Freight Forwarding is a small overhaul with a focus on long-distance logistics variety.
Technology progression is carefully balanced around the customised procedural island map generation and resource placement. For effective transport, items must now be loaded into containers before travel, but since items are being transported so compactly, transfer from trains to ships is much more straightforward.
Use the basic resources (iron, copper, stone, and coal) to produce Automation and Logistics sciences. Unlocks:
- Mini trains
- Container loading
- Lead processing
Lead ore is required for Transport science and always spawns at the edge of your starting island, so trains are required to access it. Explore containerization of resources before loading them onto trains. Unlocks:
- Ships
- Basic oil processing
Oil only spawns in large offshore patches at sea, so you'll need to use oil rigs and tanker ships to retrieve it. Unlocks:
- Battery-powered trains
- Deep sea dredging
- Titanium processing
- Uranium processing
Titanium and Uranium only spawn on other continents, so you will load them into containers at their mines and transport the containers using combinations of ships and trains. Unlocks:
- Spidertron automation
- Hovercrafts
Expansion onto other continents for larger patches of basic resources will be required. Unlocks:
- Aircraft
- Cobalt processing
- Titansteel processing
Rocket parts require Titansteel, which can only be forged in naturally-occuring lava pools using steel and titanium plates for the ultimate logistics challenge! Combat aircraft have a very large radar area, so can be used to explore large areas of the map using remotes.
- Stack sizes of all raw and intermediate resources has been halved compared to vanilla
- One container holds 20 stacks (10x density compared to vanilla)
- Inventory sizes have been reduced to compensate, so trains and ships have had their inventory sizes divided by 10
- Other vehicles and containers have had their inventory sizes divided by 2
- Containers are very heavy, so transporting them by logistic robots is prohibited
- Empty containers can be loaded into spidertrons using docks, but spidertrons also cannot carry loaded containers
- Landfill and rail bridges cannot be placed on deep water
- Landfill can now be removed by right-clicking on it whilst holding a tile in hand
- Stone bricks and concrete cannot be placed on landfill
- Custom procedural map generation originally based on Island Start featuring a completely isolated starting island surrounded by larger islands and continents
- Resource patches are larger but further apart
- Resource spawning is based on invisible 'regions' so certain resources will often spawn near each other and even larger continents won't feature too many different resource types
- Oil only spawns in water
- Seismic scanner scans a bigger range than radar, but only through connected landmasses
- Ideal for scanning the entirety of a newly discovered island
- Cannot be placed within 16 tiles of water
- Seamounts (underwater mountains) spawn in deep water
- Place dredging platforms on them, which are limited in size
- Dredge up ferrous and cupric nodules which can provide infinite supplies of iron, copper, and stone, supplementing your regular resource mines
- Later, unlock cobalt crust, which can be processed into cobalt ingots on land
- Lava pools occur naturally in far-away islands
- Steel plates and titanium plates can be inserted into lava pools to create hot titansteel plates (which also produces slag as a byproduct)
- Hot titansteel plates can be cooled into Titansteel plates, which produces lots of steam (so doubles up as a power source)
- Titansteel can be reheated in small lava pools if you want to expand the power production
- Slag requires sulfuric acid to process, which returns small amounts of iron ore and stone
- Titansteel is used in rocket construction
- Battery items can be charged in the charging station
- Energy stored in charged batteries can be used in the discharging station
- Floating power poles (from Cargo Ships) have been removed, so on each island you will have to setup power production or import electricity using containerized charged batteries
- Regular trains require charged batteries for power (mini trains still use burnable fuel)
Some of Freight Forwarding's functionality is provided by other, required, mods. Many things from these mods have been changed to fit into the overall balance and progression, so if you find a bug in them, please confirm that it still occurs without Freight Forwarding enabled before reporting it to that mod's owner, or report it to me and I can let you know whether it's my bug or not.
- Intermodal Containers: developed from Deadlock's Crating Machine, provides container loading and unloading functionality
- Water mods
- Cargo Ships: large inventories for transport across water; oil rigs for drilling oil in the ocean
- Canal Builder Simplified: allows placing shallow water adjacent to existing water
- Beautiful Bridge Railway for Cargoships
- Underwater Pipes: construct offshore oil rig infrastructure without landfill
- Hovercrafts: easier navigation across both water and land
- Mini Trains: adds small trains; regular trains only use batteries and are unlocked later
- Spidertron Patrols: useful for transporting items which can't be loaded into containers
- Lex's Aircraft: late-game alternative to spidertrons, for automation of product logistics over land and sea
- BZ Lead
- BZ Titanium
I'd recommend installing Freight Forwarding Pack, which provides a few extra challenges in other areas of gameplay.
Enemy difficulty has not been changed, but because of the island/continent-based map generation, enemies may be easier than normal. I'd recommend Armoured Biters (make sure to enable custom nests in mod settings), Explosive Biters, Frost Biters, and Toxic Biters if you want an extra challenge.
Compatible with AAI Industry and Krastorio2. For additional complexity, you can try installing other BZ Ores, although I haven't tested them so they don't have the custom resource spawning and there may be tech/progression softlocks. Not compatible any other overhaul mods (such as Bob's+Angel's and Space Exploration). Maybe in the future I will add compatibility with some overhauls, perhaps Industrial Revolution, or Exotic Industries, but this is unlikely to ever happen. Let me know if you'd be interested in any particular overhaul compatibility.
For quality of life, you are free to choose your own. You can see my general recommendations here.
Other small-to-medium mods will probably work, although may break the intended balance/progression. Fully compatible with Alien Biomes.
Thank you to everyone who's contributed to the mods used in Freight Forwarding. In particular: Deadlock989, shanemadden, schnurrebutz, robot256, Klonan, Sacredanarchy, brevven, and lexsus. Thank you to Stringweasel for the seismic scanner graphics (from Biter Power). Thank you to FragJacker for the battery charging/discharging station graphics (from SE Space Trains). Thank you to Yehn for Island Start, which this mod's map generation is based on. Thank you to PantherX and Kirazy for the dredging platform tile graphics (from Dectorio). Thank you to Subnautica for the ferrous nodule, cupric nodule, and cobalt ingot icons. Thank you to RedRafe, Ray1claw, ElephantInTheRoom and others from my discord for feedback and suggestions. If anyone would like to contribute better graphics, please get in touch!