When playing with this mod on the Steam Deck and an Xbox-style controller, I found it a lot harder to use than with keyboard and mouse. In controller input mode, the game has a virtual cursor. Using the right joystick (Steam Deck, PS4, and Xbox layouts) moves this virtual cursor in a small circle around the character. This virtual cursor is usually invisible, but objects that you hover over get the usual selection box highlight. You can then mine the object or open its menu. The left joystick moves the character, which you of course have to do a lot with the shotgun.
The mod requires the cursor to be roughly near where you're placing the items, but with the right joystick, you can't see the virtual cursor. You can see the selection box if there is an entity there, but that's hard to see, especially with the shotgun's item shooting effects causing a lot of visual noise. In practice, this means you walk around holding shoot and wiggling the joystick, trying to find exactly how far off center to tilt to get the cursor where the blueprint you want to target is. It's annoying and not very fun, and I think that even if you could see the cursor, it would still be difficult.
On Steam Deck, you can use the touchpads to move the cursor all over the screen, and this makes the cursor visible as a cross. That works to at least make the mod usable, but the touchpad is best for occasional precise cursor movements. It's just awkward to use the right touchpad to shoot, left joystick to move, and right bumper to shoot all at the same time.
My suggestion to solve this issue is to have a new arc shoot mode where the shotgun shoots items for all blueprints in a 30-60 degree arc in the direction the player is facing. This should target all blueprints in the normal min/max range, just without hovering the cursor next to each blueprint. The player only has to hold the control stick in the direction they want to shoot.
For example, if the player is surrounded by blueprints on all sides, holding up on the right joystick would face their character north and move the virtual cursor to the north. Holding down shoot would place items for all blueprints north of the character in an arc, without the player having to hover the cursor close to each blueprint. I would suggest starting with the items nearest the player and moving out as the player continues to hold shoot.
The mode could be automatically selected based on whether Settings - Controls - Input Mode is set to keyboard and mouse or controller. I would suggest adding two mod setting options to determine which shotgun mode is used for which input mode. Someone using a controller and keyboard might opt to use the normal mode. I use this mod to help with reducing movements that cause RSI, so I might use the arc shoot mode with a mouse just to reduce the amount of mouse movement needed.
Thanks for reading and considering this! I'm also happy to beta test any changes and provide feedback.
