... On the rewards: Integrate one of the mods that add a air scrubber building to remove pollution/spores from the air... some vehicles like the Airship and Aircrafts... maybe a Advanced Centrifuge that allows to process Helium into Helium-3 and uranium recipes with +50 base productivity... plasma ...

... in this case platforms lifted by balloons.

- Like in Maraxsis, transportation use the "Spidetron Patrols" mod with a new vehicle (no trains), the Airship (and there is even a airship model from Industrial Revolution 3.. that perhaps could be used if the author is ok with it)

- On the matter of ...

... ideas on the air cargo transportation in the real world:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjBgEkbnX2I
In short, the video discovers the usage of airships for a large amount of cargo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship
Also, an airship need to grab a counterweight to unload the cargo, because it ...

... ideas on the air cargo transportation in the real world:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjBgEkbnX2I
In short, the video discovers the usage of airships for a large amount of cargo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship
Also, an airship need to grab a counterweight to unload the cargo, because it ...

Idea: an airship/blimp/zeppelin that can be given stations for safe automatable cargo transport over water, cliffs and hostile forces.

How it may work: I don't know how to code, so I'll list a few methods that may work.
1. Stations (mooring mast) if you tell an airship to go from station A to ...

... mods-data.factorio.com/assets/c8ea5d213a28e051aef411fd15b5305f45eda4e8.png

[Mod portal link]

Description
A mod that adds some sort of airships into the game. Based on the Aircraft mod, but hopefully more realistic.
The premise of the mod is that you can now use a small airship to move ...

Ok, that is also a problem with "realism clash": An airship cannot fly so fast as the trains currently do.

Think of it graphically: Something big, that is flying over the bots with 5-10 times more speed...

Well, I don't know, how that will come out in the end. My critics is perhaps just, cause this ...

... and would be something like 4x4. Similar to trains loading/unloading would be done using adjacent inserters.
2. This should be a dropship, not airship, that utilizes turbines with a vertical landing capability. It should be really fast or otherwise it is inferior to trains in all possible ways.
3 ...

Ok, that is also a problem with "realism clash": An airship cannot fly so fast as the trains currently do.

Think of it graphically: Something big, that is flying over the bots with 5-10 times more speed...

Well, I don't know, how that will come out in the end. My critics is perhaps just, cause this ...

Ok, that is also a problem with "realism clash": An airship cannot fly so fast as the trains currently do.

Think of it graphically: Something big, that is flying over the bots with 5-10 times more speed...

Well, I don't know, how that will come out in the end. My critics is perhaps just, cause this ...

The problem with airships is their size (halfway realistic would be the size of 4-6 wagons in length and one wagon in width) and the fixed view from above. That results in blocked sight to the things below the airship.

I don't say that it must be THAT big, but how would smaller airships look? Some ...

... be offset by making them slow (plus that would be realistic: trains are quick, zeppelins not so much), and maybe the docking procedures at the airship landing pad/base/thingy would also be time-consuming, so it would be preferable to have hub-outposts fed by multiple trains from other outposts ...

... rendered wires though: they are saggy, which wouldn't look good for a ropeway conveyor. An alternate to ropeway conveyor would be a dirigible (airship) which would get loaded like a train, then slowly fly to destination, get unloaded, etc. Benefit is that it wouldn't need tracks, disadvantage is ...

... target
* Landing pads could be reskinned chests containing liquid fuel and ammo

Transports :

* Like a huge logistics robot, looks a bit like an airship (blimp)
* Slow, weak, only basic gun for defence (as seen here )
* Vertical take off and landing
* Would require special refuelling/loading ...

... but it gets the ammo from the logistic system by itself.
4)Electric fence that damages bitters that touches itself. Weaker then walls.
5)Battle Airship that does not take damage from melee bitters, but takes damages form worms and long-range bitters
6)Bitter Scanner that emits a wire signal if ...

Is there something missing?

And I've found similars:

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/search.php?keywords=airship* search for airship*
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=8838 [Request] Zeppelins! in Mods
https://forums.factorio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2702 Airplanes
https ...

... into it, this relatively simple thing is getting more and more complicated:))
My thought is so: if you can handle large objects flying through the air, you might be able to repeat that for some Zeppelin-like airship. Or big structures on ground/water, like big ships, oil-platforms, fortress...

... lighter-than-air vessels is a lot higher these days than it was in the Zeppelin era, and they are quite a bit faster. Once can only imagine how much they would have advanced by the time the human race has expanded into space.

http://phys.org/news/2013-01-high-tech-cargo-airship-built-california.html

... these would be enormous and hard to build at first, being that anything later then the first tier would take steel, and lots of it. As for the airships themselves, i see there being 4 tiers of them:
Tier one: Very basic, only 2 cargo slots (plus one for it's own fuel), mostly useful for that one ...

Yeah, an airship is most definitely a possibility! Although it may be a bit view-obstructing.

To edit:
Yep, I had exactly this in mind. I believe I had it posted in another thread though...