RP_0 and Other Mod Questions

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

I'm trying to get involved in modding. For the Realistic Space Program thread, I need to download mods like Realism Overhaul and RP_0. Are these good starting mods? I'm looking at the required mods list and it's dizzying. Should I start with something smaller?

Furthermore (Sorry to rant with so many questions), what is Module Manager? I've heard it's needed to install all mods. Is this correct?
 

Again, sorry to ask all these questions. It's just I've never attempted installing many mods, and I'm kinda in over my head.

[AlextheBodacious]

Module manager is a little add-on that's often included in mods. It adds little anti-bug patches so things function normally.

Some excellent mods for RO are Remotetech, E.V.E., and TAC Life support. These will show you the ropes of a complete realism overhaul, and are good as starters. If you just want something small to start, some nice functionality mods would be Stock Clamshell Fairings, Kerbal Engineer Redux, kOS, and Audio Muffler.

If you want some mods to have fun with, Darklight's Multiplayer, BD Armory, Distant Object Enhancement, USI Colonization, DMagic Orbital Science. As long as you install them right (You know, cut the Gamedata folder in the still-Zipped mod, paste it to the main KSP folder, so both gamedata's merge, and the one GD folder has both Squad and <Mod Name> installed, like

so it all fits, like normal.)

Edited February 24, 2016 by AlextheBodacious

[NathanKell]

@AlextheBodacious sorry, but neither of those is quite correct. :]

ModuleManager is a "helper" mod. It's a mod that helps other mods do things, it doesn't do anything itself. What sort of things? It lets mods change the config files (*.cfg) that KSP loads. Those config files define everything from part stats to physics behavior to contracts. It even lets you clone or remove parts (i.e. clone or remove the nodes that define parts). It's remarkably powerful.

The RO/RP-0 suite requires slightly more processing power, but not a great deal more. I've run it on a five-year-old laptop, as has ferram. The issue isn't so much that, as that's a big jump to make.

@Choctofliatrio2.0 to start out, if you want to try realism mods, I suggest just installing FAR alone. Kerbal Alarm Clock is also a great mod to get started with, it's incredibly useful. DMP, BD Armory, and USI mods are going to tax your CPU about as much as RO, I think.

[maculator]

ModuleManager allows mods to patch original .cfg-files without editing the original one. It applies patches wich is rather important and opens alot of opportunities for modders to even adress .cfgs from other mods.

I don't know how experienced you are with playing or modding KSP. But for RO you should:

1. really know how to play the stock game and
2. have some experience in installing mods

If you want an easy way to ramp up the diffculty without the need for heavy modding I would go for a combination of those mods:

Necrobones has some neat part packs wich are not really memoryusage-heavy but provide a suitable selection of bigger and usefull parts.

[Streetwind]

Realism Overhaul is definitely not a "beginner" mod set. It changes a lot about the game and requires you to relearn many things at once. I'll second @NathanKell's advice here and recommend you get your feet wet elsewhere first. USI Kolonization System is also not self-explanatory and requires a lot of learning, so that, too, is best left for later unless you love digging your teeth into entirely new (and sometimes undocumented) game systems.

Try looking at the following mods, and see if anything strikes your fancy:

Visual mods: Environmental Visual Enhancements, Planetshine, Distant Object Enhancement, SkyToneMapper, Collision Effects, Engine Lighting, perhaps also RealPlume Stock (may require you to tweak settings to run smoothly).

Utility mods: Kerbal Alarm Clock, Alternate Resource Panel, Transfer Window Planner, Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, ScienceAlert, Kerbal Engineer and/or MechJeb, RCS Build Aid, Docking Port Alignment Indicator, Trajectories, Stock Bugfix Modules, Radiator Toggle, BetterBurnTime, Waypoint Manager

Content mods: SCANSat, DMagic Orbital Science, Outer Planets Mod, RLA Stockalike, Crowd Sourced Science Logs, Contract Packs (for example: "Bases and Stations"), Stockalike Station Parts Expansion, Near Future: Solar, Impact Science, Mark IV Spaceplane System, SpaceY Heavy Lifters

Gamechangers: Community Tech Tree, Ferram Aerospace Research, AntennaRange or RemoteTech, TAC or USI life support, Kerbal Construction Time, Strategia, ResearchBodies

 

There are of course many, many more - and no, you don't have to install them all But those are what I would consider reasonably newcomer friendly (RemoteTech is fairly complex but I included it since I already mentioned AntennaRange anyway)

Edited February 24, 2016 by Streetwind

[Snark]

+1 to excellent advice already on this thread.

ModuleManager is, as has been pointed out, a tool rather than a behavior-changing "mod" in its own right.  As far as you-the-player are concerned, there are really just two things to know about it:

• It's used by a very large fraction (I'd say the majority) of mods out there.  Because ModuleManager is so small (just a single DLL) and is needed by just about everybody, most mods that require it just install ModuleManager along with themselves.  So if you install any significant number of mods at all, ModuleManager is likely to be along for the ride.
• It allows doing an amazing amount of stuff to KSP without needing to write a single line of code.  This means that you can mod KSP yourself, up to a point, without having to write a single line of code.  You would be astonished at how easy it is.  All you have to do is create your own text file with ModuleManager config in it, name the file so it ends in ".cfg", and put it somewhere in your GameData folder.  The syntax for ModuleManager is well-documented, plus you can look at lots of examples from various mods that do ModuleManager things.  You can't do everything with just ModuleManager, but there's a lot you can do-- in particular, you can tweak the behaviors of parts to what you like.  Wanna make it so that all wings have liquid-fuel storage, proportional to their mass?  Simple, it's just a few lines of ModuleManager config.

One thing I would suggest, when you start using mods:  add them a bit at a time.  Don't install a dozen all at once-- do it one at a time.  Rationale:  Changing just one thing at a time helps you understand the changes better.  You're less likely to end up confused.  In particular:  although lots of mods are excellent, their quality (and their interactions with each other!) aren't necessarily up to professional QA standards, and odd behavior can happen.  When it happens to you, you'll want to figure out "which mod is causing that?"  And doing so is a lot harder if you don't have a feel for which mod works with what.

It's also the case that if you have odd mod-caused behavior, you'll find it a lot more difficult to get help in the forums unless you know which mod is doing it, because other forum posters aren't running the same combination of mods that you are, and just posting "here's a weird behavior and I don't know why and here are the 30 mods I'm running" significantly reduces the pool of people who can or will help you. 

In any case, definitely look into mods, there's an amazing amount of great stuff out there and it can really breathe fresh life into the game.  Main thing is to decide what you want to accomplish (new physics?  prettier visual F/X?  more parts?  utilities? etc.) and then look into mods that do that sort of thing.  @Streetwind's categorization is spot on, and I like his list.     (not least because a couple of my mods are on it...)

[Laie]

On 2/24/2016 at 5:26 AM, Choctofliatrio2.0 said:

For the Realistic Space Program thread, I need to download mods like Realism Overhaul and RP_0. Are these good starting mods? I'm looking at the required mods list and it's dizzying. Should I start with something smaller?

Realism Overhaul is great but it was a steep learning curve just coming to grips with everything it adds to the game.

If you want to play career mode in Realsim Overhaul, you will need RP-0. On the one hand I recommend that, as it gradually introduces the hardware and you don't get lost among a hundred engines and twenty kinds of rocket fuel. On the other hand, RP-0 adds even more mods with their own user interfaces you have to cope with.

[hellblazer]

This video covers step by step on how to setup the 64 Bit workaround, Real Solar System (RSS), Realism Overhaul (RO), and RSS Visual Enhancements (RVE). See the details section in youtube for modlist and links to key mods.

 

[NathanKell]

I feel compelled to point out that many mod authors, myself included, offer no support for those using the x64 hack, because it is proven unstable on many systems. If it is stable on yours, that's great! But please don't assume it will be for others.

[Vanamonde]

Modding discussion moved to the modding subforum.