Mods for 1st expansion run

[Kinson25]

What mods will you use for your first Space Age playthrough? What QoL mods do you use?

I want to keep it close to vanilla so likely it will only be Squeak Through and rate calculator.

[Qon]

Here's some mods I use that I would use in a "vanilla" experience or with overhaul mods. I can't really be without them and they don't really mess up the gameplay, just help it along. Things that 2.0 solves have not been included as far as I'm aware, but maybe there are still mods which have been included in base here?

Pushbutton: If you play with circuit networks a lot then it's so painful to be without it.
Recursive Blueprints+: I use this mod a lot, but not really in regular playthroughs. But I want access to it always in case a good opportunity arises. I will make a playthrough based around this mod at some point, won't finish my self building base before 2.0 drops.
PE Stringy Train Stops Redux: More ways to control train network. Maybe not as necessary in 2.0, but this is way more capable than the new 2.0 features for controlling train scheduling. Would need a big update to be able to use all the new 2.0 features via this mod though.
Wire Shortcuts: Maybe these are included in 2.0? I think the shortcuts might be, but the mod actually includes hotkeys (my use case) as well and I don't think those have been confirmed for 2.0.
Equipment Gantry: If I'm going to make several spiders then automating the complete process is necessary.
Auto Manual Mode: You think it's not that important, and then you play without it and next time you ride your train and it doesn't switch to manual mode directly when you try to drive your train you exit the game and reinstall this mod rather than opening the GUI and switch to manual mode from there.
Custom Circuit Network Colors: With huge amount of circuit wires colored red and green over combinators which have a lot of red and green in their palette, switching to something like cyan and magenta becomes necessary.
Large Print Signals: The vanilla icons have tiny letters in the middle of the icon while this mod makes more use of the available space, makes big circuits more readable without zooming in as much.

[Neutronium]

I'm doing the same thing myself, starting a long term game running 24/7 on a server. Aside from Rate Calculator like you mentioned, I'll be using these two from Raiguard as well:

Ultimate Research Queue: Supports queues of 40 or so which is a nice improvement from vanilla. Can also auto-continue infinite research. Will be used to keep the ball rolling even when I may be AFK for up to several days at a time.
Editor Extensions: Includes an inline test surface with creative mode functionality that runs completely independently of your main world. Time still passes as you're on the other surface. You can test various BPs without even needing to disconnect from your game.

I want to experience the game as the devs intended as much as possible... this is just a light sprinkling of tools to streamline building/planning and AFK progression. I hope this helps.

[Kinson25]

Here's some mods I use...

That is a fantastic list!
Some others I plan to use are:
EvenDistributionLite Makes spreading items to machines easy.
VehicleSnap Makes driving much easier.
WhereIsMyBody If you have biters, or trains. This makes is much easier to find your corpse.

[Kinson25]

I'm doing the same thing myself...

I often use https://mods.factorio.com/mod/some-autoresearch, but I will be checking out Ultimate research queue.

[Loewchen]

Many mods will not work on launch yet anyway, even for just 2.0 without expansion this might be the case.

[Neutronium]

FYI, Raiguard has mentioned before that all of his mods will be supported with 2.0 on day 1, which coincidentally works perfect for me. So at a minimum you have those.

[Kinson25]

Many mods will not work on launch yet anyway, even for just 2.0 without expansion this might be the case.

I build and operate haunt every year, so I won't get to play until after October. That gives a few weeks for them to get updated.

[sarge945]

WhereIsMyBody If you have biters, or trains. This makes is much easier to find your corpse.

This will be unnecessary, as your corpse should be pinned automatically using the new pinning system in 2.0

[NineNine]

When I play the new expansion, I'll play it at least once with no mods. I trust the developers and I want to see what they've created, before messing with it in any way.

[BlueTrin]

For me

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Squeak%20Through

And some version of far/long reach

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/far-reach


Does anyone have a tutorial of recursive blueprints? I never used it and want to learn it.

[mmmPI]

Does anyone have a tutorial of recursive blueprints? I never used it and want to learn it.

I don't have a tutorial, but i used it quite a lot, and i would recommend using another mod like AAI or tape-measure to have a way to know the coordinate of the tiles as it speed up the experiment by a lot.

Then it's pretty staightforward at first, put a blueprint in the "deployer chest", and send this chest 3 signals one X with as value the coordinate you picked up earlier, one Y with as value the coordinate you also picked up earlier. That's 2, it won't trigger anything, just find the proper location. The third signal can be a "construction bot" with value 1 or higher, to trigger construction of the blueprint that is in the chest at the location [X,Y].

The other options allow to designate not only a tile with X and Y, but a rectangle using W signal for width and H signal for Height in addition to the X and Y, this can be use with decon planner signal instead of the construction bot signal, to deconstruct areas. Other details of implementations, like can the deployer chest deconstruct itself ? are solved with the more complicated options shown on the mod page, which you can just look at when you need to know if a particular function is possible.

That sound like a good idea for a mod for the expansion to me, as it doesn't really impact the gameplay or change the intented experience from what was revealed so far, unless you decide to, and you can choose the extend of it. But I'm not ruling out that something like this will be in the expansion, maybe in a different form, but a bit similar to the way we will be able to change recipe of assembling machines, steps toward self expanding factories, i think are part of the intended design/ long term goal.

Otherwise I don't think i will use any mods for my 1rst expansion run, to really see how it is and experience it, i think this will give me idea of which mod i'd like to use but if i use mods, that may be things like "to do list" to note my discoveries in normal run, or things to make the game easier, like sandbox, to test in details all the new things in lab environment, but not in my normal game, in a side game i'd load to test a thing before i continue my normal game.