Changelog

Version: 2.1.2
Date: 2026-08-29
  Info:
    - Build for Factorio 2.1 of release 1.2.2.

Version: 1.2.2
Date: 2026-08-29
  Bugfixes:
    - The electric network window showed this mod's entries as "unknown". The hidden power receivers
      under the defence tower, the scout station and the ammo station had no name in the locale file.
      They are named after the building they belong to, so the network list now reads "Defence Tower"
      rather than nothing useful.

Version: 1.2.1
Date: 2026-08-29
  Bugfixes:
    - Ammo drones crawled and jumped. They were being moved inside the dispatch handler, which runs
      every 37 ticks, while every other drone in the mod moves every 2 - the same step taken 18 times
      less often, so they covered 0.57 tiles a second instead of 10.5 and hopped a third of a tile at
      a time. Dispatch can be worked out rarely; movement cannot. They are now two separate rates.
    - Ammo drones fly home after a delivery instead of vanishing over the target. The fleet is not
      consumed either way, but a drone disappearing on arrival reads as a fault. Anything the target
      could not take, or the whole load if the target was destroyed mid-flight, comes back into the
      station rather than being lost.
    - A drone on its way home no longer counts as a delivery still inbound, which had the station
      hold off on sending the next one.

Version: 1.2.0
Date: 2026-08-29
  Features:
    - Defence towers and scout stations now show their ranges under ALT + Q, in red. Towers had no
      range overlay at all until now - only the scout station drew one, and only while its window
      was open. Red because this is weapon reach, not logistics: everything else both mods draw is
      cool or orange, so red reads unambiguously as "this is where it shoots".
    - The key and the mode belong to Early Drones; this mod asks it which mode the player is in. A
      separate keybinding would mean two cycles drifting apart after the first press.

Version: 1.1.4
Date: 2026-08-29
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed a crash in the Ammo Station: "LuaItemStack API call when LuaItemStack was invalid for
      read". Taking a stack down to zero invalidates it immediately, and the item name was being read
      from it afterwards to fill in the drone's record. It happened whenever a delivery used up a
      whole stack - that is, every time the station had exactly as many magazines as one drone
      carries. The name is now read before the subtraction, and a stack that reaches zero is cleared
      rather than assigned a count of zero.

Version: 1.1.3
Date: 2026-08-29
  Bugfixes:
    - The Ammo Station never used transport drones at all - it conjured them out of electricity. Slot
      one is now the drone slot, holding up to 20 logistic drones exactly as the Fuel Station does.
      The drones are a fleet, not a fuel: they are never consumed, and the station can have as many
      in the air as it has in the slot. With an empty slot it now says so instead of standing there.
    - It sends tier 2 drones. The station unlocks alongside the defence tower, which is well into the
      electric era, so hauling ammunition with a burner drone was a tier backwards from everything
      around it.
  Changes:
    - The drone slot tidies itself: drones dropped into the buffer move to slot one, and anything
      else left in slot one moves to the buffer. Without it a single delivery landing in the wrong
      slot would silently stop the station, with nothing on screen to explain why.

Version: 1.1.2
Date: 2026-08-29
  Features:
    - The Ammo Station can be pointed at a chest to draw magazines from, the way the Fuel Station in
      Early Drones is pointed at a coal pallet. Open the station, press the button, then open the
      chest. Its own inventory stays as a reserve and as the fallback if the chest is removed.
  Bugfixes:
    - The station ignored the first slot of its own inventory. It reserved that slot "for future
      use", which was pointless - and the first slot is exactly where a player drops things, so
      magazines sat there while the station reported that everything was stocked.

Version: 1.1.1
Date: 2026-08-29
  Bugfixes:
    - The Ammo Station asked for advanced circuits, which was not merely expensive but impossible:
      its technology runs on automation and logistic science, while an advanced circuit needs
      plastic, which needs oil, which needs chemical science. The building could not be made when it
      unlocked. It now costs 8 steel plates, 4 electronic circuits and 8 iron gear wheels - below the
      defence tower it serves, and in line with the Fuel Station it was modelled on.
  Changes:
    - Static checks gained a rule comparing every recipe's ingredients against the science packs of
      the technology that unlocks it. Nothing else could see this class of fault: the syntax is
      valid, the vanilla names exist, and the game loads without complaint.

Version: 1.1.0
Date: 2026-08-29
  Features:
    - Ammo Station: one node that keeps every defence tower and scout station within range stocked
      with magazines, on the same principle as the Fuel Station in Early Drones - a large radius, a
      slider from 40 to 200 tiles, and deliveries in big batches because a trip costs the same
      whatever it carries. It holds 50 magazines in each building it serves, and it will only ever
      bring a tower combat magazines and a scout station scout magazines.
    - It runs on electricity rather than on what it carries. The Fuel Station burns from the same
      supply it delivers, which is why it needs no refuelling; magazines cannot be burned, so this
      one draws 12 kW standing and 100 kJ per drone. Towers and scout stations already need power,
      so the requirement is not new to the mod.
    - It uses the Fuel Station's own graphics, recoloured. The two nodes do the same job for
      different cargo and should read as a family.
    - It registers itself with Early Drones as a building that accepts magazines, so transport drones
      keep it stocked and the chain runs end to end without hand-carrying anything.
  Changes:
    - The hidden power receiver is now created by one function for all three buildings instead of two
      near-identical copies. Adding the ammo station would have made it three.

Version: 1.0.1
Date: 2026-08-29
  Bugfixes:
    - Defence towers and scout stations no longer act as general storage for the Early Drones network.
      Both are containers underneath, so area mode filled them with ore and carried their magazines
      off. They now register themselves with Early Drones as buildings that accept only their own
      magazines - the tower takes combat magazines of all three tiers, the scout station only scout
      magazines. Drones will now keep them stocked instead of emptying them.

Version: 1.0.0
Date: 2026-08-28
  Info:
    - First public release. The three tiers are complete and were tuned against real games rather
      than on paper: personal escorts in a weapon slot, powered defence towers, and scout stations
      that patrol charted ground along the power network.
    - The version number jumps from 0.3.10 because the old numbering tracked tiers, not readiness.
      Nothing was added for this release.
  Changes:
    - The mod description no longer promises expeditions against nests. That was the original plan;
      it became scouting patrols, which is what the mod actually does.

Version: 0.3.10
Date: 2026-08-28
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed the stutter introduced in 0.3.9. When an enemy stood in range but none of them could be
      used - uncharted ground, or out of network reach - a station ran a full area search, a sort
      and up to forty reachability queries, then started over 31 ticks later. Nine stations made
      that seventeen times a second. A station now checks with one cheap engine call whether there
      is anything in range at all before doing any of that, and waits three seconds before retrying
      a search that found nothing usable.
    - The candidate cap is down from forty to sixteen. Each candidate costs a reachability query and
      only four are ever needed.

Version: 0.3.9
Date: 2026-08-28
  Bugfixes:
    - Scout stations now hand each drone in a wave its own target. A station used to take the single
      nearest enemy and give it to all four, so nine stations standing together sent thirty-six
      scouts at one biter. This is the same fault fixed for defence towers in 0.3.6 - the report was
      about scout stations all along.
    - A station no longer falls silent because its nearest enemy happens to be in uncharted land or
      out of network reach. It walks down the list until it finds one it can use, and the idle
      reason now reflects the last candidate actually rejected.

Version: 0.3.8
Date: 2026-08-28
  Bugfixes:
    - Drones no longer move in fits and starts near their target. They used to fly at a target and
      then stop dead inside firing range, so a target that shifted restarted them several times a
      second. The hysteresis added in 0.3.6 only widened the band the switch clicked in - a biter
      crossed it in about a second anyway. A drone now flies to a point held at firing distance from
      its target and glides along with it, and backs off by the same rule when it gets too close.
    - A drone holding position now turns to face its target instead of keeping the heading it
      arrived on.

Version: 0.3.7
Date: 2026-08-28
  Balancing:
    - Scouts may now stray 150 tiles from the nearest power pole, up from 80. Their routes come out
      much straighter and far fewer poles are needed to cover an area, which is meant to make the
      power network a planning decision rather than a chore.
    - Scout lifetime drops from 90 to 75 seconds, paying for the freedom above. Nine scout stations
      cleared a large nest in a single throw and only the clock stopped them, so the clock is the
      real brake and that is what gets shortened.
  Changes:
    - The station panel and its hint no longer have the off-grid distance written into the text.
      It is passed in from the code, so the number cannot drift away from what the drones do - the
      same trap that left the energy figure stale two versions ago.

Version: 0.3.6
Date: 2026-08-28
  Bugfixes:
    - Tower drones no longer all stop at once when a single one reaches an enemy. Every drone asked
      for the nearest enemy from its own tower's position, so they all got the same answer - and
      towers standing near each other got the same answer as well. The whole swarm converged on one
      biter, entered firing range together and froze together. Each tower now looks up the enemies
      in its zone once and hands them out in turn.
    - Drones no longer jitter at the edge of firing range. Stopping and resuming used one and the
      same distance, so a target that moved a little flipped the whole pack in and out of motion.
      Scouts had the same fault and are fixed with it.
    - Freshly launched tower drones are no longer given a shared initial target, which glued a new
      six together despite their scattered launch positions.
  Changes:
    - Static checks gained a rule comparing indentation against block nesting. A misplaced "else"
      or "end" is usually valid syntax with a different meaning, so the syntax check cannot see it.

Version: 0.3.5
Date: 2026-08-27
  Balancing:
    - Scout magazines cost more again: a tier 3 combat magazine plus two advanced circuits. The
      price came down when the longer weapon appeared to do nothing, but that was because scouts
      flew into whatever they were shooting at. Now that they hold their distance the reach is real,
      so the premium has something behind it. Energy per scout is unchanged - the cost goes up on
      one side, not both.
  Changes:
    - Rewrote the scout description. It used to spell out that they fire three times slower for
      three times the damage, which turns a bit of character into a sum. It now says what they feel
      like instead.
    - The station panel was still quoting the old energy figure.

Version: 0.3.4
Date: 2026-08-27
  Changes:
    - Scout stations now send complete flights rather than a steady trickle. A new flight of four
      goes out only once the previous one has left the field entirely. Topping up one at a time
      meant single scouts arriving into a fight already in progress and dying alone, and a lone
      scout is worth very little.

Version: 0.3.3
Date: 2026-08-27
  Bugfixes:
    - Scouts hold at firing distance instead of flying into whatever they are shooting at. Their
      longer weapon was doing nothing: they opened fire earlier but closed anyway, so the extra
      reach bought them about one shot. Tower drones had this standoff from the start and scouts
      did not, which was an oversight.
  Balancing:
    - A scout station now launches its whole flight at once rather than one drone every half
      second. A lone scout dies before it achieves anything, and four together are worth far more
      than four in sequence. They still leave from different points, so they do not overlap.
    - Scout magazines cost the same as tier 3 combat magazines instead of carrying a premium, and
      the energy per scout drops from 400 to 250 kJ.

Version: 0.3.2
Date: 2026-08-27
  Changes:
    - A scout that kills its target now goes looking for the next one instead of hovering where it
      stands until it expires. It was searching only forty tiles around itself, so after dealing
      with one stray biter it usually found nothing and simply waited to die. Scouts cost a great
      deal and never come home, so they should work until they do.
    - They now search the station's whole patrol radius, measured from wherever the scout has got
      to, so one can work its way outward along a line of targets. The same two rules still apply
      as for the first target: charted ground, and within reach of your power network - and that
      distance from the network is what stops them wandering off for good.

Version: 0.3.1
Date: 2026-08-27
  Bugfixes:
    - Scout stations sat idle even with a nest well inside their patrol radius. The station insisted
      the target itself be close to your power network, and a nest is by definition out in the wild.
      A scout may now stray eighty tiles from the nearest pole instead of forty, which is what "a
      large range off the line" was supposed to mean. The network still gives unlimited distance
      along it; this figure is the freedom on the last stretch.
  Features:
    - The station draws its ranges on the ground while its window is open: the patrol radius in
      blue, and how far off the network a scout may go in orange. The two limits are different and
      without seeing both there is no way to work out why one nest is a target and another is not.
    - The panel says why a station is idle: no power, every scout already out, nothing hostile in
      range, the enemy on uncharted ground, or the enemy too far from a pole.

Version: 0.3.0
Date: 2026-08-27
  Major Features:
    - Scout Drones and the Scout Station. Scouts patrol ground you have already charted and remove
      threats before they reach your base - closer to artillery than to an escort. Because they
      work over charted ground, vanilla radars finally have a job beyond filling in the map.
    - Scouts fire once a second instead of three times, but each shot hits three times as hard.
      The damage per second is identical to a tier 3 combat drone; only the feel is different.
      Their weapon does reach further, and that is a deliberate advantage rather than flavour.
    - They travel along your power line without limit and stray at most forty tiles from the
      nearest pole, following the network as far as it goes and cutting away only for the last
      stretch. Routing comes from Early Drones through its remote interface, so both mods share one
      index of the same poles rather than each building their own.
    - Scouts do not come home. They are given a much longer life so they can actually reach a
      distant target, and that one-way trip is what pays for their reach.
  Features:
    - Personal Combat Drones III: six drones per launcher, 400 health, damage doubled again, 35
      second life. Researching it also doubles what a defence tower can hold, from four to eight.
    - The scout station has its own panel: charge, scouts in the field, and a slider for the patrol
      radius.

Version: 0.2.5
Date: 2026-08-27
  Balancing:
    - Four drones per tower instead of six. Two towers were still turning back a full ninety big
      biters attacking from three sides at once, which is more than automatic defence should manage
      on its own. Four also leaves room for the third tier to double it.
  Features:
    - Towers have an information panel: charge as a percentage and in kilojoules, what the standing
      draw and per-drone cost actually are, how many drones are in the air, and how many rounds are
      left in store. Power that cannot be seen cannot be planned around.

Version: 0.2.4
Date: 2026-08-27
  Balancing:
    - Towers now need electricity as well as magazines. Two of them held off ninety big biters
      while losing only two thirds of one tower, which is too cheap for defence that needs no
      attention at all. Power draw matches a laser turret - a 24 kW standing draw and a buffer that
      a full launch of six drones very nearly empties, so a second wave waits on the recharge.
    - Tower range cut from 45 tiles to 30, and drones per tower from ten to six. A tower now covers
      a smaller patch, so covering a base takes more of them.
  Bugfixes:
    - A tower's hidden power receiver is removed along with the tower, and re-scanning the map no
      longer leaves a second one stacked underneath drawing its own idle power.

Version: 0.2.3
Date: 2026-08-27
  Bugfixes:
    - Tower drones no longer chase enemies across the map. When a drone lost its target it looked
      for the next one from where it happened to be standing, which chained: kill, find another one
      further out, repeat. A whole tower's worth of drones would follow a single group off into the
      distance while other groups took the tower apart unopposed.
    - Targets are now chosen from the tower's position and must lie inside its range, and a drone
      that finds itself outside that range returns home whatever is happening. A tower defends its
      own patch rather than going hunting.

Version: 0.2.2
Date: 2026-08-27
  Bugfixes:
    - Tower drones now actually reach the enemy. They were drifting in a slow clump and expiring
      before they arrived, wasting the magazines that paid for them. The cause runs deeper than it
      looked: the base game has no combat robot that flies to a distant target of its own accord.
      Defenders and destroyers barely move under their own power - they are towed along by the
      player they follow - and a distractor does not move at all. Taking following away left drones
      with nothing pulling them anywhere.
    - Tower drones are now steered by this mod instead, using the same flight code that carries the
      logistics drones in Early Drones. They hold at firing distance rather than piling onto the
      target, pick a new enemy when theirs dies, and return to the tower when the area is clear.
    - They also leave the tower in eight different directions instead of single file, so ten of
      them look like ten rather than one black cloud.

Version: 0.2.1
Date: 2026-08-27
  Features:
    - Defence Tower. A stationary building that puts up to ten drones in the air when an enemy comes
      within 45 tiles, and lets them lapse once the threat is gone. It takes the same magazines as
      the launcher you carry, so one ammunition line serves both you and your base, and it needs no
      power - the drones are the cost.
    - Tower drones are the personal ones with following switched off. A tower does not walk, so
      there is nothing to follow: they fly to the enemy and fight there. Same toughness either way.
  Changes:
    - The drone launcher has its own icon at last.

Version: 0.2.0
Date: 2026-08-27
  Features:
    - Personal Combat Drones II. Four drones per launcher instead of two, each with twice the health
      and twice the damage, lasting 25 seconds instead of 15 and circling a little wider. Four axes
      at once, none of them overdone: six tier 1 drones make a fight hard work, and the second tier
      should change that noticeably without turning it into a walkover.
    - The upgraded launcher takes its own magazines, so cheap ammunition cannot feed expensive
      drones. Both are built from the tier 1 versions rather than from scratch.
  Changes:
    - The launcher's icon was a building, which never suited something carried on your belt. That
      artwork now belongs to the defence tower, where it fits.

Version: 0.1.1
Date: 2026-08-27
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed a crash on any save that had already run 0.1.0. Saved data outlives a mod update, so a
      record written by the older version was missing a field the new one expected. Fields are now
      filled in on every pass rather than only when a record is first created.
  Changes:
    - Drones no longer fly on top of one another. They now launch a fraction of a second apart AND
      from different points around you, so each one enters its orbit where it appeared instead of
      six sharing a single path. Six drones now look like six. The full escort is still up in well
      under a second.

Version: 0.1.0
Date: 2026-08-27
  Info:
    - Work in progress. Nothing is craftable yet.