that other mods could call for "turn this tile into a road".

I'd absolutely love it if just the basic (blank) asphalt tile was also road - then trucks would even stay in their lanes!

With the new graphics, they look absolutely beautiful, and I just wish I could have them work with asphalt so I don't feel the need to double up my road network.

Edit:

Just had a quick look through the code - is there any reason why there needs to be a proxy tile for each road sprite?

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/drone-roads

Enjoy :)