Distinguish mods enabled by dependency as opposed to manually

[BicycleEater]

TL;DR

Make it so that the game can tell whether a mod was enabled directly or via dependency, so that disabling a mod can take the dependencies with it.

What ?

The specific request I have here would be that mod-list.json had more information about why a mod was enabled - perhaps a list of mods it was enabled as a dependency of (or at minimum a boolean for whether the enable was manual). Clicking then enable button would then override this to either enable the mod outright, or disable the mod outright.
Currently the progression is:

before-enabling.png (303.82 KiB) Viewed 1377 times

enabled.png (362.89 KiB) Viewed 1377 times

disabled.png (359.03 KiB) Viewed 1377 times

Instead disabling the mod again should take the dependencies with it - i.e. it should go back to stage 1.
I'd suggest a UI like:

new-ui.png (236.67 KiB) Viewed 1377 times

With the '-' meaning that the mod was enabled as a dependency only.

Why ?

This would make changing between larger mods/modpacks much easier, as currently its easier to disable spacex by turning all mods off and re-enabling the ones I want. This is particularly problematic as the mod list gets longer, as finding a diverse collection of enabled mods is a pain.

Potential extension

This I'm less sure about, but another useful thing might be to do this for mod downloads - so removing space-exploration would take other mods with it.
The second bin in the top-right of my proposed UI would remove a mod with its dependencies.
If you add this kind of dependency management, then there could also be a selector to only show manually installed mods in the list, so that the many library mods don't end up cluttering the menu.
I'm aware this could be a separate suggestion, but it feels closely linked.

[ssilk]

Ah, yes, so important. Recently I was curious how many activated but unused libs I had been running and made me the work to go through all mods if they have been installed by a dependency. The answer was 4. That’s a problem, because startup time significantly decreased after removing.

[BicycleEater]

It gets worse when the libs have incompatibilities - or aren't just libs, and are instead full mods, as then your gameplay is significantly altered by a mod you never enabled or downloaded.

You could also add a button on optional dependencies of mods which would enable them as a dependency - so they go with the mod they're a dependency of. Again, this is a less important thing, but would I think be smoother than the current UI.

[FuryoftheStars]

Another game I used to play did something similar, but with highlighting of the mod names in the list in different colors. When you had a mod selected, any that were dependent on it had their name text in the list changed to one color, while any that it was dependent on had their name text in the list changed to a different color.

Anyway the devs choose to handle it, though, I support this idea!

[BicycleEater]

I hate to do this, but I'm gonna bump this post, as it's still really annoying to not have this.
My current approach is to disable all mods, then enable the ones I want, but then there are some I always want, and always have to enable - honestly this alone reduces the number of mods I use by a huge fraction, just because I can't be bothered to re-enable them every time.

[Illiander42]

I hate to do this, but I'm gonna bump this post, as it's still really annoying to not have this.
My current approach is to disable all mods, then enable the ones I want, but then there are some I always want, and always have to enable - honestly this alone reduces the number of mods I use by a huge fraction, just because I can't be bothered to re-enable them every time.

Same and same.

I used to have a save file that was just there so I could sync to it for my QoL mod set.

[BicycleEater]

That's fair. I tend to go between a few mod configurations, so I sync on the save-games I have, but it does mean I don't use many QOL mods.