It appears that if there are dependencies in the deployment that require a Managed Package to be installed/updated, that package is automatically installed/updated before the deployment takes place.

This is great, but it needs more clarity and control for the user.

It would be nice to know if Managed Packages are going to be installed as the result of a deployment, and if so, opt-in or opt-out of that process. It would be great if opting-out also displayed the related metadata with the dependency so those could be excluded as well.

This may also avert some errors where metadata needs a Managed Package already installed in order to be deployed successfully.