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What is the rationale behind playing completely stock?


falloutaddict

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I play stock, but randomly delete 20-30 part files before I startup the game. This is the only real way to play KSP. Pure stock installs are for players that want rocket science handed to them on a silver platter.

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I play stock, but randomly delete 20-30 part files before I startup the game. This is the only real way to play KSP. Pure stock installs are for players that want rocket science handed to them on a silver platter.

Just make sure those parts aren't all engines...

Anyways, I usually play a fairly heavily modded game, but I do understand the appeal of stock. Stock is great for sharing craft and comparing missions and has a certain simplicity to it with not having to install a bunch of mods and keep them all updated.

Unfortunately IMHO, KSP is still unfinished and is still an early access game in everything but name (and price now) and every time I go back to stock to build something I could potentially share, I end up missing all the niceties from mods that really should be stock (new/rebalanced parts mainly that fill in the holes in the stock lineup and KAS/KIS and life support, along with the occasional system rescale so I can build appropriately large rockets).

At least the essential UI/info and and graphics/audio mods still let me share craft while dramatically improving the game.

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Four things keep me playing mostly stock.

1. I like to have my videos display the basic game so that what I do can be done by EVERYONE. They can build anything I build with no mod conflicts.

2. It's normally much more stable and faster to load.

3. I don't have to wait 3 months after an update for all my mods to update before I play the new stock update.

4. I don't have to face that annoyance when a mod I've come to depend on is suddenly abandoned and no longer used.

In addition, when I do finally tire of Stock KSP, then mods will be there. I will probably enjoy them as much as everyone else does, but for now I'm happy as is.

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Ive run only stock since day one. (well over a year). My son installed Mechjeb and a couple others, but I cannot bring myself to do it yet.

I have nothing against mods, and have a huge pile of them for Skyrim and other games. Im just not ready to mod KSP yet.

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My first month or so was entirely stock play. Now that I've used mods, I doubt I could ever go back. One of the primary reasons is that stock rockets tend to be ugly as sin beyond the relatively straightforward 2.5m - 3.75m stack. Sure I could make them nicer-looking by clipping and such, but I feel about clipping they way a stock purist feels about mods.

Second, yes, here it is: Mechjeb.

If I had to personally calculate and execute every rendezvous and intercept, I'd go mad. Can I do it if I must? Sure. I can also stick a fork in my eye, if I must. The enjoyment of this game for me comes from designing a program or vehicles capable of executing what I want them to do, without my involvement in every fine detail of the manuevers. I highly doubt I'd have done as much as I have now if I had to do it all manually, because I simply wouldn't enjoy it.

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I think I'm going to have to start playing stock. Once I start downloading mods, it feels like there's a few others I need, then my mod list jumps up to around 50 (most being quality of life mods. ie; more contracts, navball, KER, etc. Only 5 part mods).

Then after maybe 40 minutes into a mission, my game resets. Really frustrating.

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Here's what happens to me. I play for a while with a set of mods, until I start getting tired of it. Then Squad comes out with a new update and I play for a while with it stock. It's like a whole new game. Then I look at the mod lists and install some interesting ones. It's like a whole new game again! Then Squad makes some changes, and I wonder how they will affect the stock game balance, so....

It keeps the game interesting.

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I think I'm going to have to start playing stock. Once I start downloading mods, it feels like there's a few others I need, then my mod list jumps up to around 50 (most being quality of life mods. ie; more contracts, navball, KER, etc. Only 5 part mods).

Then after maybe 40 minutes into a mission, my game resets. Really frustrating.

Protip: Use 64-bit Linux with 8GB of RAM (or more), or use the OpenGL tweak for Windows and make sure to turn off the heat gauges using F10 until Squad fixes the memory leak with them. I've been able to run a ridiculous pile of mods for a significant period of time with the OpenGL tweak (including large parts packs, EVE and mods with additional planets). This was even back on 0.90 when the memory leaks were worse than what they are now.

A lot of players have been reporting success with a hack that enables 64-bit on windows as well, but watch out for some mods that disable themselves (like FAR) when they detect 64-bit on windows.

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There sure are a lot of communities in this community...

What he means is this:

EVERYONE in the community has access to stock KSP. (provided they bought it) You have access to it. I have access to it. Slash has access to it. Everyone starts with stock, and therefor stock is the biggest group of people because it literally includes everyone.

Not everyone can run mods, especially RO, so that group of people is naturally much smaller than the stock group. If Slash focuses on stock craft, it can be used by everyone in the community, because we all have access to stock KSP. It may not work in RO, but thats a given. Just cause you play RO doesn't mean you don't have access to stock. If you made RO craft, yeah they would work for you. And anyone else who has your exact RO config. But for anybody else, with stock or a different RO config, most likely it won't work as intended.

So Slash didn't mean that RO users weren't part of the community as a whole. He just meant that the whole community has access to stock, therefor by making stock craft he can appeal to the whole community. :)

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It's the easiest way to not be a filthy cheater.

Basically this. That's why I prefer stock at least.

I honestly view things like mechjeb as cheating, but when that was my sig I got reported "multiple times". There are no depths of depravity mod players wont go to.

Also you absolutely do not need dv or anyother KER numbers added to the game to play it. I manage just fine. I agree with this article, where Harv says "In the end, it takes away a gameplay element because it takes some of the guesswork and some of the trial and error and figuring out for yourself what the delta-V is. It might take some of the magic away."

Remote tech and TAC and KAS might be fun, but I enjoy the game Squad made, just as they made it*.

*With the exception of chatterer and EVE. I like my game to look and sound pretty. Forgive me for cheating.

Edited by r4pt0r
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The reasons I have tried playing straight vanilla is to share crafts, and somewhat for the challenge. After a few "I wish I had a this part to fit in that gap" moments, I get a mod. I also prefer to use the stock revamp mod because it is better looking than stock.

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In general I play most games stock, and don't spend much time working with mods. I will sometimes use well polished, popular, and useful mods. Kerbal Engineer and Alarm Clock for example, and I've used a few different docking port mods from time to time, but I honestly have no desire to spend my time and effort sorting through mods and finding ones that are not only interesting and useful, but which also play nicely with each other.

The stock game itself is more than enough fun, and I would rather be playing it than trying to juggle mods, or waiting for large ones to get updated each time the core game has a new version roll out.

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Imho it is a basic behavioural preference regarding choices/options.

Some people just do not like to decide for themselves and prefer to eat what is served.

Eg some poeple prefer to swich on the TV and have their control limited to channel up and down and volume up and down.

While others prefer to type in what they want to see, even if that means actually thinking about what they really want to watch.

It is no coincidence that the most heavily modded games are open world themselves, and not linear shooters.

You can go to politics/food/religion/other entertainment. Always the same basic principles of preference.

And speaking about preferences, when you take a look at the twitch channels streaming KSP, it is not surprising that most are stock.

While some use part mods, hardly any of them uses more complex/less visible gameplay mods, like KerbalConstructionTime, DangIt, or even a tech tree mod, let alone something more complex like KSP Interstellar Extended.

MKS/OKS being the only real exception, because it adds this basic layer of scope for the space program (and is nice to watch).

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I've been playing stock for quite a long time for three main reasons:

  1. It felt like the only way to have achievements and designs feel meaningfully comparable to what others have done
  2. Lack of interest in spending time maintaining mods and dealing with any issues arising from their use
  3. Belief that Squad would be more focused on creating a broadly balanced and satisfying game than a modder who has his own playstyle and preferences in mind (ie. parts could be overpowered, not fit well with career flow, etc.), and I figured eventually Squad would get around to pulling in the best mod ideas themselves.

I have to say though that I've just recently reached the point where I'm giving up on stock play.

Basically I've been disappointed that point #3 above hasn't held true -- especially at its 1.0 release status. So I've been really excited by the SETI mod which aims to pull together a wide range of popular mods, contracts, and a custom tech tree into a cohesive, balanced career gameplay experience that looks to be much more well thought-out and diverse than the stock game. I'd be much happier if it were Squad doing this, but I think it's pretty clear at this point that Squad wants to stick to the minimum necessary and leave everything else to modders, so I'm really happy that somebody is taking up the banner of creating a great career game from that platform.

Edit: Hah, of course Yemo, the creator of SETI, slips a post in just ahead of mine. That wasn't planned, I swear.

Edited by sherkaner
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I stick to stock parts (except for UI inputs like mechjeb, Kerbal engineer, Kerbal alarm clock, and various other things like sound effects for immersion).

This is mainly because I plan to share my crafts and other lessons learnt from the base game. So for the crafts I make and the ascent profiles I have, they all need to be standardized and not force people to download mods they might not want.

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I use KER, but that is all. In addition to preferring the difficulty of using stock + hard-mode, I can still enjoy the game when it is updated rather than waiting on all of the mod-makers to adapt to changes. I wonder how many mods are going to break with the Unity 5 update?

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Also you absolutely do not need dv or anyother KER numbers added to the game to play it. I manage just fine. I agree with this article, where Harv says "In the end, it takes away a gameplay element because it takes some of the guesswork and some of the trial and error and figuring out for yourself what the delta-V is. It might take some of the magic away."

Great point. I always play with KER and love it, but I feel OK about that because before I found out about it I was doing all my dV calcs in Excel, and would frequently pause a mission and go plug in my current fuel numbers to see what I had left. So I wasn't doing guesswork anyway, KER just automated a task in-game that I was already automating out-of-game. OTOH I never use Mechjeb and cringe any time someone answers a Gameplay Question about how to pilot with "here's how you set MJ to give you whatever you want" -- piloting requires attention, skill and control, and if you're going to automate it why not just Hyperedit and deduct the fuel? But your game is YOUR game and your fun is YOUR fun. Just don't expect me to be impressed with your flying if you weren't the one who flew it.

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Just don't expect me to be impressed with your flying if you weren't the one who flew it.

You use the exact same reasoning for using KER (automate something you could do, but don't think you should have to do) as others give for Mechjeb, but somehow your particular choice is more legit? Why is this such a common attitude?

It's nice to throw this platitude in there:

But your game is YOUR game and your fun is YOUR fun

But since you preceded and followed it with asinine comments sort of make it pointless. If you're going to be insulting, why not just skip to the insults and deduct the other words?

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What he means is this:
I know exactly what Slashy meant, and I'm pretty sure Slashy knew exactly where I was coming from, notice the qualifier. The point being that the stock experience is not the only one and that we really should qualify "community" in the sense that Slashy uses it to "stock community". Whether it's larger than the modded community does not matter, being clear about whether we're talking about a "community of KSP players" or a "community of players that only play KSP stock" is important. Clearly Slashy's knowledge isn't specific to RO play, or FAR play, or even necessarily play with ENG.
*With the exception of chatterer and EVE. I like my game to look and sound pretty. Forgive me for cheating.
You are a disgrace to the game.
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I play stock. Why?

1) don't want want to deal with downloading a bunch of mods

2) don't want to deal with troubleshooting mod induced bugs

3) don't want to deal with more unfinished products than vanilla KSP

The only mod I have used so far is welding... For obvious reasons. If someone came out with a mod that increased performance of KSP... That's a mod I would use.

Besides, the fun comes from doing cool things in space, making it easier is not going to make it more fun.

This is an interesting question/topic however. I think the problem with mods for me is that they seem to fall into two categories, they either try to add to the game or make it easier. If there was a mod such as "SciFi 2525" that was old-school science fiction in spirit (think lush jungles on Eve, marooned obsolete self-conscience robots on Moho, and insanely massive but simple FTL ships that have brains and spines) then I would be all about it. A few carnivorous plants and rudimentary ray guns for self protection would be a nice touch. That is to say, make a mod that significantly CHANGES the game and you would have my interest. MechJeb, not so muchâ€â€I can fly my own damn ship, thank you! ;)

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