MOD Suggestions (realism and ambience) for a new player.

[Dichotomy]

Hello

I am a new player who is contemplating which MODS to use before my first playthrough. I have played around with KSP a little a while back, but little more then that outside of forum lurking. I have a high-threshold for failure, and prefer realism/immersive type MODS.

I was hoping that other forumgoers could recommend a few MODS, where they felt that the stock game was inadequate, and that the MOD was both stable and complete. The only MOD I am set on ATM is SCANSAT.

QUESTION 1

Not mod related, but didn't want to saturate the forums with another seperate post. I have read the wiki and other articles regarding kerbal stats ie COURAGE AND STUPIDITY. The general consensus is that these only pertain to how kerbals behave (primarily when in danger IIRC). Unfortunately MOST of the articles I read were quite out of date, and none were post 1.0. Can any one tell me if these stats have any mechanic based functionality ?

QUESTION 2

These are the MODS I was interested in :

1. ASTRONOMERS VISUAL PACK

2. FAR.

3. Deadly Re-Entry

4. Finally can anyone recommend a life support MOD that requires a life support to be accounted for (simple or complex), but still allows for the possibility of rescuing stranded kerbals (I like the idea of this)? I was looking at TACS, but think it probably rules out any rescues gievn the timescales involved.

These are the questions I was interested in :

A. Does the MOD account for the stock science tree, and integrate any new parts/systems into logical nodes of the tree (that do not unbalance the player's intended progression through the tree) ?

B. Does the MOD account for currency in career mode (if applicable), with balanced costs associated with any new parts/systems.

C. Any other notable impressions/comments pertaining to the MOD ?

D. Is anyone using any of the above MOD's ATM with stock v1.02 and if so are they stable.

Finally does anyone have any other MOD suggestions they think might be of interest ?

Thanks for any replies in advance, and apologies for the rather open ended and long question.

[Octa]

Hello

I am a new player who is contemplating which MODS to use before my first playthrough. I have played around with KSP a little a while back, but little more then that outside of forum lurking. I have a high-threshold for failure, and prefer realism/immersive type MODS.

I was hoping that other forumgoers could recommend a few MODS, where they felt that the stock game was inadequate, and that the MOD was both stable and complete. The only MOD I am set on ATM is SCANSAT.

QUESTION 1

Not mod related, but didn't want to saturate the forums with another seperate post. I have read the wiki and other articles regarding kerbal stats ie COURAGE AND STUPIDITY. The general consensus is that these only pertain to how kerbals behave (primarily when in danger IIRC). Unfortunately MOST of the articles I read were quite out of date, and none were post 1.0. Can any one tell me if these stats have any mechanic based functionality ?

I haven't heard of any changes in 1.0. These 2 characteristics and the badS-Flag of the kerbal control the facial expressions in IVA-(Cam).

QUESTION 2

These are the MODS I was interested in :

1. ASTRONOMERS VISUAL PACK

2. FAR.

3. Deadly Re-Entry

4. Finally can anyone recommend a life support MOD that requires a life support to be accounted for (simple or complex), but still allows for the possibility of rescuing stranded kerbals (I like the idea of this)? I was looking at TACS, but think it probably rules out any rescues gievn the timescales involved.

These are the questions I was interested in :

A. Does the MOD account for the stock science tree, and integrate any new parts/systems into logical nodes of the tree (that do not unbalance the player's intended progression through the tree) ?

B. Does the MOD account for currency in career mode (if applicable), with balanced costs associated with any new parts/systems.

C. Any other notable impressions/comments pertaining to the MOD ?

D. Is anyone using any of the above MOD's ATM with stock v1.02 and if so are they stable.

Finally does anyone have any other MOD suggestions they think might be of interest ?

Thanks for any replies in advance, and apologies for the rather open ended and long question.

Unfortunately i'm not using any of them. As far as i see, only Deadly Reentry features new parts from your list. Most mods integrate themselves in the tech tree so their parts are not available from the start, but have to unlocked one after another. Also, the parts costs funds. Mods also feature contracts, or at least there's another mod that includes contracts for a mod (say mod one more time, i dare you!)

Personally, i remember seeing a mod that adds contracts to feature the parts and function from ScanSat, but this is certainly not available for everything.

I recommend CKAN which is more of an external tool, but for me, it made managing the whole update stuff a lot easier and way more comfortable. Many mods are included in CKAN, so from the popular ones there just a few left that have to managed manually.

Stuff i find interesting is:

ScanSat

Dmagic Orbital Science

Station Science

Kerbal Alarm Clock

Kerbal Inventory System

Hullcam VDS

Kerbal Alarm Clock

Transfer Window Planner

Rasterpropmonitor

Kerbal Engineer

DockingPort Alignment Indicator

[Levelord]

Snacks! is a good life support mod where if you run out of snacks, your Kerbals will start to lose XP. I suppose this is what you are looking for in terms of a life support that doesn't kill Kerbals thus allowing for rescue missions. It's still for version 0.9 though. I don't know when it'll be updated for 1.0+