Which Mods Use Least System Resources?

[Clipperride]

I've been playing the basic install of KSP on a rather marginal laptop. With the GFX options all turned down I can play the game without annoying lag until stations of over about 500 parts, where the game does chug along a bit.

With so many interesting Mods out there; how do they effect the machine running the game? I'm guessing new parts have no effect and a sliding scale with Mods that are active during the game? What mods would you recommend trying out without my frame rate suffering?

[Highguard]

NOT parts-mods. They take a lot of memory for the model and textures. Unfortunately, IIRC, all the resources used by mods are loaded at start-time, rather than if/when they are actually used.

Info-mods (KER, KAC) are generally low-memory, since they're just reporting or recording information that's already computed by the game.

[The_Rocketeer]

Any mods will increase overall load on your system. In my experience, though, memory-intensive mods aren't the ones that bite into framerate. On my Win7 desktop, if I have too many mods for my system memory, the game won't start properly - it will crash before displaying the main menu. Then again, my computer has dedicated video-RAM. Depending on your laptop graphics processor, that could make a big difference to framerate.

The single most demanding modset I've used is Astronomer's Visual Pack Interstellar V2. Even though many features are optional and others have low-res options included, even just for poor quality clouds it still takes a big bite of my RAM.

Chatterer is a very neat, low-impact mod that makes a cool difference to the game's atmosphere.

Parts packs, depending on their size, lie somewhere in between.

However, I have to recommend running KSP in opengl mode if you're pushing the bounds of your available system memory. If you don't know, here's how.

[Vanamonde]

Mod question moved to the mod subforum.

[Alshain]

In general, mods that add GUI interface elements will have little impact, such as Kerbal engineer and RCS Build Aid or simply alter existing behavior of parts and gameplay. They use some CPU but it shouldn't be a lot.

Mods that have textures will have bigger impact on RAM. Part mods have textures, but also cloud mods, kerbal skin changers, skybox replacers, etc could ramp up the amount of RAM needed.

Finally there is a category which doesn't technically add textures but still falls somewhere in between the two I mentioned. These are mods that add non-texture graphical features like Planetshine. Planet shine adds emissives... or light sources. They add more of a strain on your graphics card than your RAM or CPU.

Keep in mind this also depends on how well the mod is programmed. Mods have the ability to choose when their program starts (except parts) so if done properly, that can have an effect. Mods that add stuff only to editors for example may not feel like as big of an impact if the same mod were used in flight, where the game is much more resource intensive anyway.

Edited September 16, 2015 by Alshain

[MrHappyFace]

There's also the physics mods like FAR that can be very CPU intensive.