I have no idea if you're still about Derringer, but are you planning on updating this mod?

I think there are very different ways to accomplish what the mod does with 2.0/Space Age additions, so it might need a rewrite? but I use it with Pollution Solutions Lite ( https://mods.factorio.com/mod/PollutionSolutionsLite ) to do convoluted things :o) which I like, but would need this to also work along side.

Cheers!

I'm aware this needs updating. Right now I'm trying to pound out the problems in getting Klonan's Transport Drones ported to 2.0 properly; it's alarming the number of things 2.0 broke, from the introduction of quality to the fluid network revamp to the restructuring of collision layers. That said, it's open in one of my editor tabs, and has been ever since 2.0 released. I'm just trying to do a better job of it than the last release.

Good news. Thank you Derringer.

I recall some discussion/hope a while back about Quality, Elevated Rail etc, even Space Age itself, being mods that could be enabled/disabled, which would mean that little would change for existing mods going from 1.xx to 2.xx . From what I can gather, that did not turn out to be the case. Not even a little bit :o/ Lots of modders taking over/helping out other mods to get them updated/improved. Quite the undertaking.

Good to hear that you're still about though. daniels1989 has said that autosetdeconstruct is easy enough to add to the PollutionSolutionsLite mod, so it's been added to the list there. Not sure that makes any difference to you :o) but I thought I'd mention it.

Zero impatience from my perspective. I'll be grateful if I end up with all the mods back up and running at some point, to keep playing my same save, so it will take a long and it takes.

Thanks again.

[My replies are way too long.]

Once more, no worries. This should actually be a simple fix assuming logistic networks and deconstruct markings haven't had their API surface violently rearranged; I just haven't played any 2.0 games with anything that generates loot drops, so the only test victims I might have lying around are boulders. ^_^

I'm also looking into the few, rare crashes that were reported; the only time I've ever actually had this mod crash was in conjunction with Space Exploration where I force-deleted a surface that had pending loot checks, but generally I know it has an issue with surfaces getting deleted out from under it at inopportune times.

I'm planning at some point to formally establish my own fork of Transport Drones rather than continue to release an unofficial, off-mod-portal hotfix series of the existing port which I picked up trying to fix because it broke my own game. The biggest thing holding me back there is migration logic from other forks: since a significant part of the mod state is in mod-private data storage rather than game engine state, I'd need to build a routine that attempts to completely recompute the mod state from engine data alone, even if imperfectly. I've been releasing unofficial hotfixes to the other modder's work simply to avoid breaking existing games; if nothing else, breaking a game with 40+ hours put into it is not something I'd wish visited upon me, so I've taken this approach to best benefit the player community.

For what it's worth... simple things like inventories (chests, for example) have, in fact, had their API surfaces violently rearranged, because content is no longer an (item ID, count) pair, but an (item ID, quality, count) triple.

Thanks for the reply.

Poor, poor boulders :o)

Never had any crashes with your mod :o), but I never ran Space Exploration, so maybe I avoided some glitches there.

Good to hear that it should be a simple fix. I wonder if it will turn out that way in the end :oD I hope so.

Transport Drones really seems like it's been patched up from the 1.1.x version and is struggling to cope :o( No criticism of the modder meglinge. Seems like another mod in line with what we've been saying about the biiiiig 1.1.x --> 2.0.x changes. I was idly thinking about Quality and how everything has that concept hanging over every mod. The question of how a mod will handle Quality, even if it doesn't really matter to the mod, opens up a huge can of worms to implement something. And core elements of the game being "violently rearranged" surprises me that as many mods have managed to get updated. The couple of personal mods that I pieced together, were simple fixes (I recall something to do with "ingredients" requiring a more formal structure and "result" having its name/format changed - stuff like that), but I've seem a fair number of modders talking about how the different Setting/Prototype/Runtime stages have had changes made. Stuff has been moved. Some subtle stuff as well, but modders have been saying how the changes "broke the mod and it needs a rewrite" :o(

There seems to me to be a paradox with Wube's approach. Space Age was intended to be playable with an existing save, whilst intended to be started afresh. And I think the latter is by far the strongest influence in the actual design. I have over 2000 hours on my save, so 'starting afresh' was never going to happen for me.

I only just found out that there is a zipped version of Factorio. Who knew :o) This means I can properly run completely separate versions of Factorio: 1.1.107 and 2.1.32 This is huge. Factorio Space Age one step closer, so Wube's approach may work for me in the end. It going to take a lot of modders, spending a lot more time on it though.

And on that, I do appreciate your efforts to try and bring a lot of these updates to fruition. By all accounts it seems quite the daunting task.

I'm now an official collaborator on Transport Drones, so with any luck it will get pounded into shape sooner. That said, quirks are very likely to remain unless one of us has time to do a truly violent rearrangement of how requesters work. There are some visual issues with quality not showing in the road network GUI as well.

Adding Space Age into an existing save is almost guaranteed to have very different balance from a new game, if nothing else because a lot of technologies have had their science pack requirements violently rearranged, and several key technologies (cliff explosives, artillery, spidertron) are changed to require science packs from other planets.

I never installed Transport Drones. I did look at it a while back, along with MANY others mods, but really wanted to limit having too many, due to the very update problems that occur.

Maybe one of the possible positives is that Wube seem to be done with further content, so maybe no more major changes to the API will occur, so updates maybe the last. That's a lot of maybes. Then again, maybe a version 2.1 will come out at some point, so who knows.

Not sure if to congratulate you with regard to official collaborator status, since you just signed yourself up for even more work :oP

One can only hope. If anything, much of the reason for the 2.0 'Modpocalypse' is actually several years of 1.1 API stability, which in all likelihood caught many modders off guard, and drove a number of others to retire rather than update their mods.