Balanced alternative to Automate mod

[HaxtonSale1]

OR: Hoppers, a Minecraft x Staredew Valley mod

Automate is widely^{[citation needed]} considered as disgustingly OP, as it gives the plain ol' chest the ability to both push and pull to machines. While it is convenient I feel it removes a lot from the game.

Solution:

• Separate the thing that automates things from the regular chest.
• Reduce its range - 1 tile for each of the cardinal directions seems good.
• Reduce its capacity to 9 to further distinguish from the chest.
• Increase its price, because it is still pretty powerful at this state. I think It needs Iridium bars, because I want to make it an endgame item. It'll give people something to do after the movie theater at least. 5 per (1 Iridium bar + 1 battery), perhaps.
• Name it "Hopper".

DLC 1: Pushing and pulling at the same time, from the same direction, seems too much. Give users the ability to select behaviors for each directions. For each of the cardinal directions, users can select whether to push, pull, or leave the direction inactive. We'd need a UI for this though.

DLC 2: The fun part. The PC doesn't know how to craft this at the beginning; Mr. Qi will send it to you, when you prove to himself that you are willing to strive for excellence. Exactly what, is left to the modders. I have some suggestions here, though:

• Ship 1000 of 5 items, that can get a score in the grange display.
• Ship one of each item that can get a score in the grange display, except for the non-gemstone minerals.

[HaxtonSale1]

I've closed this before. I now realize that the vanilla hopper is not the automating tool I wished it to be, so I think this idea is still valid.