Recommended add-ons / mods for newbies?

[Neufusion]

Any recommended add-ons / mods for newbies?

I'm playing easy career, have the basic concepts of the game down, and have played most of the basic missions except pilot recovery and mun landing.

[Black Dog]

1. Youtube (especially Scott Manley's videos)

2. Kerbal Engineer Redux (it's a must for everyone and should be stock)

3. Modular Rocket System from Necrobones or KW Rocketry for some additional parts

4. everything else is not really needed as a newbie

[BlueCanary]

Mechjeb is helpful for learning the best way to perform maneuvers by watching it do it for you, and like Black Dog said Kerbal Engineer Redux is extremely useful, although if you get mechjeb it does most of the same things really. Other than that, it completely depends what you want to do.

[Black Dog]

I agree, MechJeb ist helpful...

But not for a Newbie. Part of the fun ist to find out how to do it yourself. MechJeb robs you of exactly that fun. You program it and go drink a coffee. After coming back you find, it has landed on the Mun for you - yay fun times.

Later - ok, but not as a beginner

[sarbian]

After coming back you find, it has landed on the Mun for you - yay fun times.

Glad to see it works for you

[Kar]

Glad to see it works for you

Sometimes lol.

AHH... guess its not MJ 100% fault, maybe 99% if you land on high inclination slope.

Speaking of that sarbian, what about that? The auto-landing is great, it would be greater if we could see the slope angle on the map while we are choosing a place to land like in the mun where there are so many slopes, in particular in the poles.

More or less what Scansat does while we pass the mouse arrow on the map screen.

[BlueCanary]

I agree, MechJeb ist helpful...

But not for a Newbie. Part of the fun ist to find out how to do it yourself. MechJeb robs you of exactly that fun. You program it and go drink a coffee. After coming back you find, it has landed on the Mun for you - yay fun times.

Later - ok, but not as a beginner

I mean more as a sort of live tutorial by watching and copying how mechjeb does things.

[Meithan]

There are two mods I can't live without:

1) Kerbal Engineer Redux or MechJeb -- mainly for the delta-v readouts (in the VAB and in flight), but I also use many other info readouts (current TWR for ascents, radar altimeter for landings, accurate node burn times, detailed orbit information, rendezvous data, etc.).

2) Kerbal Alarm Clock -- once you start having several missions in flight (because going to Minmus takes 8 days, and you can do other stuff in that time), this tool is an absolute necessity. It lets you set alarms for distinct ship events (maneuvers, SOI changes, periapsis/apoapsis, etc.) or even transfer windows to make sure that you never miss one.

Not necessary but it will make your life much easier:

3) Docking Port Alignment Indicator -- once you get the gist of it, this tool will let you perform flawless, effortless dockings. What I like about it is that after a while of using it you won't even need it anymore.

Edited July 22, 2015 by Meithan

[Kar]

I mean more as a sort of live tutorial by watching and copying how mechjeb does things.

Some people like to use KER for info and also use MJ for other functions. Personally, even when I started, I always preferred MJ over KER, just because it gives me all the info I need and more, and after the 99999 launch you surely learned the game so it gets boring do all the stuff manually (for some).

Sure MJ can be a great way to learn, but in my own experience, there is no substitute for doing it yourself (and fail) and learn.

On the topic, it all depends how hard or easy you want you career game is. Personally I think the levels of difficulty on KSP are lame. I use mods to make my game harder and it's not the difficulty levels that will make my game harder (just longer grind if you reduce science, rep and money rewards from contracts).

When you learn the game, and feel comfortable with it, and, if you are like me lol, discover the amazing mods this community has made, your gameplay will be harder.

If you want some kind of realism there are many mods that do just that. If you want a easy life, then forget some hard mods out there.

Be aware there are mods that gives you more rocket parts and other stuff and makes rockets a bit overpowered and easy to get into the orbit and other places, in my honest opinion I would stay way from those. But hey, it's your game!

Mechjeb is good for info and automate many thinks, still learn and do it yourself first it will be much more rewarding and when you know how things are done, you do make MJ doing it for you, you can even fine tune many things MJ do.

Stay away from visual mods and graphics mods, they are great, and those people made amazing jobs but the memory problems KSP still have with the limitation of 32bits KSP its a pain to run big mods.

Some mods that do not increase or reduce the difficulty (imo) are:

Chatter: does not add anything just makes your kerbal talk.

Tac fuel balancer

Active texture management (reduce memory usage)

waypoint manager - great when you do many contracts flying over kerbin.

Nav instruments - adds ILS to your ksp, easy to align in any runway to land your planes.

Stage recover - Drop your boosters with parachutes and recover part of the funds you spent. This one saves my economy in career.

Im sure there are many others, I also use many more but those makes the game more harder and thats not you want do you?

My mod list:

Many here actually makes the game more harder, but much more fun.

Edited July 22, 2015 by Kar

[SAI Peregrinus]

The following all improve the ease of use / make the game more tolerable.

All of these are UI mods:

Action Group Manager - Lets you edit action groups in flight.

Action Groups Extended - Adds tons of action groups, and lots of extra functionality.

Filter Extensions - Makes the part filters better, which makes it easier to find parts.

GPOSpeed Fuel Pump - Balances fuel, takes less effort than TAC.

Kerbal Alarm Clock - Lets you set alarms. Pretty much necessary if you want to run more than 1 mission at once, don't like waiting 3 minutes after warping to a node, or similar things.

Kerbal Engineer Redux - Tells you information that it's really good to have. Eliminates more frustration than any other single mod.

Landing Height Display - Switches the altimeter to display height above terrain instead of height above sea level, so you don't crash into mountains.

Menu Stabilizer - Once your mouse is over a menu it won't move, even if your vessel is spinning.

Module Manager - Lets you tweak quite a lot about the game.

Navball Docking Algnment Indicator - This or docking port alignment indicator are really, really helpful for docking.

Navball Up Default - Shows your navball by default in the map view.

Part Commander - Lets you access all the right-click menus from your parts via a menu, instead of hunting around for them. Especially useful to access parts inside fairings or service bays.

Plane Mode - Swaps the yaw/roll keys as needed. Especially handy if you use a joystick.

Precise Node - Vastly better maneuver node interface.

Quick Search - Adds a search box to the SPH/VAB parts lists.

RCS Build Aid - Lets you balance RCS/Engines. That makes docking much, much less frustrating.

SAVE - Automatic save game backups.

Stock Bug Fix Modules - Fixes a bunch of bugs.

Stock Plugins - Removes the need to have a part for Kerbal Engineer, Graphotron, Protractor, MechJeb etc.

Throttle Controlled Avionics - Makes VTOLs and multi-engine landers easier.

Toolbar - Reduces button clutter.

Trajectories - Shows your aerobraking/re-entry path.

Transfer Window Planner - If you're not using KSP-TOT and want to go to another planet, or just need a quick guess, this is the way to go.

Waypoint Manager - Show waypoints from contracts in flight. No more switching to the map while trying to fly a plane.

Some mods that have parts:

Adjustable Landing Gear - Exactly what it says. Lets you easily align your landing gear so that your planes don't veer off the runway.

Procedural Parts, B9 Procedural Wings, Procedural Fairings - Parts that can be changed in size/shape easily. So instead of 10 different fuel tanks, you use 1 and resize it to what you need. Saves memory if you prune the stock tanks, wings, probe cores, stack decouplers, fairings, etc.

Auto Balancing Landing Leg - Exactly what it says. If you land on a slope it will keep your craft level.

Ferram Aerospace Research - More realistic aerodynamics, and GREAT tools to make designing planes easier.

MechJeb - Autopilot.

Kerbal Inventory System + Kerbal Attachment System - Among many other things these let you avoid the use of the Advanced Grabbing Unit (Claw). Since the Claw tends to irreparably break savegames, that's a good thing to avoid.