Hi everyone,
Let‘s kick off this community with a fluid list of awesome mods for ONI. The first version is purely based on my own opinions and is mainly focused on mods which are extensions to vanilla gameplay or at least keep the gameplay as close to vanilla as possible. If you want to chime in with more mods or discuss specific entries feel free to do so 😄
Planning Tool
Planning Tool is a mod that lets you plan out a layout of your base, similar to planning tools for other games like RimWorld and Prison Architect. You can use this mod to design your base before you start building, or to experiment with different ideas or layouts.
Blueprints (fixed)
Adds blueprints to Oxygen Not Included! Blueprints allow the player to quickly copy and paste buildings from one area of the map to another. Blueprints automatically place build and dig commands so that the player doesn’t have to do any more than is necessary. In addition, blueprints complete instantly in debug or sandbox mode making them ideal for testing large setups and designs!
Plan Buildings Without Materials
Allows placing down building orders with materials not present in your inventory (but discovered!) to make planning and building easier.
Build Over Plants
Allows you to build over plants. Building over a plant will automatically uproot it with the priority of the building being placed.
Bigger Camera Zoom Out
Allows zooming out far while playing without the need of debug or screenshot mode. Also allows scrolling outside of the map edges so you can work on the sides of the map easier. In Spaced Out! you will be able to zoom out your star map further away too.
Pip Plant Overlay
Adds an overlay showing the locations where Pips can plant Seeds, and providing reasons for the locations where they cannot.
Research Queue
Allows multiple technologies to be researched one after another using a queue, even if they are in different sections of the Technology Tree.
Thank you. I will extend it over time and perhaps also add short previews of the mods but I do not want to straight up copy them from the steam workshop so it might come with a slight delay.
The issue you are mentioning is also what I have experienced in the past. It is especially painful if you use mods like the airlock mod - which admittedly gets updated often and fast enough from what I understand - where parts of the mod might end up being used in critical infrastructure and simply disabling the mod then opens up the possibility for a huge disaster in your colony.
The sweet spot for mods are therefore Quality of Life enhancements, which sometimes even get picked up by Klei and therefore are no longer necessary as a third party addon.