What is the rationale behind playing completely stock?

[Orbital Vagabond]

With stock you can play the game consistently as the devs release new content, while modded games typically need to wait for the stock update, then the mod updates. This is much less of an issue since Squad only really releases about 4 patches a year.

There's also the issue where mods can lose support, and will never get updated to the most recent vesion. This includes mods developers that have 'rage-quit' their mods for various reasons.

[Sky_walker]

Please explain how you can debunk someones opinion of a game and call it nonsense ?

That sounds like trying win an argument by saying I don't like liver therefore you couldn't possibly like liver and if you do it is nonsense.

I am sorry but now that is funny

People play stock for dozens of different reasons. You can even see it in this thread. Saying that they do it because they are "just happy with the game that the developers have released" is a nonsense.

[Alshain]

Stock is easier to share crafts. The main reason why I wanted to really try the new aerodynamics, because sharing crafts that work with Stock vs. FAR adds complication. The same effect for part mods.

Part mods I do use are usually not game altering or just add more difficulty and if I want to share, I can usually remove them. For non-game altering, I like things like the Mk3 Mini expansion and the Surface Lights mods. They add useful parts, but no super efficient engines or anything like that. Other mods like RemoteTech parts don't make it easier and the mod itself makes it more challenging.

[Mister Dilsby]

I play stock because I feel more connected with other players in the community that way. If I go to the Duna using stock parts, and someone else goes to the Duna using extra-efficient engines and a mod to perform all of his manouvers for him and a bunch of cool doohickies all over their ship that do cool stuff while his kerbals starve inside their capsules if they stay out too late, then we aren't really playing the same game.

I play stock for an indirect sense of comradery with my fellow kerbonauts.

I was going to type a long response on this thread, but JHadden said it all for me. I'll only add, as a stock player I tend to only look at and comment on mission reports for stock-only builds, or at least builds that are harder than stock (e.g. life support). I want to see what others can do using the same parts as me, and I want to challenge myself to take the state of the art ever higher.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Stock KSP is like eating Meat without any Sauce, Pepper or Salt... pure Goodness!

But what is Life without a little spice from time to time

[Red Iron Crown]

I play both. Stock makes it easier to share your experiences, techniques, and files with others. Just about everyone can load a .craft with all stock parts, add mod parts and it's a crapshoot.

[falloutaddict]

I have only one opinion about people that plays completely stock: they're scared from crashes. Mods makes you RAM easily running on the limit of KSP, causing crashes and other weird thing. But playing stock it's actually play just 50% of KSP.

Nothing wrong with that. I have about 13-14 mods installed and when the game finally crashes I take it as a sign I should probably go to bed

"We play with stock-only capabilities and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

-John F. Kerman

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

Both good answers! Those dirty cheaters with their dirty mods.

Console gaming mentality? The belief that the developer should be able to deliver a complete product to the end user without need for mods to finish it? Limited system resources that make mods an impossible prospect? There's a lot of reasons why people play only stock. That's just a few.

I have a pretty low end pc and I am still able to run mods without any serious issues. Also, aside from maybe incorporating kerbal engineer and alarm clock, I wouldn't even consider any of the other mods I use needed, I just think they enhance the experience. Don't know why anyone would want to limit their fun based on the belief that the game should be "complete." But who am I to judge?

What if there were no mods? What if KSP was an un-modable game (as, I believe, the vast majority of games out there are)? Would you still play it? I think that's a better question.

I would. I started playing before I knew there were mods, I played for a long time knowing there were mods without installing them, and if there had never been mods I still would have played (I really love this game), maybe just would have made an excel spreadsheet for calculating dV though.

[PDCWolf]

I always play stock only in fresh installs until my BS meter reaches a high level, then I install mods mostly to add variety to the game and stuff that I think the game needs. Most of the time I also do my own fixes (like with the -outdated- mod in my signature).

TL;DR The normal game feels empty and too simple/easy to me, even with the gimping limitations it has.

[falloutaddict]

I play stock for the challenge and the simplicity. I do use KER when I need to, to do the equations for me, but I never got around to installing it post-1.0 so right now I'm playing by ear. I think mods are a wonderful idea but none really truly stand out to me, and besides, when making products and missions in stock then everybody can equally have the .craft file and things are much freer.

It's for the people, man... *peace sign*

I am all stock. I imagine one day I will explore the mods and different ways to play, but for now I feel I haven't begun to exhaust all the possibilities that stock offers. When I get bored or have no more inspiration to do stock missions, then I will switch it up.

So you guys are out there

[GoSlash27]

I play completely stock so that my designs, approaches, and techniques are fully compatible with the rest of the KSP community.

I also like the challenge of doing it all myself rather than relying on mods like MJ or KER and I think that this has made me a better engineer and pilot than I would have been otherwise.

Oh... the original question was "how do I get by without them"...

KER: I use spreadsheets that model all sorts of different forms of the rocket equation. Not only do I not need KER, I can do things that it can't, such as instantly tell which engine is best for a certain stage and exactly how much fuel/ tankage I need to feed it.

MechJeb: I simply learned how to fly and how to execute all the different maneuvers necessary.

Alarm Clock: I put up a little sat just ahead of Kerbin and barely outside it's SoI. I use it to generate maneuver nodes to tell me when my transfer windows will be open.

Best,

-Slashy

Edited May 26, 2015 by GoSlash27

[falloutaddict]

People who don't play with TAC life support installed are cheating.

So basically, the rationale behind stock is that they're the real filthy cheaters.

LOL I feel you there, after installing TAC it just doesn't feel right to go back. Now that I've got remote tech it's even worse. I imagine it will not get better once I get far or deadly reentry.

[regex]

I play completely stock so that my designs, approaches, and techniques are fully compatible with the rest of the KSP community.

So you don't consider the Realism Overhaul players to be a part of the community?

[falloutaddict]

I play stock (+KER, for the valuable information; +KAC, for juggling several missions with my faulty short term memory) because i barely manage to get to duna in career before a new version pops up and i have incompatible save games...

all the new parts and features would overly complicate things for me. it's fun as it is, more fun is good, but i haven't even completely used up all the stock fun yet.

that said, i urge you to try one additional mod, which i found absolutely essential for my playing experience:

Chatterer!

now new with female voices! :-D

YES I cant play without those chattery little voices in the background. And i noticed the new girl voices too seem to only get used when I have a female pilot.

[rkman]

So you don't consider the Realism Overhaul players to be a part of the community?

Don't they use mods? So they are probably filthy cheaters, not elitist like yourself.

[falloutaddict]

People play stock for dozens of different reasons. You can even see it in this thread. Saying that they do it because they are "just happy with the game that the developers have released" is a nonsense.

I am loving the variety of responses I am getting.

So far the list is:

-Don't want to have issues with memory

-Want to be able to share craft easier

-Playing the game as the devs intended

-Like the challenge

-Feel mods make the game unbalanced

-Haven't run out of stuff do in stock mode

-Don't want to be a cheater

-Are a bunch of cheaters

-Feel more connected to the community

So wow! There are quite a few more of you guys than I imagined! These are all perfectly valid and good reasons to play stock. Like I said, I was just curious to what peoples reasoning behind it was not whether one is better than the other. Thanks for all your responses

Edited May 26, 2015 by falloutaddict

[gmiddlemass]

I play stock on my main career game until I complete the tech tree and then I make a copy of the directory and open it up to mods. The mods I use tend to be mainly visual though or ones like the excellent "TweekScale" for even more flexibility in using the stock parts and "Outer Planets" for somewhere else to visit.

Playing stock means that my craft files are guaranteed to work when i share them with friends and gives a sense of achievement for having gone there myself rather than relying on the likes of Mechjeb or Kerbal Engineer.

[GoSlash27]

So you don't consider the Realism Overhaul players to be a part of the community?

Regex,

Not in the sense that I'm talking about, no. Most people on the forum don't use realism overhaul, so your techniques, designs, and tribal knowledge don't really interchange outside your subset.

I like to help and learn from the widest group possible.

Best,

-Slashy

[Spartwo]

I don't use part mods for the sake of persist and craft files. I go crazy otherwise.

[tater]

I play stock when a new version comes out so that I can make intelligent commentary on the changes here. I'd play heavily modded if the game was more stable while heavily modded, as I think it needs many mods, frankly.

[katateochi]

Stock is easier to share crafts. The main reason why I wanted to really try the new aerodynamics, because sharing crafts that work with Stock vs. FAR adds complication. The same effect for part mods.

*cough* KerbalX.com *cough* - automatically detects the mods an uploaded craft needs (and now lets you download a .ckan metapackage for mod craft on there, so you can download a mod-craft and it's .ckan file, put the craft in your saves, and give the .ckan file to CKAN and it will fetch the required mods for you.)

I play stock when a new version comes out so that I can make intelligent commentary on the changes here. I'd play heavily modded if the game was more stable while heavily modded, as I think it needs many mods, frankly.

I totally agree!

I love playing with mods, but when a new release of KSP comes out I always play pure stock (or very nearly pure stock) for a while.

There are great merits to both stock and mod game play. Mod's add so many great new features. Stock gives you a level playing field and poses different design challenges. Both bring challenging aspects to the game and I enjoy both styles. It's like having two quite different games for the price of one.

[Kuu Lightwing]

Oh, I like the assumptions that everyone playing stock is elitist. Thank you for assuming that even though you don't know me.me .

Now, I use KER and EVE, but I consider myself a stock player. And I probably play that way until I'll get bored (I can stop playing completely by that point, though) there's a number of reasons for that:

1) I have experience playing heavy-modded Minecraft, so I know how it feels. At some point I stopped playing Minecraft and started playing RedPower, IndustrialCraft, Thermal Expansion, etc. While that's nice, I can't get back and play vanilla anymore, it became a different game for me. I might get there at some point, but while stock works for me, I'll play stock.

2) I don't want to bother with managing all the stuff, updating, running out of memory, finding which mod caused that nasty bug, etc.

3) Now this is a bit too global, but still, I want to respect developers work and give some feedback. It's quite often to point some balance issue or suggest a feature, and get a response like "use [mod name]". You are not helping! It's like suggesting to devs to abandon all development except for the engine and bugfixing, and I think I have actually seen such suggestions. No! Stock should be playable as it is without mods so if I think there's an issue with it, I point it out. For the "respect" part it is just making me cringe when people start discussing how worthless Squad is because fairings don't separate in two parts. Seriously...

Answering from mobile so sorry for stupid mistakes and bad English.

[rcp27]

I take the view that a computer game is in a sense a work of art. It is a creative form of story telling through an interactive medium. The game sets out to take me on a journey in which I have to face certain challenges, learn how to overcome them, and deal with success and failure using a particular set of options at my disposal. They could easily have put something like Mech Jeb or KER into the stock game, but they have taken a creative decision that they want me to go through the learning process and experience the emotions of succeeding or failing without them.

When I go to watch a movie or read a book, I try to avoid spoilers. I want to follow the story the creators of that work of art intend me to follow in the way they planned. I respect the artistic decisions they have made, and want to go on the journey they intend for me. I feel the same way about games: I respect the artistic efforts of the creators of the core game and want to experience the game as they intended. In that sense, mods are a bit like fan fiction: they provide a different experience in the same setting and background as the work from which they are derived. They may be good or not, but they are different.

[pandaman]

I resisted mods for ages as I never really 'liked the idea'. I played pure stock from v18.3 and only installed KER after a while of using v25 as I got really fed up with having no delta v indicator in VAB. I do use a lot of KERs other info 'cause it's there' but if stock had some its functionality I would consider not using it.

Same goes for KAC which I have only just installed but not needed to use it yet.

When I get a better pc I will consider 'eye candy' mods, and maybe stuff like RSS for a change.

[ArchGaden]

The times I've intentionally played stock where when I wanted the pure challenge of doing a mission without the help or hindrance of mods. A stock solution can be recreated by anyone, and knowing that seems to make it feel more legitimate somehow. Of course, beyond a few sandbox missions, the only reason I play stock is because plugins sometimes need a few days to work out compatibility with major patches.

I can say without plugins, my playtime in KSP would probably be about 1/5th of what it is... a great bargain to be sure and still an amazing game, but just not nearly as amazing as it is now. When used properly, plugins can add convenience to certain redundant aspects of the game without making it easier, and add amazing new features well ahead of the stock game. Mining and refining fuel, better aero, and deadly re-entry heat are all features we got from plugins before stock had it. Life-support is still a plugin-only feature.

My personal point of no-return with plugins was with Kethane. Too often, my big missions were devolving into countless routine refueling runs. You can only make a vessel so big before it breaks the game and deep space missions meant either insanely big vessels at launch (worse before 3.5m parts) or many ships docking in orbit to refuel at key points during a mission. So many routine refueling missions turned the game into drudgery. It was then I reasoned, "This isn't hard. The mission would be just as hard if I cheated to refuel at these points, but a lot more fun without the drudgery". I just couldn't bring myself to outright cheat though...and then I discovered the Kethane mod. It added a whole new dimension to my missions, allowing me to refuel without routine launch drudgery or feeling like I cheated. It even added difficulty to the game. I now had a reason to put satellites into polar orbit and land large mining rigs on distant moons. Building fuel infrastructure in advance of major missions was often more challenging than the missions themselves.

Of course, I can fully understand how someone getting into KSP right now could shun plugins. All that cool stuff that was once part of my 'must-have' plugin package is now built into stock and stock feels much more like a complete game. On other hand, you're still missing on life support, robotic parts, and a lot of other cool stuff.

[LittleBlueGaming]

I enjoy playing with some of the informational/quality-of-life mods, I enjoy playing with parts mods for more variety, but I also enjoy playing stock for more of a challenge.

Also, I've got a toaster for a laptop, so I can really only use small mods.

Current modded career uses Blizzy's Toolbar, CapCom, ContractConfigurator+Packs, Contracts Window +, Crowd Sourced Science, Kerbal Engineer, MechJeb, Science Alert, Stage Recovery, Waypoint Manager, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Final Frontier, S.A.V.E, Transfer Window Planner, Docking Port Alignment Indicator.