Anyone got pointers for the best mods for the original version?
Any pointers for the best/easiest way to get mods?

Personally, I've used a steam workshop addon that lets me download from the ones hosted there.
(This is somewhat frowned upon by Steam however. There have been a couple prominent sites that were shut down.
However, SteamCMD is still available and offered by Steam themselves. I consider it a grey area.)

My previous must have mods were:
One gave bots nigh-infinite energy when wound the first time (Perpetual Motion)
Another one that let me relocate distant resources to be much more convenient, but required basic metal production, so that it wasn't quite so cheaty. (Metal Dredger)

These were from a previous play on an old version though. I see that there have been a couple major updates since I stopped playing, so I don't know how relevant they still are.
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Played a bit, looks like they introduced a world starting option of no energy, so that's good.