Procedural Part Mods

[kananesgi]

I'm no sure if this is a good idea or not. I'm just getting back into KSP after a little break to deal with the headaches of Christmas. When I left, 1.05 was fairly new and many of the mods I wanted to play weren't compatible, so I was still playing on 1.04. For the last couple of days now, I've been trying to get a modded 1.05 install working and running into constant problems with CKAN not installing mods or not updating them.

At any rate, I finally got it working by simply giving up on some of the mods. I started a career up with the following list of mods installed (copied straight from AVC)

KSP: 1.0.5 (Win32) - Unity: 4.6.4f1 - OS: Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (6.1.7601) 64bit
USI Tools - 0.5.4
CactEye 2 - 0.6.11
Community Resource Pack - 0.4.8
Contract Pack: Bases and Stations - 3.1
Contracts Window Plus - 1.0.5.5
Crowd Sourced Science - 3.0.2
DangIt - 0.6.2
Deadly Reentry - 7.3.1
Engine Lighting - 1.4.1
Ferram Aerospace Research - 0.15.5.4
Firespitter - 7.1.5
Interstellar Fuel Switch - 1.18
RasterPropMonitor - 0.24.2
Kerbal Attachment System - 0.5.5
Kerbal Construction Time - 1.2.3
Kerbal Joint Reinforcement - 3.1.4
Kerbal Inventory System - 1.2.3
kOS - 0.18.2
KSP-AVC Plugin - 1.1.5
Infernal Robots - 0.21.4
ModularFlightIntegrator - 1.1.2
NearFutureConstruction - 0.5.5
NearFutureElectrical - 0.6.1
NearFuturePropulsion - 0.5.4
NearFutureSolar - 0.5.5
NearFutureSpacecraft - 0.4.4
Final Frontier - 0.9.1.1749
PlanetShine - 0.2.4.2
Procedural Parts - 1.1.11
QuickScroll - 1.3.2
QuickSearch - 1.1.4
RCS Build Aid - 0.7.6
RemoteTech - 1.6.9
SCANsat - 1.1.4.5
SETI-CommunityTechTree - 0.9.5.1
SETI-Greenhouse - 0.9.3
SETI-BalanceMod - 0.9.5.2
StageRecovery - 1.6.2
TextureReplacer - 2.4.11
ThrottleControlledAvionics - 2.3.0.2
TAC Life Support - 0.11.2.1
Trajectories - 1.4.5
Kerbal Alarm Clock - 3.5
Transfer Window Planner - 1.4
TweakScale - 2.2.6
USI Core - 0.1.2
Karbonite - 0.6.6
NuclearRockets - 0.1.1
USI Survivability Pack - 0.3.3
Universal Storage - 1.1.0.8
[x] Science! - 4.12

Now, some of these I don't even know what they are as they installed with SETI. I read the brief description, but that often doesn't really say what they are for, such as the Throttle Controlled Avionics. No real idea what that is.

 

To get to the point, when I started the career, the first thing I notice are these procedural boosters. I assume they came from the Procedural Parts mod that I didn't realize was in there. I'm on the fence regarding the realism or whatever arguments for or against using procedural parts, but from what I understand about how KSP works, they (procedural parts) are definitely better in terms of system resource usage. As such, I'd like to try a game using only procedural parts and getting rid of any stock parts that fill the same role. For example, procedural boosters would override the stock SRBs, so there is no need in having both in the game, taking up resources and space in the build menus. How would I best go about identifying the stock parts that are replaced by procedural ones and then how do I remove only those parts, without loosing things like command pods and science modules and such?

I think mainly what I'm wanting here is to use procedural parts for things like boosters, fuel tanks, fairings, and wings. Maybe cargo bays if there is a procedural version of that.

Sorry if this sounds like a stupid noob question or something. I'm still recovering from a heavy bout of the flu and I'm not quite firing on all cylinders. That's probably why I've had so much trouble just trying to get things working again.

[wasml]

Quote

How would I best go about identifying the stock parts that are replaced by procedural ones

Comparing specs would be about the only way as far as I know. Take Procedural Fuel Tanks - See what sizes/contents can be replaced and note the names. For example the large orange tank found in the GameData\Squad\Parts\FuelTank\fuelTankJumbo-64 folder. The first few lines of the cfg file are

PART
{
    name = fuelTank3-2
    module = Part
    author = NovaSilisko
    mesh = model.mu

    ....

Note the bolded line - that's the name "fuelTank3-2" If you look at the description (description = ) farther down you might recognize it from the parts menu info display. And the "title = " is the part name you see in the editor.

 

Quote

how do I remove only those parts

For this you'll need to dig into the .cfg files. Take the noted names you saved from the first step and look through likely looking .cfg files for the same name. Usually but not always the cfg file will have a similar name to the part name. You can remove that cfg file from the GameData folder and the part will not be loaded - though the part its self doesn't uses many resources - it's the textures you want and they'll still load even if no parts are using them (unless your using DTL). Next look for a texture name that appears to be associated with the cfg file - if your lucky it might be mentioned in the cfg file but usually not. One thing to be careful of - sometimes multiple parts use the same texture. If you see three cfg files and three .dds files chances are your OK. If you see three cfg files and one dds file it may be shared. For this reason I usually copy the cfg's and dds (sometimes tga or png) to another location outside the GameData folder. If I restart KSP and I have plain white pieces or missing pieces I have probably removed a needed texture (or a wrong cfg file) and I simply restore them. Can be a bit of a pain but will also get you familiar with the cfg files and soon you'll be editing them to better suit your requirements!

Edited January 6, 2016 by wasml