Any interest in something like Skyrim's STEP for KSP?

[Lord Aurelius]

One thing I keep thinking would be really nice to have for KSP is something akin to Skyrim's STEP project. For those who aren't familiar with STEP (Skyrim Total Enhancement Project), here's the description they provide:

" STEP is an extensive, STEP-by-STEP, guide to enhancing TESV Skyrim with the best mods, tweaks and settings. The focus is quality over quantity. STEP tries to stay as close to vanilla Skyrim as possible while improving visual quality and correcting game-play mechanics."

The goal would be to have a set of baseline mods and tweaks that everyone using the guide would be expected to use (things like bugfix and optimization/quality of life mods that don't change gameplay or increase game requirements). Additional configurations could be specified beyond the baseline, and could include things like graphical overhauls, part rebalances (with some new parts as well to fill in gaps) and even full career overhauls (kind of like what SETI was trying to accomplish). The modding community outside of the project would be encouraged to create their own configurations starting from the baseline or other official configs, and the best of these could potentially be "adopted" by the project and maintained by the main project team.

My idea is to make this more of a community rather than an individual project (kind of how RSS-RO has been done) so multiple modders can contribute and come and go from the project in response to real-life demands. I've seen far, far too many great mods get abandoned by the wayside when the author went MIA and left their mod with a restrictive license, and I would want to see the project organized in such a way as to (hopefully) prevent this.

I don't have the time myself to lead something like this, but I would be willing to help contribute with planning/organization and/or creating part configs.

 

Does anyone have any interest in something like this?

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Sounds like you are suggesting a "modpack" basically?

Mod packs are typically frowned upon around here for several reasons, including licensing issues and how quickly new patches can break old mods.

[Randazzo]

It's been tried. Something something herding cats.

 

[Superfluous J]

The closest you can really expect to get is Realism Overhaul, which is a pretty big list. It significantly changes the game.

I think the problem with your idea is - perhaps more than with other communities - there is a vast difference in what different KSP players consider to be the "correct" set of mods, and many of us like to mix it up on a regular basis to keep things fresh.

[Lord Aurelius]

1 hour ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Sounds like you are suggesting a "modpack" basically?

Mod packs are typically frowned upon around here for several reasons, including licensing issues and how quickly new patches can break old mods.

I'm not suggesting a modpack. A modpack would be a single download with all the mods pre-modified and bundled together so it's a single archive to install. What I'm suggesting is a step-by-step guide that tells what mods to download and install, what files/in-game configs to edit, and possibly provides some small helper mods with modulemanager configs to make everything play nice. Players would still download the individual mods via CKAN or the various author's download pages.

37 minutes ago, Randazzo said:

It's been tried. Something something herding cats.

 

I'm not surprised something like that would happen, although which particular attempt are you referring to? The only mods I'm aware of that have tried to do anything like this are RSS-RO and SETI, and neither of those have had that particular problem.

24 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

The closest you can really expect to get is Realism Overhaul, which is a pretty big list. It significantly changes the game.

I think the problem with your idea is - perhaps more than with other communities - there is a vast difference in what different KSP players consider to be the "correct" set of mods, and many of us like to mix it up on a regular basis to keep things fresh.

I'm familiar with realism overhaul, and like you said, it significantly changes the game which is what I'm trying to avoid.

Your second point is valid, but I keep feeling like there could be a place for a "good enough" baseline that at least includes bugfix, and popular graphics/audio QoL mods. Some players will obsess over building their perfect KSP version (I know I've been like that, and yes, to some degree that mindset has prompted me to suggest this in the first place), but I'm at point now where "good enough" is preferable to playing stock, or spending a bunch of time messing around with mods and never actually really playing KSP before I get frustrated and move onto something else. I find it hard to believe that I'm the only player who feels this way and would at least like some basic starting point.

[Randazzo]

29 minutes ago, Lord Aurelius said:

I'm not surprised something like that would happen, although which particular attempt are you referring to? The only mods I'm aware of that have tried to do anything like this are RSS-RO and SETI, and neither of those have had that particular problem.

1

It was called community guidelines or standards or some such thing. It was a couple years ago. Feel free to dig through my activity if you want to try and find it. You'll know it when you see it.

 

[JH4C]

One player's must-have is another's "never would I ever." There's no such thing as an essential mod in KSP, it's all about what helps you play your game how you want; even the most lauded mods have their haters.

[Lord Aurelius]

18 minutes ago, JH4C said:

One player's must-have is another's "never would I ever." There's no such thing as an essential mod in KSP, it's all about what helps you play your game how you want; even the most lauded mods have their haters.

I know that, I've been hanging around the forums since 0.19. I'm very much aware that everyone has their opinions on the "perfect" KSP setup. Especially the people who tend to be more active on the forums.

Like I said, all I'm trying to propose is something like STEP. KSP and Skyrim are both alike in the sense that they're great ideas with lots of bugs and half-baked execution, and I'm just trying to see if there's any interest in putting together a guide to give some examples of mods to address the core issues and provide a reasonable foundation for adding additional mods onto.

A lot of the motivation for this comes from the fact that a lot of mod authors have a list of recommended mods on their pages, and these recommendations have been very helpful to me with getting ideas and seeing new mods to make my game better. I would just like to have a lot of this information in one place, with directions on how to install the various mods and have them play nice with each other instead of having to dig through old forum posts.

If there's no interest in a community effort for this, maybe I'll put together a quick-and-dirty guide for myself (so I can remember which mods I've used and how I got them working together) and post it up in case anyone finds it useful.

[Fengist]

37 minutes ago, JH4C said:

One player's must-have is another's "never would I ever." There's no such thing as an essential mod in KSP, it's all about what helps you play your game how you want; even the most lauded mods have their haters.

You hit that nail on the head.  Either people are asking for more parts or complaining a mod is bloated.

I think the other problem you would have with this, should you wish to pursue it and it wildly succeeds, is creating an elitist division amongst the modding community.  Who here is qualified to say which mods are the 'best' and are to be included and who's are amongst the worst and need to be excluded?  For example, one of my mods is consistently in the top 40 on Curse but has nothing to do with rockets or aircraft or even space exploration.  Which of those facts would cause it to be included or excluded.  I personally wouldn't want any of my mods in said pack.  The day I feel I have enough confidence in writing code that I can look down on someone else's mod as being 'not good enough' is the day I need to turn my computer off and take up something truly humbling like golf.

[Superfluous J]

I guess one thing is there really aren't many. There's *ve (the first letter is changed over time and I don't know what it is now) and scatterer and... That's about it. They play nice together and not much else changes the graphics. Sound is even less, the only one that comes to mind is chatterer.

Three mods aren't really that hard to install especially when they're three out of fifty.

[HebaruSan]

10 hours ago, Lord Aurelius said:

Does anyone have any interest in something like this?

It doesn't sound like it solves a problem I have.

4 hours ago, Lord Aurelius said:

What I'm suggesting is a step-by-step guide that tells what mods to download and install, what files/in-game configs to edit, and possibly provides some small helper mods with modulemanager configs to make everything play nice. Players would still download the individual mods via CKAN or the various author's download pages.

To decide whether I wanted to install this, I would have to read through the list of mods and what they do to determine whether I wanted them. This is what I already have to do when choosing individual mods from the list in CKAN.

To install it, I would have to follow the usual mod installation steps manually myself (or check their checkboxes in CKAN), and then add your .cfg files on top of that. This is the same amount of work as installing mods normally, just with less choice of what I install (unless I go the non-standard route, but then what was the purpose of the list in the first place?).

So I've expended the same effort reading about and installing mods as before, in exchange for what exactly? The chance to have the same setup as a few other people out there somewhere?

[Poodmund]

I think the caged responses that the idea has been getting here is due to the fact that the OP is trying to sell the idea that is only, really, going to appeal to the ignorant, uninformed users to the majority of forum users who are ingrained within the modding culture of this game who possess a wealth of knowledge about the modding database.

Basically, OP, you're preaching to the wrong crowd I think.

[Gargamel]

12 hours ago, Poodmund said:

I think the caged responses that the idea has been getting here is due to the fact that the OP is trying to sell the idea that is only, really, going to appeal to the ignorant, uninformed users to the majority of forum users who are ingrained within the modding culture of this game who possess a wealth of knowledge about the modding database.

Basically, OP, you're preaching to the wrong crowd I think.

I think if the OP wanted to write up a guide for beginners on picking some mods to start with, and describing a variety of some basic mod setups that a lot of players enjoy, they would find some support in the community.   Maybe not a lot, but some.  Maybe some others would help contribute too.  But it would probably amount to nothing more than a guide in the tutorials section, and would need pretty much constant updating.   And of course, as mentioned, everybody plays with different mod setups, so it would not be a definitive list, rather a suggestion on where to start.   But, I'd assume there's been a few of these threads made over time, and none to my knowledge has ever gone far. 

[Lord Aurelius]

5 hours ago, Gargamel said:

I think if the OP wanted to write up a guide for beginners on picking some mods to start with, and describing a variety of some basic mod setups that a lot of players enjoy, they would find some support in the community.   Maybe not a lot, but some.  Maybe some others would help contribute too.  But it would probably amount to nothing more than a guide in the tutorials section, and would need pretty much constant updating.   And of course, as mentioned, everybody plays with different mod setups, so it would not be a definitive list, rather a suggestion on where to start.   But, I'd assume there's been a few of these threads made over time, and none to my knowledge has ever gone far. 

If I end up doing anything with this, I very well end up doing something along those lines, although it might be a bit more like the Skyrim Revisited guide. Pretty much just sharing with my personal modlist and tweaks/settings so others can benefit from the time I've put into planning everything out and tweaking things to work together (and maybe get some suggestions on other mods to include I may have overlooked).