Is "No Mods" the solution to the Kraken?

[mythbusters844]

Nope. The stock game is just as unstable or even less stable than adding mods. Their memory usage just exacerbate the stock memory leaks, general instability, and the thousands of lines of uncommented legacy code generating hundreds of suppressed exceptions a second. I've actually had more game-breaking problems (not crashes) in the stock game than with mods.

Edited August 11, 2015 by mythbusters844

[A_name]

I run lots of mods. I started playing a couple years ago and have had I think only 1 Kraken attack in all my KSP gaming history. By Kraken attack I mean mission braking occurrences. In my particular case my craft would shake itself to death upon loading. I also had a minor issue once with ghost forces making my ship rotate when I turned off the SAS, a problem which I traced to a part clipping a service bay, which is a known issue. Other than that I've always been fine, I guess I'm just lucky.

Game crashes are a whole different story and these are (usually) directly caused by the game running out of memory. This is indeed affected by number of mods installed. OpenGL mode and Active Texture Management mod are recommended if this is an issue. You can (usually) "feel it coming", i.e. the game starts becoming very slow and laggy. In these cases I usually opt for saving and restarting the game.

[legoclone09]

Mods =/= Kraken. Once this is understood, you realize mods are safe. The worst thing is the Klaw and Cargo bays,thise are the true Kraken summoners.

[IllicitMedic]

Linux is the answer, I've never once experienced the kraken nor encountered memory related crashes or mod related crashes and I play with upwards of 50 mods since 0.19

In fact since 1.0 I don't believe I've even had a crash or bug.

[legoclone09]

Linux is truly the answer, I can have fun in the game now! Ah, SETI, B9 procedurals, and VSR. So essential.

[A_name]

Linux is truly the answer, I can have fun in the game now! Ah, SETI, B9 procedurals, and VSR. So essential.

Pardon the noob question. Can you have Linux and Windows installed on the same computer to be able to switch to Linux to play KSP and then back to Windows to do other stuff?

[Xannari Ferrows]

Xannari; "you will at least be visited by both him, and Mr. NaN." // ...Mr. Nan?... O.o

You'll get visited by him often, actually, but he comes in full force once something, be it orbital parameters, resources, rate of consumption, ect. tries to divide itself by 0.

Other than that, you'll get a few bugs every now and then that are his handywork.

[Sampa]

*Facepalm* not this again...

[Hannu]

Pardon the noob question. Can you have Linux and Windows installed on the same computer to be able to switch to Linux to play KSP and then back to Windows to do other stuff?

As far as I know, games do not work properly in virtual boxes. But you can have a boot menu in which you can select Windows or Linux. If you install Linux (at least Ubuntu or Mint) to Windows computer it makes a boot menu (GRUB) automatically. You need about 100 GB unpartitioned space in hard disk. Installation is (should be) easy and it takes less than an hour.

[Sharpy]

Keyword to enter in google for more details: "dual boot".

[selfish_meme]

Installation is (should be) easy and it takes less than an hour.

Your hardware will be the determining factor of the accurateness of this statement

[steve_v]

Your hardware will be the determining factor of the accurateness of this statement

As will actually knowing what you're doing, and checking compatibility first.

Back on topic: Some mods introduce bugs, but IME they are fixed far more quickly than bugs in the stock game, of which there are plenty. Some mods even exist solely to fix stock bugs.

When I play, it's with 40+ mods. When I don't play, it's because of stock bugs.

[Sharpy]

The game never crashes on me nowadays.

That doesn't mean Kraken doesn't strike. But after a while you learn to recognize signs of Kraken lying in wait, ready to jump its victim. Save, quit the game, restart, load. Kraken averted for a good while.

Sometimes I ignore these signs or miss them, but usually that results in a spectacular disassembly of a major structure, not in a game crash.

[Kobymaru]

The game never crashes on me nowadays.

That doesn't mean Kraken doesn't strike. But after a while you learn to recognize signs of Kraken lying in wait, ready to jump its victim. Save, quit the game, restart, load. Kraken averted for a good while.

Sometimes I ignore these signs or miss them, but usually that results in a spectacular disassembly of a major structure, not in a game crash.

I guess you're one of the lucky few. I've been hit by game crashes or freezes so often now... Everything frozen with NaN's and no Vessel when switching to a vessel, jumbled up and empty tracking station, Revert to Vehicle Assembly bug, ...

I'm not saying it's unplayable or anything. But there are so many little annoyances and physics incorrectnesses that it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

But by now I wish Squad would make something like 3 Releases with no features and BUGFIXES ONLY. There are some *very* longstanding bugs (like that you can't set maneuver nodes on the first half of a parabollic trajectory) for which fixes are long overdue.

Also, I'm not a big believer of the "Unity 5 will fix everything" movement. They redid some parts of the game, and U5 might be better but in the End I think that it boils down to core Gamecode being weird and jumbled and intransparent.

If they would just work on the core gamecode for the equivalent of lets say 2 releases, then they could actually hire new Developers because it would reduce the time to familiarize them with the code to an actually feasible level.

[cantab]

The stock game has plenty of bugs. But naturally adding mods gives the chance for more bugs.

What I've not seen mentioned is the impact of mods on game performance. You can easily have your game hobbled by a bunch of mods or one problem mod if you aren't careful.

[Corax]

I guess you're one of the lucky few.

Then let me chime in as yet another "lucky" one.

Part of your impression may lie in the fact that users who don't suffer crashes, don't post about their experience very often.

I've been playing KSP since one of the first public releases, and rarely had it crash on me. It does happen, but usually either a) because Squad hasn't yet released the usual two to three "hotfixes" after a new release, or because I borked a mod install.

FYI I'm playing KSP on Linux, using Wine in the early days, and the native client since when it became available.

I can only recommend getting to know your system as close to the bare metal as you can, and in my experience, Linux is and has always been more cooperative in that regard than the increasingly locked down, comfort feature-laden commercial alternatives. Of course that doesn't happen in a day or even a year, but is an ongoing process. I've had my first computer experiences in the early eighties and am still learning - please don't take it as bragging, but to illustrate my point.

PS.: Ubuntu is not "Linux"

Edited August 12, 2015 by Corax
oops, they *don't* post very often

[LostOblivion]

Like the astronauts of STS-31 said (with slight alterations :-P):

"ANY indication of a bug, ANY indication, you're getting outta there fast!"

[Sharpy]

Then let me chime in as yet another "lucky" one.

Part of your impression may lie in the fact that users who don't suffer crashes, post about their experience very often.

I've been playing KSP since one of the first public releases, and rarely had it crash on me. It does happen, but usually either a) because Squad hasn't yet released the usual two to three "hotfixes" after a new release, or because I borked a mod install.

FYI I'm playing KSP on Linux, using Wine in the early days, and the native client since when it became available.

Eh, I'm getting my slew of bugs. It's just that crashes are exceptionally rare. Usually I'm able to quicksave before quitting and reloading... unless I arrive to a sight of a thousand parts floating in space. Classic explosive disassembly kraken is still strong, and I tend to abuse Klaws recently. (you can't install a docking port on an asteroid...)

PS.: Ubuntu is not "Linux"

Only if we agree Prius is not a car Anyway, Ubuntu has a solid backend, it's just the GUI that... uhhh. I'm a happy user of Kubuntu.

[harrierjack]

+ 1 on the linux comments.

Can't say I remember any crashes aside from the occasionally completely unstable ship which summons a kraken anyway, and this with all the usual USI/KIS/KAS/.. mods

Only realised a few days ago how screwed windows ppl are, when I was staying at a friends place and needed a KSP fix, also wanted to see how my big stations look on high graphics (he never buys cheap hardware, specially gfx). I seemed to be able to load the mods (took waaay longer then I was used to) but it kept crashing immediately after loading. Stock game worked, but loading still took longer then my modded linux KSP.

So yeah, google dual boot linux/windows and perhaps check Linux Mint Cinnamon (best out of the box windows-like exeperience imo), there's plenty of instructions how to keep your windows and try it out, most of it is already automated. Though chances are you're gonna throw the windows out the window soon after, I know I did ;P

[Kobymaru]

I can only recommend getting to know your system as close to the bare metal as you can, and in my experience, Linux is and has always been more cooperative in that regard than the increasingly locked down, comfort feature-laden commercial alternatives. Of course that doesn't happen in a day or even a year, but is an ongoing process. I've had my first computer experiences in the early eighties and am still learning - please don't take it as bragging, but to illustrate my point.

Fun fact: I use Linux as my main Operating System. And yes, I do dual boot - I just specifically boot into Windows to play KSP. I have my reasons for that, but they can be summarized as "I don't want to fix 10 bugs before I start playing".

Just look at "The Linux Thread" and "The other Linux Thread"! It's not really motivating to use Linux for gaming when the first thing that happens is that parts in the editor have no attachment nodes because of localization issues (which I had to find out first) and that that there is no Anti-Aliasing which makes the game look like crap (which is tied to Linux graphics cards drivers, which I had to find out first too. And which is a whole other can of worms).

Especially while in Windows Everything Worksâ„¢ automagically. Sort of.

I don't want to fight the game, I don't want to fight the OS when what I actually want to fight is Gravity and Drag.

Also, honestly, I think squad doesn't really care about Linux because they want get the Win32 (and now PS4) port to run before actually fixing other platforms. That may be justified or not, but that makes no matter that the KSP experience on Linux sucks hard. If you tell me that you have been running Glitch-free and can install most mods, then maybe i'll reconsider trying it again.

PS.: Ubuntu is not "Linux"

I agree on this one

Edited August 12, 2015 by Kobymaru

[Hannu]

Your hardware will be the determining factor of the accurateness of this statement

Therefore I wrote (should be). But probability of problems is low if you do not have very new or very exotic hardware. If it does not work you do not lose anything (probably, making backups before OS installation is always very good idea).

[Robotengineer]

Fun fact: I use Linux as my main Operating System. And yes, I do dual boot - I just specifically boot into Windows to play KSP. I have my reasons for that, but they can be summarized as "I don't want to fix 10 bugs before I start playing".

Just look at "The Linux Thread" and "The other Linux Thread"! It's not really motivating to use Linux for gaming when the first thing that happens is that parts in the editor have no attachment nodes because of localization issues (which I had to find out first) and that that there is no Anti-Aliasing which makes the game look like crap (which is tied to Linux graphics cards drivers, which I had to find out first too. And which is a whole other can of worms).

Especially while in Windows Everything Worksâ„¢ automagically. Sort of.

I don't want to fight the game, I don't want to fight the OS when what I actually want to fight is Gravity and Drag.

Also, honestly, I think squad doesn't really care about Linux because they want get the Win32 (and now PS4) port to run before actually fixing other platforms. That may be justified or not, but that makes no matter that the KSP experience on Linux sucks hard. If you tell me that you have been running Glitch-free and can install most mods, then maybe i'll reconsider trying it again.

I agree on this one

You can force Anti-Aliasing on Linux. I don't have many issues with KSP on Linux.

[code99]

IDK what everyone is saying here (linux this, linux that ) but for the OP :

I've played KSP since early in its early access and I can probably count on my fingers how many times the game crashed or i experienced a gamebreaking bug ... and keep in mind, i always play/played with mods. I dont think i played the vanilla game more than 10 hours total!

Nowdays, on 1.0.4 I play with a cr*p ton of mods ... i really mean it, dont know the number but seriously, lots and lots of mods installed via ckan and so far, 0 issues. Not a single crash, freeze, bug or anything like that.

I'm excluding crashes due to RAM usage ... this was before i switched to OpenGL, i would get tons of crashes beacause the game couldnt handle more than 3.5 - 4 GB of ram (my game crashed at 4GB mark for some reason, other people seem to say that it crashes at 3.5 ...) when i had just a few mods installed...

With OpenGL, ive got tons of mods installed, no texture compressions or anything and the game runs as smooth as silk hovering at 3 GB memory usage.

So, playing vanilla wont really affect anything, if a bug/crash will happen, it will happen regardless if you have mods or not. Yes, having mods does come with a small risk of increasing crashes if you mess up the installation of those mods or if you install maybe some mods that arent compatible with your version of the game ...

If you play vanilla you will miss out of a lot of cool stuff that you can only find in mods.

Hope this helped

[steve_v]

If you tell me that you have been running Glitch-free and can install most mods, then maybe i'll reconsider trying it again.

I am, if you discount cross-platform stock bugs. The only issue I had is that in-game AA/PPFX is broken... but forcing AA with the Nvidia drivers works fine. 40+mods, ~7GB memory usage.

Watch out for mod-induced lag/garbage churn though.

[IllicitMedic]

Pardon the noob question. Can you have Linux and Windows installed on the same computer to be able to switch to Linux to play KSP and then back to Windows to do other stuff?

Yes, that's how I do it, I have both OS installed and when you boot your computer you can choose what OS to load. I use Linux purely for KSP at the moment. Windows for everything else.

Linux is free also and I recommend Ubantu, which will also installed the boot menu for you.