Getting back into KSP after a long break; what are the must-have mods these days?

[Jovus]

Pretty much as title. It has been a good long while since I last ran KSP, and a good long while before that since I actually seriously played.

What mods are essential these days? Back when I last played it was things like Kerbal Alarm Clock, Kerbal Engineer or MechJeb (I preferred the former, not to inflame old rivalries), and your docking assitant of choice (mine was Navyfish's). How about these days?

For that matter, what mods would you recommend for a vanilla+ experience, whether functional or graphical?

[hendrack]

Personal taste differs, but I'd say the following mods are kinda essential, but there are plenty more from many talented modders.

Aside the mods you mentioned, KSP 1.8 has a very nice russian KURS style docking camera, unfortunately that one is broken currently in 1.9. More stockalike would be docking port alignment indicator.

Functional stuff:

Editor extensions redux for the VAB

Tweakscale

Tweakable everything

AmpYear is a power manager and infoscreen, 

Toolbar and Toolbar controller

Zero MiniAVC is kind of important, it prunes the mini avc .dll which is often bundled but outdated with some mods

Kerbal Attachment and Kerbal Inventory System

Hyperedit

Camera Focus Changes is pretty handy (o key changes camera focus to a part under your mouse cursor)

AntennaHelper and CommNetAntennaInfo

Kerbal Joint Reinforcement

Grahpics

scatterer, distant object enhancement

Smokescreen and realplume for nice rocket exhaus effects

texture replacer and textures unlimited 

Magpie adds shiny shaders to a lot of parts via textures unlimited

Restock is a pretty big mod which replaces many stock textures and models

Astronomers Visual or Spectra are big graphic enhanement mods

TUFX adds post processing effects

Parts

I'd say stockalike station parts redux, SXT and stockalike mining extensions are Stock+

For more flavor, either Bluedog Design (American stuff), Tantares (Soviet/Russia), KNES (European stuff) and CRE (British rockets) can be considered stockalike.

ReDirect for your space shuttle needs, or Cormorant for Mk3 shuttles.

Tundra Exploration are stockalike SpaceX parts (there are a couple stockalike spacex mods though)

Nearfuture mods and Umbra Space industries are also very very good big part mods, but they leave the orbit of stockalike parts a bit.

Edited June 14, 2020 by hendrack

[Nightside]

Ground Effect is my favorite newish mod in a while