I might suggest changing the fuel requirement to accept any fluid that has a fuel value. By doing that people could use it on total conversion mods that make petroleum harder/ later game fluid.

Aye +1. If that's not feasible (limit to a single fluid type?) then a startup setting to set the fluid and consumption rate would be useful as we could use a different modded fuel instead.

Agreed. Being able to use, for instance Krastorio 2 fuels, would be handy (and make sense).

I'd also love an option to disable it entirely. I know it removes all real balance, but hey :)

Yes, this option will be useful with modded fuel ressouces. +1

I'll think about it

It is possible technically for me to change it to use any fluid (its not a trivial task though),
But there are some user problems with knowing what fluids you can use, with petroleum its easy to see the input on all the recipes and the fuel depot, if it was any fluid, it is hard to know what fluids can be used.

giving a new purpose to petrol is really nice when playing with no mods that change fluids/oil production. but as soon as oil production is delayed, people can already have belts right from the start, trains also a while before oil, and shortly after getting to the point where transport drones with petrol can be used, people will also get bots. thus the timeframe to use the transport drones is relatively small (during midgame only). there is also no huge motivation to use transport drones for a main bus after half the factory is already built with some other type of main bus, and it's difficult to later insert all the roads and depots into a crowded factory. waiting just a little longer and using bots would be so much easier ...

my current factory barely has oil, but already imports copper and iron from the second outpost because the starting area has run dry of it. on these maps, i would have had to build and use some alternative method of transport and only can play with transport drones now since i used the old drones (that used no fuel yet) from the beginning until i had some petrol.

maybe it's quite difficult to implement, but having earlygame transport drones that use chemical fuel (high usage of wood/coal/solid, etc) might be nice, with the option to later replace/upgrade drones and depots from chemical MK1 to petrol MK2.

ps: some people already are writing mods to modify transport drones, eg giving them the looks of logibots, or removing the need for petrol as fuel :-)

Would it be possile to make fuel requirement a toggleable function?
that would give the option of using the drones early and later activate fuel as it gets available.

as a mod option, it probably would have to be a startup option, requiring to restart the game.
thus a separate "toggle mod" might give more flexibility (although it also would require a restart of the game), eg to enable that function by enabling that "toggle mod" for some specific map, and not having to modify mod options on playing different maps (because mod options apply to all maps at the same time) !?

..I've ended at a endpoint playing this mod along Angel´s+Bob, because the cracking tech, ask for hard-to-reach materials in the phase I am in.. I already designed my base around these transport mod, so unexpectedly I have run out of drone's fuel (Methane) while my deposits of other types of fuels are overflowing.

It's not a complain this can happen when the mod conflicts, but It's a pity.

vislle, can you point out where you are getting stuck? I am doing a bangel ribbon world and got fuel up and running relatively early - you need:

natural gas (pumpjack)->
Natural gas separation (oil&gas separator) ->
raw gas refining acid&NGL (gas refinery) ->
gas fractioning methane/ethane/butane (gas refinery)

https://i.imgur.com/DvH2bjW.jpg

@Tubs. I've also that configuration but the ratios of these tech level are 50 Methane 30 Ethane 20 Butane

-Advanced gas processing gives better ratios: 90 Methane 30 Ethane 20 Butane, but require aluminium and brass for the building, I haven't built aluminium process yet.

At this stage I've no use yet for Ethane o Butane, also the fuel-oil or nafta are overflowing. Of course knowing how much Methane need it, I can redone my oil-gas off-base.

But by eliminating my main bus in order to embrace the transport drones, once I unexpectedly waste all my methane, am I now in a death spiral looking to get enough materials to rebuild the refinery or to get aluminium, I'm solving it by hand carrying, but it's a last resort.

I use the excess gasses in fuel burning boilers for more electricity and steam for assemblers, but yeah its a massive struggle. Fortunately I've not found much else that uses methane before you get the methane synthesis from hydrogen to patch production up.

I built a yolo aluminium process just 1:1:1:1 no ratios to bootstrap, mainly for the gun though 🤔.