This mod sounds really great. I would like to know, if it is possible (or planned) to enable the transfer of unbarelled fluids. This would be very useful, but may be hard to implement.

I am planning to handle fluids some time in the future, but still not sure how. Fluids aren't exactly great for UPS. It can currently be done with barrels, but I was thinking maybe an automatic barrel thing at the edge of the module to avoid unbarreling machines?

For now I will work on bugfixing, QOL features and performance though.

Suggestion

It would be nice if add space optimization. Make these modules with reduced dimensions.

Technology tree, with several scale ranks — 0.75; 0.5; 0.25 (for example). You apply an improvement and the module becomes smaller in external size.

It will make sense to use this mod, even if UPS does not bother.

esgle, what you are asking already basically exist as factorissimo, if you dont care for ups and dont mind needing to manually place the blueprints inside the modules. It even allows you to place modules inside modules.

@Daniel Are miners/oil pumps/offshore pumps currently allowed in a module? From my point of view, the ideal answer would be no/no/yes. As the miners and oil pumps interact with the ressource fields, which is not easy to copy and the offshore pump doesnt interact with anything and would allow e.g. nuclear power plants inside.

Miners and oil pumps aren't supposed to be allowed in there, but I haven't added a restriction for it yet. They will stop working in a later release, for both new and existing modules. Offshore pumps will be allowed, because water is basically free anyways.

Currently power plants on the inside won't work. It has a few issues with how energy consumers work in factorio, but I might be able to work around it. I haven't really bothered much because my thinking is that if you want maximum UPS you go for solar anyways.

I used Factorissimo 2 in one of the passes. This is significantly different from what I am suggesting. In Factorissimo 2, it is necessary to adjust the production workshops to the existing size. It is necessary to enter buildings — it is almost impossible in the sandbox. Etc.

If scalability is implemented in this mod, then there will be an order of magnitude more people for whom it will become attractive.)

Scalability isn't possible without having you enter buildings like in factorissimo. I am not interested in making factories smaller, if that is what you want download one of the compressed items/10x assemblers mods. This mod is meant to allow you to build bigger, what is the point of that if the factory doesn't get larger?

I will however consider publishing a seperate mod with a faster factorissimo once I am done with this one. Still much optimisation to be done though. I got the Lua script 2-4x faster in 0.3.2, and have now found a way I think I can get a well optimized save to run another 2x times faster total tick time. This mod is all about performance.

Currently the slowest part of my test factory is the vanilla electric network update.