The Most Popular Planet Packs

[ProtoJeb21]

In this thread, I will evaluate multiple planet packs to determine to top 10 most popular mods of this category. What I will do is pick out the top 10 from different download sites in terms of downloads, and then find the most popular fan-wise. However, with the wide variety of planet adding and changing mods currently available, the definition of planet pack is a bit confusing. Here are my criteria for a mod to be called a planet pack:

• It must add in new celestial bodies.
• It must not depend on another planet pack.
• If made with RSS, it must have celestial bodies separate from our own solar system.
• It can change the look and orbits of the stock bodies, unless it creates a copy of our own solar system or something too similar to the stock system.
• It must depend on Kopernicus or RSS.

With this in mind, RSS (Real Solar System) and its add-ons are NOT planet packs, so they won't be on this list. If they were, they probably would've smashed all competition. Things like Centauri Dreams and Uncharted Lands are planet packs, but KASE is not. Now, it is time for Round 1.

Round 1: SpaceDock Popularity

This round will determine the popularity of a planet pack by its downloads and followers.

#10: Saru Planet Pack (957 downloads, 16 followers)

#9: Kumar's Dwarf Stars (1,025 downloads, 13 followers)

#8: Larinax Solar System (1,291 downloads, 21 followers)

#7: Antares Solar System (1,504 downloads, 18 followers)

#6: Kerbol Origins (1,594 downloads, 24 followers)

#5: Other_Worlds - Cercani System (2,653 downloads, 50 followers)

#4: Interstellar Adventure Revived (2,906 downloads, 27 followers)

#3: Constellations - The RSS Star Pack (Formerly RSS Extrasolar) (4,518 downloads, 34 followers)

#2: Extrasolar - Planets Beyond Kerbol (9,347 downloads, 63 followers)

#1: Outer Planets Mod (33,452 downloads, 222 followers)

Round 2 will take place next week, and will look at GitHub downloads.

[electricpants]

But I don't have a GitHub download! 

[RA3236]

Well, I can say...

*reads Larinax Solar System in 8th

Wait, when did that get so many downloads? It isnt even officially tested for the latest KSP!!!

Looks like noone has voted for it though.

[Andi K.]

Did not expect my two planet packs to be placed at #2 and #3!

[amarius1]

  On 7/29/2016 at 6:43 PM, ProtoJeb21 said:

In this thread, I will evaluate multiple planet packs to determine to top 10 most popular mods of this category. What I will do is pick out the top 10 from different download sites in terms of downloads, and then find the most popular fan-wise. However, with the wide variety of planet adding and changing mods currently available, the definition of planet pack is a bit confusing. Here are my criteria for a mod to be called a planet pack:

• It must add in new celestial bodies.
• It must not depend on another planet pack.
• If made with RSS, it must have celestial bodies separate from our own solar system.
• It can change the look and orbits of the stock bodies, unless it creates a copy of our own solar system or something too similar to the stock system.
• It must depend on Kopernicus or RSS.

With this in mind, RSS (Real Solar System) and its add-ons are NOT planet packs, so they won't be on this list. If they were, they probably would've smashed all competition. Things like Centauri Dreams and Uncharted Lands are planet packs, but KASE is not. Now, it is time for Round 1.

Round 1: SpaceDock Popularity

This round will determine the popularity of a planet pack by its downloads and followers.

#10: Saru Planet Pack (957 downloads, 16 followers)

#9: Kumar's Dwarf Stars (1,025 downloads, 13 followers)

#8: Larinax Solar System (1,291 downloads, 21 followers)

#7: Antares Solar System (1,504 downloads, 18 followers)

#6: Kerbol Origins (1,594 downloads, 24 followers)

#5: Other_Worlds - Cercani System (2,653 downloads, 50 followers)

#4: Interstellar Adventure Revived (2,906 downloads, 27 followers)

#3: Constellations - The RSS Star Pack (Formerly RSS Extrasolar) (4,518 downloads, 34 followers)

#2: Extrasolar - Planets Beyond Kerbol (9,347 downloads, 63 followers)

#1: Outer Planets Mod (33,452 downloads, 222 followers)

Round 2 will take place next week, and will look at GitHub downloads.

Expand  

Take a second look at Kerbol Origins

[ForumUser]

What about the least popular modpacks? Will you make a thread about them to make them more popular?

[Hypercosmic]

...

Edited March 29, 2017 by Hypercosmic

[StarCrusher96]

Is KSS also in the competition?

Edited April 1, 2017 by StarCrusher96

[Davian Lin]

Kerbol StarSystem in the top list!

[Coutiek]

Artem Kerman agree with you ! Kerbol StarSystem is the best I'm currently a little bit sick, and i have to take a lot of paracetamol   and other drugs,so in case I just write something ambiguous, I'm so sorry  

Edited August 10, 2017 by Coutiek

[Snark]

What about planet packs that happen not to use SpaceDock as their distribution mechanism?

Two of my three favorite planet packs aren't even listed here:

• New Horizons
• Galileo's Planet Pack

[JadeOfMaar]

  On 4/3/2017 at 5:50 PM, Snark said:

What about planet packs that happen not to use SpaceDock as their distribution mechanism?

Two of my three favorite planet packs aren't even listed here:

• New Horizons
• Galileo's Planet Pack

Expand  

Those are not on SpaceDock so they don't qualify.

I also believe GitHub doesn't have a place for tracking downloads. If it really does I'd like to know where that is.

Edited April 11, 2017 by JadeOfMaar

[Snark]

  On 4/11/2017 at 1:10 PM, JadeOfMaar said:

Those are not on SpaceDock so they don't qualify.

Expand  

Response in spoiler section below, since it's getting off topic and I don't want to hijack @ProtoJeb21's excellent thread. 

  Reveal hidden contents

Exactly, that's my point.  If the idea of this thread is to take a poll to see which planet packs are the most popular, why gate it on SpaceDock, in particular?  For example, MechJeb's not on SpaceDock.  Nor is KER.  Would it make sense to leave MechJeb and KER out of a poll of "most popular flight assistance mods"?

  On 4/11/2017 at 1:10 PM, JadeOfMaar said:

I also believe GitHub doesn't have a place for tracking downloads.

Expand  

It kinda-sorta does, in a limited way, if you've set things up in a certain fashion, but basically no, it doesn't (certainly it doesn't have a nifty downloads-over-time graph like SpaceDock's).  That's one major reason why I use SpaceDock to host my own mods.  It's nice to be able to see that.

But how is that germane here?  I mean, the whole point of having a poll is to see which planet packs people here like, isn't it?  I would think that it would be especially important to include mods hosted on sites without download tracking, simply because it would provide more useful information that wouldn't be available otherwise.

For example:  Suppose there's someone out there thinking "gee, I've never tried a planet pack before, I wonder what's a good one?"

I would imagine that a poll like this could be quite helpful to such a person.  If all they wanted to do was to look at download counts, and didn't care that they were leaving out big popular mods that happen to be hosted elsewhere, they wouldn't need a poll like this-- they'd just go to SpaceDock and look at the "most popular" pages.

Obviously it's up to the OP to decide which mods to include-- was just suggesting a couple that may be worth considering.

[amarius1]

Kerbol Origins has a new update <3