Soft Alt Mode

[makrom]

Factorio has really nice 2D sprites and animations, but using Alt mode is pretty much mandatory and it takes a lot away from the graphics.
I would love to see a more subtle Alt mode that still shows the same information, but less in your face.

For inserters and pumps, smaller and thinner arrow lines could be enough.
For crafting entities, the icons for recipe could be smaller, like the size of modules, and perhaps a tiny bit transparent. Ideally for every entity type anchored individually in a place where they don't obfuscate anything interesting instead of just always in the middle.
A perfect example are beacons, which already show modules organically integrated into their normal graphics. In their case, if the modules had some quality indicator, I wouldn't even need Alt mode visuals. The same might be true for liquids with their colors in tanks, from the top of my head these are all unique enough to not be ambiguous.

[AbstractHand]

Having diegetic recipe info would be amazing. Beacon modules showing up as they do is one of my favorite details. Inserters can already be identified by the Y-shape of their legs. Pump sprites are directional too.

I was playing with the idea of modding the assembler sprites to have physical displays for recipes when I realized it would be far easier to just place displays next to them in game

[Harkonnen]

One way that comes to my mind is rendering it with alpha like 25%, then bumping to 100% upon mouse hover with instant fadein, and 0.5-1sec fadeout back to 25% upon mouseleave.

[redrook]

+1