Best Mods for vanilla?

[MightyMuffin]

Does anyone have recommendations for mods that enhance the vanilla experience but don't get too crazy? I am looking to start a new game to work away on up to the new expansion's launch. I want to keep things mostly vanilla so it will hopefully transition smoothly into the dlc stuff.

[DCYW]

try Reversetorio, perhaps.

[Cheet4h]

QuickStart or TinyStart (forgot which of them is up-to-date) is a mod that starts you with a less powerful modular armor, two personal robo ports and a few construction bots. Really helpful in the beginning, as it allows you to copy/cut/paste parts of your base, and makes cutting down stones and forests less tedious. I don't play without it any more.
Although you need to be careful in the vicinity of biters, since you won't be able to build new construction bots until you actually research them.

[MrBlackDarkness666]

Originally posted by MightyMuffin:

Does anyone have recommendations for mods that enhance the vanilla experience but don't get too crazy?

Krastorio 2 is definitely the best fit for this description, and its super well made. There are several other mods of this scale, but pretty much all of them ad a significant amount of complexity to the game.

[GreenBeanN1]

Well the best mod is Clockwork[mods.factorio.com]
For dark nights. It seems too simple but it makes a tremendous impact.

Of course after that you need a bigger lamp mod. Make some small modification in the night vision goggles for balance (make it's effect less strong for people who think otherwise).

After that. CreepCleaner[mods.factorio.com]. Though I am not sure if it is an improvement for vanilla (I am using alien biomes and the stained environment is really ugly).

Radar night vision[mods.factorio.com] is also great to have. (After the night vision balance it is not much but still an improvement.

And of course a fix for the techtree. Some lines are not logically connected/missing. Can't stand that. I have my own version but I have seen another one:
Tech tree trimmer[mods.factorio.com]

You can achieve much more with simple mods but it depends on your playstyle. I like crazy biter fights so I have waepon and enemy mods. I don't like needles traveling. So endgame tech is teleportation (launching a rocket is mid game for me).

Starting with this don't alter a vanilla playthrough too much but it's experience is very different.

[Snix]

If you're talking replaying the vanilla but just QOL mods without adding custom made content then i recommend the following:
Auto Deconstruct
Bottleneck
Bullet Trails
Disco Science
Enhanced Map Colors
Factory Planner
GUI Unifyer
Honk
Max Rate Calculator
Milestones
Mining patch planner
Squeak Through
Waterfill

If you are looking for additional custom made content which adds whole layers of complexity to the vanilla game, then its best to just download the big modpacks like:
Space Exploration
or
Krastorio 2
These modpacks include some of the QOL mentioned above but not all.

[Spiritos]

There are plenty of mod to suit most play styles, have a look and read what they do. Recommending mods without prior knowledge of your play style doesn't really help you in the long run as you will be playing someone else's game specifics. Best starting point is look at the most downloaded and see which appeal to yourself.

[puschit]

Krastorio 2

[Swervo]

I like the jetpack mod, keeps the same vanilla experience but the game is a bit faster with less boring travel time.

[Blake]

I use these (taken from config file as too lazy to list. I also play GOG version so hours are a lot higher than on Steam)


"name": "AfraidOfTheDark",

"name": "attach-notes",

"name": "BottleneckLite",

"name": "bullet-trails",

"name": "calculator-ui",

"name": "damage-numbers",

"name": "DiscoScience",

"name": "extended-descriptions",

"name": "FactorySearch",

"name": "far-reach",

"name": "FasterStartRedux",

"name": "jetpack",

"name": "MapView_NoBlackLines",

"name": "notepad",

"name": "resourceMarker",

"name": "sonaxaton-infinite-resources",

"name": "squeak-through-2",

"name": "StatsGui",

"name": "textplates",

[Leeux]

When I'm in the mood of a vanilla+ style playthrough, I often use mods that don't overhaul the recipes but add new cool stuff at the end of the game.

Examples:
- Realistic Fusion Power: adds new power generation methods and a nice science grind at end game in order to be able to use them.

- Space Extension (aka Space X): adds a science sink to the end game, and a excuse to launch extra rockets.

- Extended Vanilla, all parts: adds extra tiers of personal equipment, armors, etc.

- AAI Containers or Angel's Addon Storage : adds warehouses, i.e. big containers and I find them more aesthetically appealing than some other options I saw.

- Merging Chests or aka Wide Chests: for more performant train stations (less parts, simpler to make: this + warehouses + loaders -> no belt balancing required.)

- Deadlock Stackers & Loaders + vanilla addon: lets me stack mats in belts so I can get more throughput from them

- Loader Redux or Miniloaders: depends on the mood on which loaders I use, but these days I decided to stick with Deadlock's Loaders, I find them the most appealing.

- Transport Drones: Add a different kind of logistics system to move stuff around, for relatively low throughput requests. Besides, the fast road it adds looks cool IMO. (This mod it's must have for me, and it should be included in vanilla IMO.)

- LTN: I used to be a vanilla train system advocate for a long time, then I started to use LTN and found it awesome. Now, these days, I often decide which system I'd use at the start of a save. For vanilla LTN is overkill IMO, but it allows some stuff that you can's simply do with vanilla, like connecting the train system to the logistics network and being able to request anything you want from it with a dynamic station. It's specially useful for defense walls, which in vanilla often require a special train and filtering the wagon slots, etc, etc,

- Factory Search, Tapeline, Milestones, Picker's mods, etc: general QoL tools and utilities, some of them are a must have for me at this point.

- QoL research: it should be in the base game,

- Inserter Throughput, Rate Calculator, Helmod, Blueprint DesignLab, Editor Extensions, Calculator UI, etc.: for calculating builds and designing BPs in a lab environment.

- Roboport & Radar Mk2: extra tiers of roboports & radars.

- Advanced Solar: adds 25x better solar panels & accums, so I don't have to cover ALL the map in solar panels @ end game if I want to use them. You still have to use a big area for them and they're expensive as hell (i.e. you spend the same cost as you would if you'd used the normal solar panels to reach the same energy, but more since they require extra mats besides the previous tier of solar panels/accums.)

- Fluid Must Flow: Adds Ducts with enormous throughput, that I like to use in stead of trains for long distance fluid transport, where it makes sense. Feels more realistic to me.

- Advanced Fluid Handling: when I'm in not the mood of having pipe spaghetti all around, but it's an overkill for vanilla.

- Bob's Adjustable Inserters: same as above, i.e. overkill for vanilla, but I like to have the option of *sometimes* being able to use a long handed stack inserter, or to drop stuff near side, corner inserters, etc. Caveat: I don't use them for designing production builds that I intend to be able to reuse in the future, since I want those to be usable without any mods at all.

- Angel's Addon Mobility: adds the crawler train that I often use for personal travel around the base since it's very fast, and also acts as a builder train and inventory trash cleaning (wagons have big capacity.) I maybe sometimes use the Smelter or Petrochem trains for delivering goods since the wagons are bigger and they are faster, it often means that I can use 1x2 trains instead of 1x4 which makes every station smaller and have less parts.

- Some of the AAI Vehicles + AAI Programmable Vehicles and Structures: if I'm in the mood to use some of them. I often use the Hauler for manually moving around loads of trash from deconning trees/rocks etc, I also use the Warden when I don't build walls, since it repairs stuff around and has a stun weapon that helps defense in outposts and also counts as a movable radar (that doesn't reveal extra chunks but keeps a big revealed area around it.)

- Klonan's Teleporters or Teleportation Redux: Used to use the first one a lot, but these days I prefer the latter, since I find it's more feature rich and less of a cheat (if you can call it that.) I only start to use it end-game when the factory size reaches a certain threshold and I try not to abuse it too much, as I only place them in selected defense walls, besides the central hub in the main base.

- VortiKs Deep Core Mining: I often use this, and I turn off the deep core cracks (I find them ugly) and I only use the simple spawned in patches in depleted ore areas, as a guarantee that I don't have to forcibly expand upon mat depletion, if I don't feel to. Deep Miners consume a lot of power so it's only an option late-mid to late game.

All mods should be findable in the mod portal by name, but if any of them aren't ask for a link and I'll add it. Sorry for not linking them all, they are too many!

[MagicManSlim]

Originally posted by Leeux:

- Advanced Solar: adds 25x better solar panels & accums, so I don't have to cover ALL the map in solar panels @ end game if I want to use them. You still have to use a big area for them and they're expensive as hell (i.e. you spend the same cost as you would if you'd used the normal solar panels to reach the same energy, but more since they require extra mats besides the previous tier of solar panels/accums.)

- Fluid Must Flow: Adds Ducts with enormous throughput, that I like to use in stead of trains for long distance fluid transport, where it makes sense. Feels more realistic to me.

What are you doing at the end game where you need fields of solar?

My end game was a 61 GJ array of accumulators, and 7100 Solar panels. So 428 MW max capacity, which I never needed and my batteries never dropped below 300 MW.

Also as far as long distance fluids are concerned, I've always used pumps. Like maybe 30 to run from an oil patch into the main base's refinery section?

Oh wait, OP was asking for something. Id reccommend "even distribution".

[Leeux]

Originally posted by MagicManSlim:

What are you doing at the end game where you need fields of solar?
<snip>

Megabases! I don't know what other people do when reaching end game, but I often keep scaling up. Once you reach megabase stage and you start using beacons and T3 modules everywhere and try to scale up the base to produce more science per minute, it leads to requiring large amounts of power. For example, my last vanilla megabase ended up requiring around ~50GW of power, that I produced with the Mk3 solar panels from that mod (and a tinsy bit from Realistic Fusion Power.)

It's not unusual to require millions of vanilla solar panels to completely feed a megabase of typical size (with the appropriate ratio of accompanying accumulators to go with them ofc.) which is super annoying to build as you need to dedicate a *huge* portion of the map to them.

I personally hate having to do that, that's why I use (and recommend) the advanced solar mod... you can get by with about tens of thousands of solar panels instead of millions which considerable reduces the area required compared to the vanilla ones.

Also as far as long distance fluids are concerned, I've always used pumps. Like maybe 30 to run from an oil patch into the main base's refinery section?

In big bases is often normal to have builds that require 1000 to 2000 sulfuric acid per second (batteries for example) and you can't usually feed those with just pipes, that's why it's often normal to use trains to move the fluids around. Also a standard refinery unit often produces 2300/s sulfuric acid (at the typical scale) so it's also often impractical to move around that amount of fluid using just pipes... it'd require parallel pipe lines and placing pumps everywhere!

Ofc. all of this will change when the expansion releases... but for now, ducts ftw (for me at least :P)

Also, water is a big issue for nuclear plants for example... so instead of having a BP with offshore pumps integrated and then depend on having water areas to use it, I personally prefer to feed the reactors with the ducts and then place clusters of pumps wherever there's water in my maps, feeding into the ducts (they have 72000 fluid/sec of max throughput, so you can feed several nuclear reactors with a single duct.)

All of this is according to my particular experience, ofc. it's probable that other people do things totally different!

[Hurkyl]

If you haven't really thought through it, once you are done with the game's official objective (or never cared), you can set self-directed objectives to test your ability to grow a factory.

The most common objective, I think, is the production of science: you measure the productivity of your factory based on its ability to sustain production and consumption of science, usually expressed in terms of science per minute. The "infinite research" technologies that keep increasing without bound were even added to the game to directly support this.

Before then, a common metric was "rockets per hour" (or "rockets per minute" if you have a big factory). The "science per minute" metric is a more comprehensive test of your factory, though (and still requires automating rocket launches).

There are still a few qualitative shifts in gameplay to be had as you increase to scales beyond what you need to simply launch one rocket, so it is still a worthwhile thing to try out, gameplay-wise. Some people even enjoy the gameplay at those scales more than they do the launch-a-rocket objective.

[brian_va]

Originally posted by MagicManSlim:

What are you doing at the end game where you need fields of solar?

if your rocket silos aren't constantly sending rockets, you're doing it wrong. that takes a fair bit of power.

[ChillCore]

Originally posted by Snix:

If you're talking replaying the vanilla but just QOL mods without adding custom made content then i recommend the following:
Auto Deconstruct
Bottleneck
....
Disco Science
....
....
....
Honk
Max Rate Calculator
....
.....
Squeak Through
Waterfill

pretty much my 'must have' list ..... blanked the ones I don't know


I mean disco science does ♥♥♥♥ all but it looks cool