This has gotten my attention...

Since outright crushing trees would be a waste, maybe a machine that tries to recover some of the trees' wood?

Most certainly it wouldn't be as efficient as a chopping trees manually, but still better than just throwing away all that wood.

I re-iterate my post:

The equipment grid system is fine, but IMO it would be a more logic fit onto cars and tanks, since they're more likely to be used for exploration than trains.
Secondly, while cars and tnaks have no real modularity as of now (which would be solved by the equipment grid), trains ...

My buses? Oh, they just end up something like this...

I'm really split on this to be honest. One the one hand, this mockup looks incredible and I can really see it adding a lot to the game. That small scale of cliffs I think actually fits pretty well with Factorio. A train tunnel should only be able to fit on TWO cliffs though, so maybe it should be ...

I think that outright turning every entity that moves into it's own radar is a tad too much.

The 'explorer'/'charting' bots would work great, but as mattj256 said...
Completely different idea: What if we would have specialized bots, that do some charting. We could call them "explorer bots" and ...

I think that the underlying issue behind this suggestion is a needed overhaul of the logistic bots' behaviour when on very large roboport networks...

Improving the bots' pathing? Absolutely yes!
Is it something vital that would indeed improve some aspects of gameplay? Not really.

Improved pathing ...

I think that the underlying issue behind this suggestion is a needed overhaul of the logistic bots' behaviour when on very large roboport networks...

Improving the bots' pathing? Absolutely yes!
Is it something vital that would indeed improve some aspects of gameplay? Not really.

Improved pathing ...