Changelog

Version: 2.2.0
Date: 2026-08-29
  Info:
    - Build for Factorio 2.1 of release 1.4.0.

Version: 1.4.0
Date: 2026-08-29
  Features:
    - Mining Depots can mine uranium, and any other deposit that needs a fluid, by drawing that fluid
      from an ordinary storage tank within 12 tiles. Uranium takes 10 sulfuric acid per ore, so a
      tier 3 depot spends 200 an outbound trip and a full vanilla tank covers 125 of them. The acid
      is taken when the drone is sent, not when it returns, so two drones cannot spend the same acid
      twice. With no tank in reach the depot says which fluid it is missing instead of standing idle.
    - It works with the mod's own fluid hauling: the tank beside the depot is an ordinary tank like
      any other, so the Fluid Station keeps it filled. No pipes anywhere, which is the point.
  Changes:
    - Uranium was skipped entirely in 1.3.4 because mining it by script would have bypassed the
      chemistry the game gates it behind. That was the right call as a stopgap and this is the real
      answer: the acid is still spent, just carried by drones instead of pushed down a pipe.

Version: 1.3.4
Date: 2026-08-29
  Bugfixes:
    - A Mining Depot placed within 25 tiles of an oil patch crashed the game. Crude oil is a resource
      like any ore as far as the search was concerned, but it yields a fluid, and there is no item
      called "crude-oil" to look a stack size up for. Depots now check what a deposit actually
      produces instead of assuming the deposit's own name is an item.
    - Drones would have mined uranium ore for free. Uranium needs sulfuric acid in a real drill, and
      our drones mine by script, so they bypassed the entire chemistry the game gates it behind -
      the largest balance hole this mod could have had. Deposits that require a fluid are now left
      alone, and the depot says so on screen rather than standing idle without explanation.
  Changes:
    - The cargo now carries the name of the product rather than the name of the deposit. For ores the
      two are the same, but relying on that was an accident rather than a rule.

Version: 1.3.3
Date: 2026-08-29
  Changes:
    - The work cycle is now cut into 20 slices run every tick instead of 5 slices run every 4 ticks.
      A full cycle still takes 20 ticks and every station is still served exactly as often - only the
      cost is spread differently. Measured on a factory with 34 area stations and 720 drones: the
      five-slice split put seven or eight stations in one tick and peaked at 50 ms against a 16.7 ms
      frame budget, three times over. Twenty slices put one or two stations in a tick.
    - The profiler now names the real slice count instead of a hardcoded five.

Version: 1.3.2
Date: 2026-08-29
  Bugfixes:
    - Mining depots spilled ore on the ground again, and this was a different path from the one fixed
      in 1.2.1. Choosing a pallet tested whether a single item would fit, so a pallet with room for
      two accepted a drone carrying ten - which is exactly what a tier 2 depot carries, and why it
      showed up there first. The remainder came back to the depot and landed on the ground whenever
      its buffer had filled in the meantime. The load is now trimmed to what the pallet can really
      take, minus whatever is already flying to it.
    - The same test guarded fixed-route deliveries, so those could overflow a full target the same
      way. Trimmed as well.

Version: 1.3.1
Date: 2026-08-29
  Bugfixes:
    - The electric network window showed this mod's entries as "unknown". The hidden power receivers
      under electric stations had no name in the locale file - they are unselectable and invisible on
      the map, but they still appear in the network statistics, which is exactly where it showed. The
      flying drones had no names either, for the same reason and with the same effect wherever the
      game names them.
  Changes:
    - Static checks gained a rule that every entity prototype has an entry under [entity-name].

Version: 1.3.0
Date: 2026-08-29
  Features:
    - ALT + Q now cycles through overlay modes instead of switching one on and off: logistic ranges,
      drone routes, both, combat ranges, everything, off. The split follows what the drawings mean -
      a circle says how far a building reaches, a line says what it is doing right now. With three
      hundred drones in the air the lines bury everything else, and it is the ranges you want while
      you are placing things.
    - The mode is exposed through remote.call("early-drones", "overlay_mode", player_index) so that
      Early Drones Defence can draw its own ranges on the same key. One keybinding, one cycle - two
      independent ones would drift apart on the first press.
  Changes:
    - Saves that had the overlay switched on come back in the "everything" mode rather than off.

Version: 1.2.4
Date: 2026-08-29
  Features:
    - Other mods can now tell Early Drones that one of their buildings is not a storage chest, and
      which items it will still accept, through remote.call("early-drones", "protect_container",
      name, first_free_slot, accepted_items). A registered building stops being a dump target for
      everything else and stops being a source at all. The registration lives in storage, so it
      survives loading a save without being repeated.
  Bugfixes:
    - Defence towers and scout stations from Early Drones Defence were treated as ordinary chests,
      because that is what they are made of. Area mode filled them with ore and plates and hauled
      their magazines away. They now take combat and scout magazines respectively and nothing else,
      so drones keep them supplied instead of clogging them.

Version: 1.2.3
Date: 2026-08-29
  Bugfixes:
    - Cargo carried by drones in flight now goes back to the building they came from instead of being
      dropped where they were. Updating the mod clears in-flight drones - they hold references to
      station records that a rescan replaces, and leaving them would break the drone limits for good
      - but their load used to land on the ground along the flight paths. It only ever happened on a
      version change, not on an ordinary save and load, which made it look like reloading caused it.
      The ground is now the last resort, used when the building is gone or its buffer is full.
    - The tanker drone list was not cleared during that cleanup even though its drones were destroyed,
      leaving records pointing at entities that no longer existed.

Version: 1.2.2
Date: 2026-08-29
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed the stutter introduced in 1.2.1. Checking how much room a container had walked every slot
      in Lua, once per container and per item, for every area station. A storage pallet has five
      hundred slots, so that loop alone ate the frame budget: measured in game at 13.07 ms of a
      13.35 ms pass, with a peak tick of 17.6 ms against a 16.7 ms budget. It now asks the engine
      with get_insertable_count, a single call. The slot walk is kept only for our own buffers, which
      have protected slots the engine would not skip - and fifteen slots, not five hundred.
    - The recipe threshold added in 1.2.1 read each machine's recipe a second time. Reading the feed
      filter and the threshold are now one call: feed_filter only ever read the recipe for furnaces,
      so the threshold was reading it twice for those and for the first time on every assembler.

Version: 1.2.1
Date: 2026-08-29
  Bugfixes:
    - Mining drones no longer launch when their depot cannot hold what is already on the way back.
      The check only asked whether there was any free space at all, so a buffer with one free slot
      sent the whole flight of ten - at tier 3 that is two hundred ore returning to a depot with room
      for a handful. The surplus was dropped on the ground, which is where those piles came from.
    - Transport drones no longer carry more than the destination can take. Container choice tested
      whether a single item would fit, so a pallet with room for two accepted a drone carrying five.
      The load is now trimmed to the real free space, minus whatever is already flying there.
  Changes:
    - The amount kept in a machine is now worked out from its recipe instead of one fixed number.
      Ten items suits a furnace that smelts slowly, but an assembler making gears burns through them
      in five seconds and then waits - which is why recipes could not be balanced and people built
      spare machines to cover the idle time. Each machine now gets about thirty seconds of its own
      consumption, so a stone furnace still asks for ten while a gear assembler asks for sixty. The
      station slider stays as the lower bound, and a single stack as the upper one.

Version: 1.2.0
Date: 2026-08-28
  Features:
    - Input Tank and Output Tank: 1x1 buffers holding 2800 units that tell the drones what they are
      for. An ordinary tank is neutral - drones may take from it and pour into it - so standing next
      to a refinery it says nothing. These say one thing each. Tankers only fill an input tank and
      only empty an output tank, and neither can be mistaken for storage.
    - An input tank accepts only the fluid the machines beside it actually take. It works that out
      from their recipes, so there is nothing to set. A tank by an oil refinery asks for crude and
      ignores everything else passing through the area.
    - A recipe that takes two fluids is handled by placing two input tanks. They divide the work
      between themselves - one takes the water, the other the crude - and hold to it. The split is
      computed from tank and fluid order rather than remembered, so it is the same for every player
      in multiplayer and re-sorts itself when a tank is added or removed. A tank that already holds
      one of the fluids keeps it; a tank stuck holding something the machine cannot take is skipped
      rather than being counted as covering a fluid it can never deliver.
  Changes:
    - Tank-to-tank runs are now allowed when one of the two has a declared role. The ban existed
      because two ordinary tanks holding the same fluid make A to B and B to A equally good, so
      drones would shuttle it in circles. A declared role removes that ambiguity - and carrying from
      an output tank to an input tank is the main thing these are for.
    - The Fluid Station description now points at the new tanks instead of telling you to place
      storage tanks and pick them by hand.

Version: 1.1.0
Date: 2026-08-27
  Modding:
    - Added a remote interface so companion mods can ask this one where the power network reaches
      and how to route through it, rather than building a second index of the same poles. Mods can
      load each other's files, but each has its own storage, so shared code alone would have meant
      the same network being indexed twice. Interface "early-drones" exposes route_is_covered,
      find_path, point_status and version.

Version: 1.0.1
Date: 2026-08-27
  Info:
    - Transport stations now show their measured throughput in items per second, so you can compare
      a station against a belt directly and see whether adding more drones actually achieved
      anything. A station picks one job per turn and gets a turn every 20 ticks, which on short
      routes caps it at three runs a second no matter how many drones sit in the slot - a ceiling
      that was impossible to work out from the outside. Only what actually reaches the receiver is
      counted, so a full furnace does not flatter the number.

Version: 1.0.0
Date: 2026-08-27
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed a crash that hit anyone who opened their own character's equipment grid while this mod
      was installed. The refresh loop assumed the window a player has open is always a building and
      asked it for its name; a character's equipment grid has no name and the game stopped dead.
      Vehicle grids were unaffected, since those open the vehicle itself. Reported on 0.4.0 - thank
      you, and sorry it took a release to fix.
  Info:
    - Tier 3 is complete: long-range stations, the Fluid Station and tanker drones, all unlocked by
      Long Range Drones. Everything the mod set out to do - replacing belts, drills and most
      inserters across three tiers, for items and now fluids alike - is in place.

Version: 0.9.8
Date: 2026-08-27
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed fluid going missing when a tank was connected to pipes. Transfers were written straight
      into the entity's own fluid storage, which is correct for a tank standing on its own but not
      for one joined to a pipe network: in 2.0 that makes it part of a fluid segment, a separate
      thing with its own contents and its own distribution, and the two writes fought each other.
      Moving fluid is now left to the engine, which handles the segment properly and reports how
      much it actually moved, so the amounts add up by construction rather than by my arithmetic.

Version: 0.9.7
Date: 2026-08-27
  Bugfixes:
    - Undelivered fluid no longer disappears when it has nowhere obvious to go. A tanker now tries
      the sender, then the receiver, then its own station before giving up, and if all three are
      full it says so above the station instead of quietly deleting the load. Previously it tried
      the sender alone, so a load coming back to a tank that had refilled in the meantime was lost.
    - A tanker caught in flight by its station being removed now tries to put its load back rather
      than taking it with it.
  Info:
    - New command /drone_fluids reports how much fluid is in the air right now. A tanker takes its
      load when it leaves and hands it over when it lands, so with several runs going the tanks
      always look short by a few thousand units that are not missing at all - they are in transit.

Version: 0.9.6
Date: 2026-08-27
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed the mod failing to load with "Failed to load locale". A two-paragraph building
      description had been written with real line breaks instead of the two-character escape, and
      the second paragraph then read as a line with no key at all.

Version: 0.9.5
Date: 2026-08-27
  Bugfixes:
    - Drones can supply boilers and other small vessels again. A boiler holds 200 units, so filling
      it to the 90% mark means delivering 180 - less than the 200 minimum a run had to carry, which
      ruled boilers out entirely. The minimum now never demands more than the receiver can hold in
      the first place. The minimum on the sending side is unchanged, so tankers still wait for a
      tank to fill rather than scraping hundreds out of a machine.
  Info:
    - How much a tanker actually carries depends on the receiver: 1000 into a storage tank, 900 into
      a machine's 1000-unit input, 180 into a boiler. It is capped by whichever runs out first - the
      drone's own capacity, what the sender has spare, or what the receiver still has room for.

Version: 0.9.4
Date: 2026-08-27
  Info:
    - A fluid station pointed straight at a refinery now explains itself instead of sitting idle.
      A vanilla machine holds 100 units inside it and the smallest run worth flying is 200, so a
      machine can never be a sender on its own. The panel now says so and tells you to put a
      storage tank next to the machine and point at that, which is what you want anyway: a tanker
      then takes 1000 units in one trip rather than dribbling hundreds back and forth.
    - The same message appears in area mode when the only fluids in range sit inside machines.
    - The building description now carries the same advice: a tank before the machine and a tank
      after it.

Version: 0.9.3
Date: 2026-08-27
  Bugfixes:
    - Tankers fly back to their station after a delivery instead of disappearing over the receiver.
      Vanishing on the far side of the map freed the station's limit immediately, so a replacement
      launched at once and it looked as though the station was conjuring drones out of nothing.
      Fluid that could not be delivered now travels back with the drone rather than being written
      off where it stood.

Version: 0.9.2
Date: 2026-08-27
  Features:
    - The Fluid Station can now be given a fixed route: point it at a sender and a receiver and it
      hauls between those two and nothing else. On a fixed route, tank to tank is allowed, which is
      the whole reason for the mode - it is how you get crude from a remote oil field back to base.
      Area mode still refuses tank to tank, because with two tanks holding the same fluid and room
      in both, a run either way scores the same and drones would pour it back and forth forever. On
      a fixed route you set the direction, so that ambiguity does not exist.
    - Picking by hand is not permission to raid a machine: machines still only give from an output
      and only take into an input, on a fixed route exactly as in area mode.

Version: 0.9.1
Date: 2026-08-27
  Changes:
    - Drones follow the power network on the way home too, instead of cutting straight back across
      open ground. The route is worked out from wherever the drone happens to be, so it holds even
      for a drone turning back halfway through a run.
  Bugfixes:
    - The fluid station panel stayed on screen after you opened a different building. Every
      building in this mod is a container, so they all share the same window anchor and the old
      panel simply sat there next to the new one. All panels are now cleared from one list, so a
      future one cannot be forgotten the way this one was.
  Info:
    - The fluid station panel now says why it is idle: no tankers, no power, every tanker already
      out, nothing to collect in range, nobody wanting fluid, or the target being off the network.
      Standing drones next to a full power bar tell you nothing on their own.

Version: 0.9.0
Date: 2026-08-27
  Major Features:
    - Electric drones follow the power network instead of flying straight at their target. One line
      of poles between two bases is now enough. The old rule asked that the straight line between
      sender and receiver stay near poles, which sounds reasonable until you notice that poles run
      along walkways while drones fly straight - so over any real distance you had to scatter poles
      across the map purely so drones could travel, which is the opposite of what this mod is for.
    - Two poles count as connected when they are no further apart than twice a drone's range, since
      the midpoint of that hop is exactly at the limit of both. Drones then route along the network
      and take the shortest way through it, going the long way round a bend rather than refusing
      the trip.
  Optimizations:
    - Whether a trip is possible at all is answered by comparing which part of the network each end
      belongs to, which costs nothing and can be asked while ranking candidates. The actual route
      is worked out once, when a drone is dispatched, and remembered for the trips that follow.
  Info:
    - A point-to-point station that cannot make a trip now marks whichever end is off the network,
      or says the two ends sit on networks that are not joined to each other.

Version: 0.8.3
Date: 2026-08-27
  Changes:
    - Removed the slot legend from the transport station panel.
  Info:
    - When a point-to-point station refuses a run for lack of network coverage, it now marks the
      exact spot on the route where coverage runs out, with a circle showing how far a drone of
      that tier may stray from a pole. It also says whether the problem is a missing pole or a pole
      whose network carries no power, because "out of network reach" next to a line of poles eight
      tiles apart tells you nothing about where to put the next one.

Version: 0.8.2
Date: 2026-08-27
  Bugfixes:
    - Fluid stations never sent a single tanker. Whether a container may be drawn from was decided
      purely from its fluidbox production type, and a vanilla storage tank does not declare one at
      all - its definition is just a volume and some pipe connections. Every tank therefore read as
      sealed and the list of available fluids always came back empty. Tanks and offshore pumps are
      now recognised by what they are, and only machines are judged by their fluidbox roles, which
      is where those roles are actually declared.

Version: 0.8.1
Date: 2026-08-27
  Features:
    - The Fluid Station has its own panel now: power charge, tankers in flight against the fleet
      size, and sliders for the tanker limit, the scan radius and how full a receiver should be
      filled before the station stops bothering with it.
  Balancing:
    - Tier 3 drones may now stray 40 tiles from the power network instead of 30. That restores the
      10 / 20 / 40 progression the tiers were designed around, so tier 3 is twice the freedom of
      tier 2 rather than one and a half times.
  Bugfixes:
    - Opening a Fluid Station could crash the game. The panel was attached to the wrong branch of
      the window handler, where it only ran for an entity that no longer existed.

Version: 0.8.0
Date: 2026-08-27
  Major Features:
    - Fluids. A new tier 3 building, the Fluid Station, hauls liquids around your base without a
      single pipe. It has no pipe connections and stores nothing: tanker drones draw fluid straight
      out of storage tanks and machine outputs, and pour it straight into whatever needs it. The
      station only decides which trip is worth making.
    - Fluids follow the same rules as items, so there is no second set to learn. A storage tank is
      the fluid equivalent of a chest and can both give and receive. A machine gives only from its
      outputs and receives only into its inputs, so nothing steals a machine's own feedstock. Tank
      to tank is refused, being the one pairing that would let fluid circle forever.
    - A tanker carries 1000 units per trip and only pours into a container that is empty or already
      holds the same fluid at the same temperature, so nothing is silently mixed behind your back.
      Fluid is taken from the world on arrival rather than on dispatch, and a load that cannot be
      delivered goes back where it came from instead of vanishing.

Version: 0.7.4
Date: 2026-08-27
  Info:
    - Groundwork for fluid hauling: the rules, the job selection, the dispatch cycle and the flight
      states are in place and tested. Nothing is craftable yet, so this changes nothing in game -
      the buildings and drones themselves arrive with their artwork.

Version: 0.7.3
Date: 2026-08-27
  Features:
    - Added a startup setting for drone transparency. A factory running thousands of drones ends up
      hidden underneath them, and fading the drones gives the base back without giving up the fleet.
      The value is multiplied into the existing tier colouring rather than replacing it, so tier 2
      and tier 3 drones keep telling themselves apart. At full opacity the prototypes are left
      untouched, since no tint at all is cheaper than a neutral one.

Version: 0.7.2
Date: 2026-08-27
  Changes:
    - You can now walk between two of this mod's buildings placed side by side, the way you can
      between vanilla ones. Their collision boxes were 0.15 tiles too wide on every side, leaving a
      0.3 tile gap where a character needs 0.4, so the graphics promised a path that did not exist.
      They now use the same margins vanilla does. Applies to every building in the mod, all tiers.

Version: 0.7.1
Date: 2026-08-27
  Bugfixes:
    - Tier 3 mining depots and transport stations were missing from the list of the mod's own
      protected buildings. Area mode treated them as ordinary chests, so drones could carry off the
      drones sitting in their loading slot and deliver goods straight into slots that are supposed
      to hold fuel and drones. Tier 1 and tier 2 buildings were never affected. The list is now
      generated from one pattern rather than typed out per tier, so a future tier cannot be missed.

Version: 0.7.0
Date: 2026-08-27
  Optimizations:
    - Electric stations no longer grind the game to a crawl. Checking whether a route stays inside
      power coverage samples the whole path every two tiles, and that check was being run on every
      candidate a station considered - even though only the winner's route matters. On a fully
      electric base this alone cost 44 ms per pass against 5.5 ms for all the rest of the choosing
      put together, and dragged the game down to 23 frames per second. Candidates are now scored
      first and the coverage check runs down the ranking until one passes, which is usually the
      first. The station picks exactly the same job as before, out of the same candidates.
  Info:
    - /drone_profile was measuring job selection without the coverage check, so it reported 5.5 ms
      where the real pass took 44. It now measures what the cycle actually runs.

Version: 0.6.3
Date: 2026-08-27
  Info:
    - /drone_profile now breaks the work cycle down by section - mining depots, transport stations,
      fuel stations, and the whole pass. Measuring the transport stations alone accounted for only
      a quarter of the time the game attributes to this mod, so the rest had to be found rather
      than guessed at.

Version: 0.6.2
Date: 2026-08-27
  Info:
    - /drone_profile now also measures the flight loop, which moves every drone in the air and had
      never been measured. It cannot be called an extra time without nudging the drones, so the
      command orders a measurement and the next ordinary pass reports its own cost a moment later.

Version: 0.6.1
Date: 2026-08-27
  Bugfixes:
    - A power pole only extends drone coverage now if it belongs to a network that actually
      generates electricity. A line of poles running off into empty land used to widen tier 2 and
      tier 3 range exactly as much as a network fed by a reactor, which defeats the point of the
      electric tiers. A network with boilers that have run out of fuel still counts as a network;
      a pole that was never connected to a source does not.

Version: 0.6.0
Date: 2026-08-27
  Bugfixes:
    - Power poles built after a map scan were never added to the coverage index, so tier 2 and 3
      drone range could only ever shrink until the mod was reloaded. Two modules registered
      handlers for the same build events, and Factorio keeps only one handler per event, so the
      second registration silently replaced the first. Building a new power line now extends drone
      coverage immediately, as it always should have. If tier 2 or 3 stations have been reporting
      targets as out of network reach next to perfectly good poles, this was why.
  Info:
    - All build and destroy event registration now lives in one place, and the mod's own check
      script fails if any event is ever wired up twice.

Version: 0.5.5
Date: 2026-08-27
  Optimizations:
    - Cargo icons are now only drawn for drones near a player. Measurements on a live base pinned
      them as the most expensive thing this mod draws: with 144 drones in the air, icons cost twice
      as many dropped frames as the exhaust trails did, and most of them hung over drones nobody
      was looking at. What a drone carries is remembered either way, so an icon appears the moment
      it comes into view and the feature looks unchanged.

Version: 0.5.4
Date: 2026-08-27
  Features:
    - Added a setting to turn off the floating cargo icons above drones. Together with the exhaust
      setting from 0.5.3, each visual effect can now be switched off on its own, which is what you
      want when tracking down where lost frames are going. Turning icons off clears the ones
      already in the air immediately rather than waiting for each delivery to finish.

Version: 0.5.3
Date: 2026-08-27
  Optimizations:
    - Exhaust trails are no longer drawn where nobody is looking. A smoke puff lives 120 ticks and
      every fuel drone makes one every 16, so a large fleet keeps over a thousand big translucent
      particles alive at once - by far the most expensive thing this mod asks the graphics card to
      draw, and most of them were behind the player. Puffs are now only created near a player.
  Features:
    - Added a setting to turn drone exhaust trails off entirely, for anyone running a fleet large
      enough that even the visible smoke costs frames. Electric drones never smoked either way.

Version: 0.5.2
Date: 2026-08-27
  Optimizations:
    - Job selection no longer slows down as your drone fleet grows. Reservations made by drones
      already in flight used to be recounted by walking the whole fleet for every machine and every
      item considered, which meant tens of thousands of passes per station with 150 drones in the
      air. They are now gathered once per decision and looked up. The choice a station makes is
      identical down to the item.
    - A furnace's recipe is read once per furnace instead of once per furnace and item.
    - Stations search their area for containers once instead of three times.
  Info:
    - /drone_profile now measures the reservation index, which is what the cycle actually does.

Version: 0.5.1
Date: 2026-08-26
  Optimizations:
    - Fixed the stutter that appeared as the drone count grew. Stations no longer all pick their
      jobs in the same tick: the list is split into five groups and one group is served every four
      ticks, so each station still gets its turn once every 20 ticks exactly as before, but the
      cost is spread instead of landing on a single tick. The peak no longer grows with the number
      of stations you build.
    - Job selection itself is several times cheaper. Reading a pallet's contents used to walk all
      500 slots for every station on every cycle; it now asks the engine for the totals in one
      call, and containers found during a scan are reused for the rest of that scan.
  Info:
    - /drone_profile now reports two figures: the total work per full cycle and the worst single
      tick, measured against the 16.7 ms budget. Only the second one is what you feel as a stutter.

Version: 0.5.0
Date: 2026-08-26
  Features:
    - Added tier 3: the Long-Range Mining Depot and Transport Station, unlocked by Long-Range Drone
      Logistics (automation, logistic and chemical science). They carry 25 items, scan 90 tiles,
      run 20 drones and fly at roughly 13 tiles per second, drawing power through an 80 MJ buffer
      at up to 40 MW.

Version: 0.4.0
Date: 2026-08-26
  Features:
    - Drones now carry a floating icon of their cargo, so a glance at the factory shows what is
      moving where instead of a swarm of identical machines.
  Info:
    - Added a changelog covering every release so far.

Version: 0.3.3
Date: 2026-08-26
  Bugfixes:
    - Tier 2 stations no longer stall next to reachable machines. Power coverage is now a selection
      criterion rather than a filter applied afterwards, so a station picks the best reachable job
      instead of rejecting the best job and ending its cycle empty-handed.
  Gui:
    - Transport Station panel now reads its tier: it shows the correct drone limit and scan range
      default for tier 2 instead of the tier 1 values.

Version: 0.3.2
Date: 2026-08-26
  Bugfixes:
    - Fuel Station could be clogged with unrelated items. Area mode treated it as an ordinary
      container and delivered goods collected from furnaces into its fuel buffer, eventually
      starving the whole fuel network. All mod buildings with protected slots are now excluded
      from being delivery targets.
    - Fuel Station buffers now eject anything that is not fuel, which unclogs existing saves.
  Changes:
    - Transport and Fuel Station buffers are no longer valid sources for area mode. They are
      transit buffers; drawing from them caused goods to circulate and stole fuel from the network.
      Mining Depot buffers remain valid sources.

Version: 0.3.1
Date: 2026-08-26
  Bugfixes:
    - Tier 2 stations charged far too slowly to keep their drones flying. The hidden power receiver
      was limited to 600 kW while a fully staffed depot needs close to 9 MW at peak. Raised the
      input limit to 20 MW and the buffer to 40 MJ. This does not increase power consumption;
      it only removes an artificial bottleneck on refilling the buffer.

Version: 0.3.0
Date: 2026-08-26
  Major Features:
    - Tier 2: Mining Depot II and Transport Station II. Electric instead of fuel-burning, faster,
      roomier, and tied to the power network.
    - Drones of electric stations must stay within 20 tiles of a power pole. In practice this means
      poles may stand at most 40 tiles apart along a route, since the farthest point of a leg lies
      halfway between two poles. Routes are validated at dispatch, so a drone is never stranded
      mid-flight.
  Features:
    - New console command /drone_coverage <tiles> draws power coverage on the map, so pole layout
      can be checked before building anything.
  Graphics:
    - Tier 2 buildings and drones reuse the tier 1 artwork with a desaturating tint, reading as a
      cleaned-up version of the same machine rather than a different one.
  Sounds:
    - Electric drones leave no exhaust trail.
  Optimizations:
    - Power coverage uses a spatial index of poles updated incrementally, rather than searching the
      map for every drone.

Version: 0.2.2
Date: 2026-08-26
  Locale:
    - Full English translation. Every string moved out of the code into locale files, so the mod is
      now completely bilingual instead of showing English item names inside Polish panels.

Version: 0.2.1
Date: 2026-08-26
  Balancing:
    - Mining drones now bring back 5 ore per trip instead of 1, mining for 2.5 seconds instead of 1.
      Flight time is fixed overhead, so amortising it over a larger load roughly triples throughput
      while keeping the energy cost per ore unchanged.
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed a crash when a drone finished mining a resource patch that had fewer units left than the
      drone could carry. Depleted resources are now destroyed rather than set to zero, which the
      engine rejects.

Version: 0.2.0
Date: 2026-08-26
  Major Features:
    - Transport Station with two modes. Area mode picks donor and receiver pairs on its own in both
      directions: containers feed machines, and machines hand finished products back to containers.
      Point-to-point mode hauls one chosen item along one chosen route.
    - Fuel Station keeps every mod building and vanilla burner machine in range stocked with fuel.
      It burns from the same supply it delivers, so nothing needs to refuel it.
    - Technology tree. Pallets are available from the start, mining is gated behind Automation and
      logistics behind Logistics.
  Features:
    - Range and route overlay on ALT+Q.
    - Storage Pallets can be assigned to an item by hand, and unassigned ones are shared out
      automatically so a single resource cannot claim every pallet.
    - A Fuel Station can reserve one pallet as its own fuel source, locked against other stations.
  Balancing:
    - Target selection now scores every candidate by how much a trip actually moves, minus route
      length, instead of taking the first match. Serving a target reduces its deficit, so rotation
      emerges on its own.
    - Drones no longer fly for fewer than three items, since a trip costs the same fuel regardless
      of load.
  Changes:
    - Furnaces only receive ingredients of the recipe they are already running, so automatic
      delivery can never switch a factory over to a different product. Idle furnaces are started
      only by an explicitly chosen starter resource.
  Sounds:
    - Engine loop while flying, and a quiet impact when a drone reaches a resource patch.
  Bugfixes:
    - Cargo is no longer lost when a buffer or pallet fills up mid-flight; leftovers return to the
      station or spill on the ground.
    - Drone limits are enforced on the slot itself, so a full stack placed by hand no longer
      bypasses them.
  Scripting:
    - Building settings now survive mod updates instead of resetting on every version bump.

Version: 0.1.0
Date: 2026-08-25
  Major Features:
    - Storage Pallet, a 2x2 container holding 500 slots of a single item type.
    - Mining Depot with mining and transport drones that gather resources without placing drills.
    - Drones fly over terrain along curved paths, burning solid fuel from their station.