For the past few weekends (sorry other mods) I've been working on my own take of a logistics mod.

With only a few things missing I'm ready to put this out there for beta testing. It is not ready to be included in major mod packs!

You could summarize it as "Phantomface-esque Storage Drawers Controller for any inventory".

It's bat themed, but that really is just a theme and does not influence the actual behavior in any way. In other words, the bats are just a visual representation of linked blocks.

So, how does it actually work?

Capture bats, craft a bat cage and link it to up to 8 nearby block faces. There must be an open path between the cage and the linked blocks!
It does not transport items on its own, you need to push/pull into the bat cage, e.g. with a hopper
This means transport speed depends on your insertion/extraction method
Even though there are bats flying, transportation is instantaneous
The bat cage basically represents all the linked blocks (like a phantomface)
You can use the GUI to interact with the inventories directly or
set filter rules for what can be import/exported from the linked inventories by external blocks.
If you are not able to place an item in a slot then that is because automation would not be able to either.

What kind of bugs am I expecting?

Performance issues with many nested cages connected to large inventories
All the issues that come with logistics and transportation mods
client/server issues, sync problems, calling non-existing code
The must be a dupe bug in there somewhere
Filters (ore, nbt, meta, mod) might not be matching like they should
Weird slot behavior in the GUI
Minor Rendering issues
It's not balanced and it does not require much effort
Capturing bats is annoying

What will I definitely implement before hitting 1.0.0?

Fluid and Forge Energy support
More server performance improvements. Cache all the things.
Hwyla/TOP integration

What other major features/refactors have I been thinking about, but can't implement because of time constraints:

Bats require food, i.e. you need to provide them with fruits -> less OP
Links are saved on captured bats instead of on the batcage -> more convenience
Instead of requiring 8 bats to craft a bat cage, make the bat cage accept individual bats -> makes a lot more sense
Render the bats actually carrying the last transferred stack, instead of just representing the link -> immersion
Configurable dash board with configurable slot visibility/positions, i.e. build your own gui from multiple blocks -> convenience

I appreciate any feedback here or on the github issue tracker. I'd prefer bugs on github though :), thanks

Bats!