yeah so basically i dont replace any existing inserters on the map for a few reasons.
for one, if you dont like the mod and want to remove it, this means all of the actual-filter entities and items will remain as they were from before you installed the mod. just as well, if my mod happens to break anything in some way, it wont completely mess up your save. the technologies and recipes will remain disabled, though, so you'd have to fix that on your own, unfortunately mods cant really tell the game what to do after it's been totally and completely removed / disabled. only the game can do certain things like inform you of various things being removed.
the second issue is that doing this in a smart way is something i feel like isnt totally worth it. there's a lot of factors that could be introduced from other mods such as the size of the inserter and their speed. i would have to check what the size of an inserter to be replaced is, and find one that's the same size that is closest to the same speed, and there's probably other things im not considering as well that i'd find as i test this.
also, it's possible that if i do this it may break other mods that use inserters in specific ways (like certain loader mods, i believe they use invisible inserters). in which case i'd have to somehow filter them out but it may end up needing to be a per-mod thing which i really would rather avoid.
