Recommended Mods

Required Dependencies
All dependencies listed in the mod's page are required to start SE. Only optional suggestions will be listed below.

Officially recommended
These mods are all made by Earendel, and are official recommendations:
 * Combat Mechanics Overhaul: Helps with defenses when off-planet, by letting walls block projectiles. It does buff enemies slightly to compensate, but that can be disabled with a mod option. It is cheaper to repair walls than turrets.
 * AAI Containers: A set of containers in the Factorio style with multiple options for inventory sizes.
 * Text Plates: Allows you to put text on the ground, useful for marking planet names, station names, spaceship docking zones, etc.

Information
These are mods that change nothing. You can remove or add them anytime without having an effect on the save.
 * Solar Calculator: Can calculate proper solar panel/accumulator ratio for any planet. Although this is not an Earendel mod, it was made specifically with SE in mind.
 * A recipe browser such as Recipe Book, FNEI, or What is it really used for: Will help you figure out the use of all the various new items and recipes in SE.
 * A factory planner such as Factory Planner or Helmod: To calculate and plan the complicated processing chains of SE.
 * Rate Calculator: Click on your factories and get a detailed production overview. The reverse of a factory planner.
 * Milestones: If you want to track your progress and get pings for each milestone reached. Comes with a preset for SE.
 * LTN Manager: Needs Logistic Train Network. Will show a snapshot of current supply and demand, delivery history, and alert history.
 * Bottleneck: Indicator what factory is running or blocked.
 * Todo list: Help you keep track of what to do. Supports multiplayer.

Quality Of Life (QoL)
These make the game easier but are generally not considered cheating. Mileage may vary, however. The emphasis is to keep all the main game challenges but reduce some daily life annoyances. Some of them are borderline logistic changers.
 * Module Inserter: Allows you to put modules in machines using construction bots. Being able to do more things remotely is especially useful in SE.
 * Even Distribution: Helps early game when you manually insert items into multiple buildings.
 * A personal logistic requests manager such as Auto Trash or Logistic Request Manager: You will be swapping between ground and space often, each of them requiring a different inventory. It is very useful to be able to switch between sets of requests with one click.
 * Equipment Gantry: Allows machines to put equipment into a spidertron while you're somewhere else in the galaxy, so that spidertron can be deployed by a rocket to start a new colony.
 * Picker Dollies: This allows you to move and rotate most entities.
 * Wire Shortcuts: Remove wires as a craftable item and use shortcuts instead. Wires are free to make in SE anyway.
 * P.U.M.P.: Place pump jacks automatically, and connect them all with pipes.

Logistic changers
These will change logistics. Some of them are borderline QoL with minimal changes not detracting from the game experience.
 * Bob's adjustable inserters.
 * Robot world continued: Gives you early logistic and construction bots. Nice to have if you have already experienced the pre-space phase of SE.
 * Nanobots: Gives you nanobots that helps automate construction. Used in the early phase before the construction bots become available.
 * Burner Leech: Another helper for the early game, specifically for the AAI burner phase.
 * Miniloaders: Similar to loaders in K2. Can load and unload a full belt into trains and chests.

Game changers

 * K2: The developers spent considerable efforts on making Se and K2 compatible. This works, even though there are some logical inconsistencies. There is a major updated integration being worked on.

Game breakers
There are many mods that are technically compatible with SE, but not to the spirit. SE is a game of considerable logistic challenges. Anything that changes logistics may risk taking away the fun. For example, resources are calibrated in such a way as to encourage exploration and colonization. Changing resources could destroy that challenge.

Another example is the various conditions on other planets and moons. Every place has its unique conditions. For example, a mod that supports water wells on waterless planets would be a major change.

Incompatibilities


Any mod listed as a "conflict" in the mod's page cannot be used with SE. If you see a "You do not have Space Exploration installed. DO NOT SAVE THE GAME." message at the start of the game, you most likely have an incompatible mod that has disabled SE.

You can confirm that by looking at Space Exploration in your mod list. If the name is in red like the picture on the right then you have a mod incompatibility. Compare your mod list with the "conflict" mod list linked above and disable any that are incompatible. You will need to "Apply changes" to restart Factorio before you can see if the name still appears in red.

Most notably these popular mods are incompatible: Resource Spawner Overhaul, Clockwork, Bob's and Angel

More generally, incompatible mods are: Everything else should work.
 * Other big overhaul mods (With one exception: Krastorio 2 works)
 * Mods that touch resource generation
 * Mods that touch the day/night cycle
 * Mods that let you teleport
 * Mods that do things when you die and didn't account for SE's respawning system