Some mods, particularly overhauls, have their own fuel fluids. Diesel, for example, or fuel oil. At the moment, TD is pretty hard-coded to petroleum. In a modpack like pY, there is an almost unending series of fluids that have an energy value. I was wondering if perhaps we could support this by:

• introduce a transport drone fuel fluid
• the fuel depots serve up this fluid, and the depots need this fluid for their trucks
• fuel depots can take any fluid with an energy value, and produce x units of drone fuel per unit energy, so that more energy-dense fluids will result in more transport drone fuel than less energy-dense ones

I'm open to other solutions. This was just the first one that came to mind. I realise the mod supports a setting where a fluid can be chosen, but this is a bit too low-level IMHO.

The mod I have taken up maintaining [https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Transport_Drones_Fuel_revived Transport Drones Fuel revived] does basically this. It introduces a fluid called drone fuel (drone-fuel) that can be made out of petroleum gas or things like coal, solid fuel, rocket fuel or nuclear fuel as well as some modded fuels. The only thing is it doesn't automagically change the fuel in the base transport drones (this mod) from petroleum gas to drone fuel. You need to do that at least once for Factorio to use that as your default fuel for this mod.

Thanks @miiohau - I didn't know that mod existed :D Does the quantity of drone fuel produced scale with the energy value of the stuff you make it from?

Just thinking - this mod could detect if the drone-fuel entity exists, and default to that if there is no over-ride in the mod settings. It would be a relatively small patch. @melinge would you accept that patch if I made it?