Beyond Vanilla - QoL

Beyond Vanilla - QoL ====================

About

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*Beyond Vanilla - QoL* is a modpack designed with vanilla gameplay in mind with non-game-changing quality-of-life improvements.

It is primarily designed for players that have already completed a pure vanilla (unmodded) game, and that want to keep playing with vanilla recipes and mechanics while making some minor improvements to their gameplay experience.

It should be particularly well suited for players who are looking into designing and building entry-level megabases.

Design decisions for the modpack are:

• Make common actions easier throughout the game.
• Make it easier to manage and plan the factory.
• Make base information easily accessible.
• Do not change the core mechanics.
• Do not change vanilla recipes.
• Do not introduce additional recipes.
• Do not introduce additional entities.
• Created blueprints and bases should be fully functional both with and without the modpack's selection of mods.
• Mods should come pre-configured with sane defaults to make all of this possible.
• Prefer mods with Free (as in Freedom) License that allows for code to be shared and improved.

When it makes sense to do so, the modpack does take some deviations from the above if it significantly improves quality of life for the player.

Features

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Blueprints

• Change circuit signals, station names, filters, colors, and machine recipes in blueprints (Blueprint Cloner)

> Pick-up an existing blueprint, drop it into the blueprint cloner, change configurable aspects of the blueprint (such as signals, train station names, recipes etc), and get a new blueprint out of it. This is useful when deploying generic blueprints that can work with multiple recipes etc.

• Convert blueprints into signals (using constant combinators) (Blueprint Signals (continued))

> Convert existing blueprint into a (new) blueprint which contains constant combinators that emit signals with the exact item count necessary to build the blueprint. Once placed, combinators can be easily connected to a requester chest to fetch all of the necessary items in one place.

• Swap wires, set tiles, quick-grid or configure blueprint (Blueprint Tools)

> With blueprint in your hand, click on one of the four buttons in top-left of the screen to either swap red and green wires in the blueprint, set tiles underneath entities (highly configurable with margins), set-up grid for the blueprint, or open full-blown blueprint configuration window. Works with copied entities as well. WARNING: Due to game engine limitations, blueprints from player/game library cannot be used directly - move them into inventory first (just don't forget to move them back). Blueprint grid can even be nudged left/right/up/down to align it better to other entities.

Building

• Reverse entire belt sections via control binding (Belt Reverser)

> Lets you reverse entire belt sections with a single control binding.

• Force personal bots to build selected ghost entities (Bot Prioritizer)

> Make your own personal bots build selected ghost entities, instead of waiting for the roboport bots to reach the spot across the map. > WARNING: Unfortunately, prioritised work cannot be undone (using the default CONTROL + Z control). Keep that in mind when using this functionality, otherwise you may end-up undoing wrong parts of factory.

• Copy and paste modules alongside crafting machine recipe settings (Copy Paste Modules)

> When copying and pasting settings from one crafting machine to another (using the default SHIFT + Right/Left Mouse Click control), the modules will carry over as well, and get inserted from player's inventory. If player does not have all of the modules required, a logistic request will be created to fill in the gaps. Extremely helpful in later stages of game when working on high throughput designs.

• Transition to ghost in cursor while building, use pipette for tile selections, cycle between item tiers in cursor (Cursor Enhancements)

> When build-dragging, if you run out of an item, the cursor automatically switches to ghost, instead of throwing an error. The pipette can be used for picking a tile - simply press (the default control) Q while hovering over stone path/landfill etc to get the tile item into cursor. Finally, use (default control) Shift + Mouse Wheel Up/Down to cycle between different tiers of the item held in the cursor. This is useful for seamlessly switching between different tiers of belts, undergrounds, or even assemblers and tiles.

• Use identical reach range for mining resources (trees/rocks/ores) by hand as for building (Far Reach)

> Slightly increased reach for mining resources so it matches with the building/interaction reach. Makes interaction with trees and rocks slightly less annoying, instead of having to remember every single time that you need to get up-and-personal with them.

• Keep track of number of ghosts in an area during construction (Ghost Counter)

> Keep track of ghosts in selected construction area, check if you have enough items on you to finish the construction, convert missing items into constant combinator signals, or even create temporary request to get the necessary items delivered by the logistic network. Same options are available even for a (non-placed) blueprint!

• Order module insertio