Changelog

Version: 0.1.6
Date: 2026-11-09
  Changes:
    - Freighters carry 750 fluid at a time. Freighter fluid capacity now has ten levels, 375 more fluid each, up to 4,500.
    - Freighters carry 2 stacks of items at a time. Freighter item capacity now has ten levels, one more stack each, up to 12. A save that already finished the old five levels keeps them and can research five more.
  Bugfixes:
    - Opening a liquid depot now shows your inventory on the left of its window, as an item depot does, so you can pick a freighter from it. On a liquid request or buffer depot, shift-click puts that stack in the freighter slot, and ctrl-click puts in every freighter you are carrying. A liquid provider has no freighter slot.
    - Fixed liquid freighters endlessly fetching and delivering almost nothing, such as the last fraction of a unit pumps leave in a provider's tank, or the little that pipes drained out of the requesting tank. Freighters now never set off for less than 100 of a fluid: a liquid request or buffer depot waits until it has room for 100 and a depot it fetches from has 100 to give, and says so. A request below 100 is still fetched whole.
    - Fixed freighters stuck at the mouth of some road tunnels: coming out of a tunnel whose mouth faces west or north, west or north of the map's centre, a freighter found no way on. A loaded one turned round, went back through the tunnel and returned its load to the provider, so the request was never delivered.

Version: 0.1.5
Date: 2026-11-08
  Features:
    - Startup settings for how many slots provider, request, buffer and fuel depots have, each kind separately, 48 by default, and for the size of the fuel depot's liquid fuel tank, 25,000 by default.
    - Road tunnels: freighters can now go under your factory. Build two road tunnels facing each other, with up to 18 tiles between them, each at the end of a road with its mouth to it, like underground belts. A request depot whose provider (or fuel depot) is on another road network that tunnels join sends its freighters through them: they drive into one tunnel, disappear, and come out of the other after as long as driving that far on road takes. Freighters use tunnels only to reach another road network, never as a shortcut on the same one. Unlocked by the new Road tunnels research, after Freight system and Logistics.
    - Provider and buffer depots can join the logistic network: tick "Logistic robots can use it" in the depot's window, and robots take items from a provider depot as from a passive provider chest, and use a buffer depot as a buffer chest. It's off by default, also for depots already built. Copy and Paste settings, blueprints and undo carry it. Liquid depots are unchanged.
  Graphics:
    - Destroyed depots now leave wrecks of themselves instead of a steel chest's or storage tank's remains: caved in, burnt and scattered about, in the depot's own colours. Destroyed freighters leave a freighter wreck instead of a car's. Like the game's own, wrecks disappear after 15 minutes.
  Changes:
    - Provider and buffer depots are now logistic containers. Ones built before this update, and their ghosts and blueprints, are replaced by the new depots as they are loaded or built, keeping their facing, contents, settings, wires and freighters.
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed request and buffer depots accepting a request for more items than their slots hold (such as 1,000,000 iron plates). A larger request is now set to as much of the item as fills every slot, which the depot's window shows: with the default 48 slots, 4,800 of an item that stacks to 100, 480 of one that stacks to 10.

Version: 0.1.4
Date: 2026-11-08
  Features:
    - Request and buffer depots, item and liquid, have a "Full loads only" checkbox. Ticked, a freighter sets off only when it can come back full: a provider (or buffer) depot has a whole load for it, and the depot has room for one. Freighters no longer drive out for a single ore while they could carry ten stacks. A request smaller than one load is fetched whole. Copy and Paste settings and blueprints carry it; it's off by default.
    - Blueprint parametrisation works with request and buffer depots, item and liquid: a blueprint of a depot with a request now offers its item or fluid and its amount as parameters, and one with freighters how many, and the depots built from it request what you fill in and ask for that many freighters. Pasting such a blueprint over the same kind of depot already built now sets its request and freighters too. Blueprints made before this update still keep their requests and freighters, but need setting up again (select new contents) to offer them.
  Graphics:
    - Depots are lower, so they hide less of what stands behind them: item depots and the Fuel depot now rise about 0.9 tiles above their footprint instead of 1.3, liquid depots about 0.7 instead of 1.0. Their footprint, pipe connections, belts and loading zone are unchanged.
  Changes:
    - You now run 50% faster on road, as on Transport Drones' road (it was 30%, as on stone path).
  Bugfixes:
    - Construction robots now repair damaged freighters on the road, as they do your other vehicles. Freighters still drive faster than robots fly, so robots mostly catch up with them while they stop to load or unload.
    - Fixed a freighter killed by a script (from the console, the map editor or another mod) going straight back into its request depot as if it had come home: it is now lost, and the depot asks construction robots for a replacement, which they must bring from storage.
    - Fixed an open request depot window showing "Request from buffer depots" as it was when opened: when another player, Copy and Paste settings or a mod changed it, the checkbox now follows.
    - Fixed request and buffer depots all sending freighters to a provider the moment its circuit condition switched it back on (for example above a minimum it keeps), taking it far below that minimum. A provider or buffer depot reading its own contents now counts what freighters already on their way will take, so it gets no more freighters once those would switch it off.
    - Freighters on their way to a provider or buffer depot that is switched off by its circuit condition, or that no longer has enough for them because an inserter or a player took items out, now go to another depot with the item instead of arriving to find nothing. The ones sent first still get their load. A freighter is sent elsewhere only once per trip, also when the depot it was heading for is removed: if no other depot has the item, that depot can't serve it either, or its own depot needs nothing more by then, it comes home empty, filling up at a fuel depot on the way if it needs to.
    - A request or buffer depot filled some other way (by hand or by an inserter) now lets go of what its freighters on their way out had claimed, so other depots can have that stock at once, and a freighter left with nothing to fetch comes home instead of driving to the provider to load nothing.
    - Delivering freighters now have headlights at night: the base car's light cones, made shorter, narrower and dimmer for the small freighter.
    - Fixed liquid request and liquid buffer depots accepting a request larger than their tank holds (such as 1,000,000 for a 25,000 tank). A larger request is now set to the tank's size, which the depot's window shows.

Version: 0.1.3
Date: 2026-11-07
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed freighters brought by construction robots disappearing from request and buffer depots whose contents an inserter or loader takes out: the inserter took them onto the belt before they reached the freighter slot, and the depot asked robots for more, over and over. Robots now bring freighters into a hidden chest under the depot that inserters can't reach. Freighters you put in the depot's chest yourself still move into the slot.

Version: 0.1.2
Date: 2026-11-07
  Bugfixes:
    - Fixed a crash when a request depot's freighter was too low on fuel for the trip and no fuel depot was reachable: the freighter now stays home as intended.
    - Undoing the removal of a depot or road network monitor (cut, deconstruction planner or mined by hand) brings back its settings: a request depot gets its request back and asks robots for its freighters again, and priority, circuit conditions and monitor readings return too.
  Modding:
    - Mods can declare their items' colors, which freighters then paint their cargo with: a mod-data prototype with data_type "item-colors" and data = { items = { [item name] = color } }. A declared color comes before every other rule, so by-products no recipe makes (such as Yuoki's slag) and items whose recipes mislead get the right paint.

Version: 0.1.1
Date: 2026-11-06
  Features:
    - Recipes: depots, the freighter, road and the road network monitor are no longer free. Item depots take a steel chest and the belt they show, liquid depots a storage tank (and pumps to fetch fluid), and the fuel depot a steel chest, a belt and an engine unit. The freighter takes 2 engine units and its full tank's fuel, 5 coal. Road is slag: 5 stone and 5 iron ore make 10 tiles.
    - With Space Age, freighters can also be made with 10 carbon in place of the coal, for planets without coal.
    - Research, as in Transport Drones: "Freight system" (after Engine) unlocks the provider, request, buffer and fuel depots, the freighter and road, which are locked until then. "Liquid freight" (after Freight system and Fluid handling) unlocks the liquid depots, and "Road network monitor" (after Freight system and Circuit network) the road network monitor. Games started before this get those three researched, so they keep their recipes. "Freighter speed" makes delivering freighters 20% faster per level, four levels and then infinite research. "Freighter item capacity" adds a stack to each load per level, and "Freighter fluid capacity" (after Liquid freight) 50 fluid, five levels each.
    - Startup settings for the tank size of liquid provider depots and of liquid buffer depots, each 25,000 by default.
    - A delivering freighter's cargo bays show its load: light grey while empty, then the color of the item or fluid it picked up (water blue, copper orange, sulfur yellow...) on the way back. Cargo with no clear color keeps the usual slate blue.
    - In alt mode, loaded freighters show the icon of the item or fluid they carry. Empty freighters show none.
    - Freighters run over enemy units on the road, as trains do, dealing impact damage. They never harm players or other freighters, and never stop or turn aside for enemies.
    - Freighters out on deliveries make a little pollution, as Transport Drones' drones do.
    - A request depot whose freighter is destroyed asks construction robots for a replacement, as soon as its chest has a free stack for it. You can also put one in by hand.
    - A delivering freighter that is destroyed explodes and leaves a wreck, which disappears after 15 minutes, as the drivable freighter does.
    - Freighters need fuel. They come with a full tank, burn it as they drive, and fill up at fuel depots by themselves: one too low for where it is going stops at the fuel depot nearest by road first, then carries on. Any fuel item or burnable fluid works, from any mod.
    - Freighters too low on fuel to reach the provider stay home until there is fuel to get, never waiting at an empty fuel depot. The request depot's light is yellow while the fuel depots have no fuel and red when no fuel depot is connected by road; they set off as soon as one has fuel. Fuel in other depots stays ordinary cargo.
    - Hovering a freighter on the road shows its fuel (green, yellow when low, red when dry), and the request depot's window shows the fuel of the freighters in its slot.
    - A fuel item worth more than a freighter's tank (some mods' items hold 10 GJ) goes in whole, and the freighter keeps all of it until used up.
    - Petroleum gas burns for freighters, 50 to a full tank, unless another mod already gives it a fuel value.
    - Fuel depots take fuel items (by hand, inserters or robots) and burnable fluids (by pipe). Their window shows the fluid, with a button to flush it.
    - Map settings for a freighter's fuel tank (20 MJ by default) and how much it burns a tile (10 kJ by default; 0 turns fuel off).
    - The mod has a thumbnail, the freighter, shown in the in-game mod browser and on the mod portal.
    - Provider, request and buffer depots (item and liquid) have an Enable/disable circuit condition, like a logistic chest's: switched off, a depot sends no freighters and none come to fetch from it. The condition reads either the circuit network, leaving out the depot's own contents, or only the depot's own contents.
    - Road network monitor: built beside road, it sends what the provider and buffer depots on that road network hold to the circuit network, like a roboport. It has its own grey and bronze look, matching the liquid depots. Open it to choose what it reads: what provider and buffer depots hold, what provider depots hold, what request depots hold, or what request depots still need.
    - With the Milestones mod, its milestones include your first freighter, 100 freighters (then every tenfold) and 1,000 road (then every tenfold), whatever preset is in use.
  Changes:
    - Mod setting tooltips are easier to read: each has icons, line breaks and colored text, with its range and default in green and yellow, and warnings in red.
    - Freighters can no longer be placed and driven like a car unless the new startup setting "Place freighters as cars" is turned on. Freighters already placed stay drivable.
    - Delivering freighters drive at about 4 tiles a second instead of 12, the default speed of Transport Drones' drones.
    - Every depot shows a circuit connector where red and green wires attach.
    - Freighters stop for 1 second at a depot's loading zone to load and to unload, instead of loading and unloading the moment they arrive.
    - Only belts, pipes and train tracks can be built on road. Depots and other buildings can't, though a depot's loading zone can be on road.
    - Freighters check for enemies to run over 3 times a second instead of 6, still covering all the ground they drove over.
    - On maps with many depots, finding providers and Fuel depots and working out what a request depot still needs take less time: depots look only at the depots on their own surface, and what freighters are bringing is kept up to date instead of added up each time.
    - Request and liquid request depots with "Request from buffer depots" unticked now fall back to buffer depots for what no provider can supply, instead of ignoring them. Ticked, buffer depots still come first.
  Bugfixes:
    - Freighters no longer stop at junctions and slide sideways before turning, then drive on at an angle. They now swing through the turn and straighten out.
    - A freighter killed by enemies is now lost, with its cargo. Before, it could go back into its depot's freighter slot as if its route had failed.
    - Freighters requested for a request depot whose chest has no free stack (it is full of cargo, say) are now brought once a stack frees up, together with any more asked for meanwhile. Before, the request was dropped.
    - Large networks no longer stutter once a second. Request depots and freighters are now checked spread over each second instead of all in the same tick, and finding a provider no longer looks at every freighter in the game: on a map with 600 depots and 16,000 freighters, the slowest tick went from over a second to about 11 ms, and the mod's script time fell from 16 ms to under 1 ms a tick. Depots remember how far providers are by road for five minutes (forgetting it as soon as road changes) instead of asking the game's pathfinder every time, which also lets freighters set off sooner.
  Compatibility:
    - With Mining Drones, Mining Drones 2 Remastered or Mining Drones Mod installed, mining depots are item provider depots of what their drones mine: freighters fetch it from the tile behind the depot, opposite its mining area, where the depot lays road like any other depot. They have a priority like provider depots.
    - Fuel depots placed in earlier versions are removed when the save loads: the fuel depot is now a chest with a tank under it.
    - Marked Transport Drones and its Factorio 2.1 forks (Transport Drones (Continuous), Transport Drones (Continued, 2.1, Unofficial) and Transport Drones By Yunli) as incompatible.

Version: 0.1.0
  Features:
    - Road-bound freighters deliver items and fluids between provider, buffer and request depots.
    - Placeable freighters and seven depot designs with recolorable artwork.
  Info:
    - Development baseline: recipes are free, and fuel and balance are unfinished.