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 station B, it will make the fastest path (a straight line) there. There could possibly be "no-fly zones" marked with a building, like a special lamp sort of thing, that way ships will path around those areas. The ship's GUI could be like a locomotive.
2. Work like logistic bots with requester and provider stations, like this mod, but for longer distances and if the spidertrons could path over water: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/spidertron-logistics
3. Similar to idea 1 but it can't form its own path, instead it uses landmarks (like a tall lamp on a stick) and forms a path connecting all the dots to its destination, avoiding the need for "no-fly zones"
I believe it would be better to avoid using rails so the ships can easily fly over buildings without causing any mess.
They should be pretty large and slow-ish, with a lot of cargo space to make them worth using (even if it's not that realistic, let's just say the Engineer found a really powerful lifting gas that's easy to get/make). Also, airships should be invincible in the air (like King Jo's planes for example) since logically they can fly over each other and worms/spitters should not be able to projectile vomit 16,500 feet in the air (I hope
). Signals and chain signals could be cute blinking balloons that float in the air.Types: If someone picks up this idea it would be cool if there wasn't just 1 type of ship, there could be:
- Early game slow hot air cargo balloon with small cargo capacity.
- Mid-game (relatively) fast airship with slightly more cargo capacity, and a slower version with more capacity.
- Late-game faster and much larger ship with huge capacity (maybe it's nuclear powered??). There was an IRL zeppelin that had a cruising speed of 125km/h, but I'm not sure if that would look silly in Factorio.
Additionally, there could be a passenger ship that is quite fast with minimal capacity but can hold up to 10 players or can just be used for exploring on your own. And a possible battle airship that would be able to be damaged from the ground, but has the equipment to fight back.
Similar to the floating signals, there could be floating powerlines, imagine a drone linked to another drone far away via a thick power cable. They could have double or triple the range of the large electric pole and have a small power cost to keep them afloat.
I know mods like AAI Programmable Vehicles exist for the automating part, but I and many of my friends just can't grasp how they work, even with watching the tutorials many, 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 times. This is my first post
. They work like train with invisible rail that you can only place on water. Regarding the methods you mention this has some similarities i found with the 3rd. That's a robust method to automate cargo transportation with the train schedule GUI but doesn't allow you to freely explore the map as with the dirigible or planes.