I appreciate the concept of the "Bridge Technologies" mod. It offers a promising solution for mod developers aiming to ensure compatibility with larger modpacks. However, I've noticed that the current items listed in the mod are quite specific. While some of these items are overridden by other mods, they still retain specific names which might not be universally applicable.

I'd like to propose a shift towards more generic, tiered intermediaries/materials. This would not only make it easier for developers to integrate their mods but also provide a more standardized approach. Many of these generic items could map directly to actual items in various mods. For instance, a developer might want to fetch a material that a mod uses for early-game buildings or the type of circuits used in the late game. This includes mods that introduce content earlier than the vanilla game.

Consider the following structure:

• Circuit-T1 (Equivalent to green chips in vanilla or the earliest circuits in a mod)
• Circuit-T2, Circuit-T3, Circuit-T4... Circuit-Tn
• BuildMaterial-Tn (Primary building material for a specific game stage)
• SciencePack-N (Specific tier science pack)
• SciencePack-Last (Endgame science pack)
• Gear-Tn, Wire-Tn, WireMaterial-Tn (Raw material for Wire-Tn)
• Belt-Tn
• IntermediaryA-Tn, IntermediaryB-Tn... (Generic intermediary items of varying types and tiers)

The idea is to have generic items that map to specific items, with the primary distinction being their specificity level. This would allow one mod to fetch a random modded material available at a particular game stage for balance, while another mod might want a specific item like Carbon fiber.

To sum up, while "Bridge Technologies" is a great utility for mod integration, introducing more generic, tiered items could enhance its functionality and make it more intuitive for developers.

Hi! It's a pleasure to see some other mods developers like this idea :) Yeah, items specified currently are introduced by the needs of the mod I now develop want to make compatible. I also thought about adding sort of tiers, but hasn't yet come up with a robust approach that will suit all the overhauls and small mods I've seen.

I thought to make meta-items like basic-speed-module, medium-speed-module, best-speed-module that will return speed modules 1-2-3 for vanilla, and 1-5-9 for Space Exploration. Similarly, basic-assembly-machine and best-assembly-machine will be assembly-machine-1 and assembly-machine-3 for vanilla, and burner assembly machine (like tier 0), space assembly machine (like tier 4) for SE. And similarly for other mods with tiers.

The problem of what you say is that if the Bridge provides more tiers of items that are present in the game, what it should return?

To solve a similar issue, I was thinking about providing 1. optional items, so if some mod requests a non-existing item, it will get nil (and a function to clean ingredients list of nil), 2. a function that takes a list of possible items, and returns first existing (similar to null coalescing operator in programming).

Speaking of specific items, I'm free to discuss! I think it will take many messages, maybe Discord would be more handy for this? I can create a dedicated channel for this topic.

The problem of what you say is that if the Bridge provides more tiers of items that are present in the game, what it should return?

There mutliple ways you could solve this (other then optinal items and returning null
1. Just return the closest tier availible, So a T5 generic/meta module could just return a T3 module, or the genric items that are in-betwwen normal ones just get the closest tier up/down from the one you requestet)
2. Like 1. Return the Closest available tier (has to be down in this case), but some larger amountof it, so If I want a tier 4 module in vanilla which only has 3 tier it will give me multiple tier 3 items (might be somewhat more balanced) or if you request a generic science pack that's between vanilla red and green but you are in a mod that dosn't have something like that this would give you multiple red sciences packs.
3. Add replacemnts for missing items in this mod
I guess it kinda depends on the specifc item and type of mod what the best solution to a problem is, Tough I think having access to a bucnh of tiers both past vanilla/pre vanilla and between vanilla would be useful that way a smaller mod that adds a bunch of tiers of something could use most/every availible tier in the modpack and have some kind of fallback if there are less tiers.
The thing I would use the mod for is a mod that adds tiered pipes (with more height so they have actually increased throughput), this mod is inserting berceuse I could potentially use crafting materials (mostly some kind of building material like iron/steel/...) from deferent mods for the diffrent tiers. The mod would probably add an arbitary amount of procedurally generated tiers so what I'd do is use as many tiers of appropriate pipe materials as are available in the modpack and then just keep using the highest tier in larger and larger quantiles.
I don't really plan to make this mod anytime soon (not until I start my next major playthrough which might not be until after the DLC).