Factorio Forums

Since we now have recommended dependencies it would be great if there is a way to have an option to make them load order independent. Right now those are exclusive options.
Given mod a and an optional addon a++, it would be great if a could recommend a++, but since a++ is an extension, it wants to run after a. The alternative would be to merge them and add a setting to enable a++, but then handling required dependencies of a++ becomes a mess.

current: a++ must run before a wanted: a++ runs after a

+1, although this feels like a convoluted method of recreating optional dependencies

+1

Before recommended dependencies were added, there was no need to combine "~" with any other modifier; the main use of optional and hidden dependencies is to define load order. But recommended dependencies signal something more specific, giving them more usecases. This feature would fix a dependency cycle that showed up for Rigor Module:
rigor-module needs to load after crushing-industry-tweaks because of changes to some furnace prototypes the latter does in data-final-fixes. planet-muluna has rigor-module as a recommended dependency, but does not actually care about the load order between the two mods; using "+~" instead would accomplish the same goal for that dependency without introducing the dependency cycle.

+1. Muluna has no need to load after Rigor Module, even if my recommended gameplay style is to play Muluna with Rigor Module installed.

Honestly, it feels like this would be solved by just making recommended dependencies only change where the mod is shown in the UI, then you can use whatever other dependency marker to define how it would load. If recommended dependencies were load order agnostic, I could add another optional dependency on the mod just to define it loading before my mod.