I was just wondering what mods there are out there that soon helped to improve the vanilla game. Like for example, I'm sure the Traffic in this game was inspired by the "Traffic Tool Mod", especially since it works in the same manner.
the traffic tool was not used as inspiration, they actually hired the guy as a programmer to add it himself!
Not sure if you're asking about the thing I'm about to tell, but so far I've noticed that the devs got inspired by 3 or 4 things that the Brutus B1 got; movable hooks on bumpers, swingy antennae, possibly the Hopper Crawler (not 100% sure about it) & portal axles for D-Series crawlers. Might be also one more thing, but I'm not sure what it could be
That's a bit of a tricky question. Traffic mod - hired the dev, GamerGull. Other mods? I know that Bob.Blunderton (Roane County TN, Los Injurus, etc) has been conversing with the devs about the things he encounters while making his massive mods. So, undoubtedly, some of those conversations have led to in-game features/enhancements. I don't know for sure, but I would also venture that HighDef has made significant suggestions/offered input into the game through his map-making and gameplay. Then of course we have the scripts and mods that have been created that we can guess made it into the game, but will probably never know unless the modder says so.