Mantaflow: "Quick Smoke/Liquid" is more confusing than it used to be

Moin.

On the current alpha, the default for bakes of Manta simulations is "Modular" instead of "Replay". This means that, when clicking "quick smoke", expecting everything to set itself up to a semi-usable state, I just get nothing. Well, I keep the default cube, but no sign of smoke. Even when I render it.

From a usability standpoint, this is pretty awful. There is no indication on what is wrong (maybe the visibility settings? It did change to a wireframe view after all), what I'm supposed to do (maybe something in the object properties of the domain? Assuming my very first step is applying the effect, this is where the sidebar would take me) or what exactly "quick smoke" actually did.

If the default baking method was changed to "replay", at least I'd get direct feedback: there now is smoke when I play it.

Of course, that's not ideal either: Manta is much slower than the old thing (for me, at least), so the "replay" option makes everything painfully slow. Ideally, the thing would automatically do what I want and do that quickly, but I know this is impossible. But I should at least know where to look if something isn't working.

So, what do I actually want to see changed?

1. The UI giving me the info that I haven't yet baked the simulation when I attempt to play a scene with a simulation in it.
2. Perhaps "replay" as the default option, to bring it more in line with how it used to be.
3. (an overhaul of the entire way the options are laid out; I keep clicking back and forth between the flow and the domain trying to find settings - but that's probably more of a 3.0 kinda request)