Hi new to the game, looking for some tips.

[Nathangun]

Hi, I'm new to the game and got frustrated with some of the pointless missions, i.e. fly a craft over this place at x feet above sea level.

I'm looking to play a more science/exploring mission type game, I use CKAN for installing mods.

If anyone can suggest a list of mods for craft parts, gameplay, a diverse research tree and visuals I would really appreciate it.

 

Thank you all in advance,

Nathangun.

[Red Iron Crown]

Welcome!

I've moved you thread over to our Welcome Aboard section, where new members introduce themselves.  

[Starhawk]

Hello Nathangun and welcome to the KSP Forums!

There are lots of mods that add parts and quite a number that alter the tech tree and science collection in various ways.  I'm not familiar with most of them, but this forum is the right place to find them.

Glad to have you aboard.

Happy landings!

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

I don't play much career or science, so I don't know about contract mods.

However, here's some of my favorite parts and visual mods:

These two have not been updated to 1.2.1 yet:

 

[Dman979]

Hello, @Nathangun, and welcome aboard!

One other contract pack I know about is @inigma's GAP pack- Giving Aircraft a Purpose.

Also, you don't have to do every mission offered.

And if you end up not liking career mode, try Science or Sandbox. Science mode might end up being exactly what you're looking for.

[Nathangun]

 

On 11/22/2016 at 2:53 PM, Red Iron Crown said:

Welcome!

I've moved you thread over to our Welcome Aboard section, where new members introduce themselves.  

 

On 11/22/2016 at 2:58 PM, Starhawk said:

Hello Nathangun and welcome to the KSP Forums!

There are lots of mods that add parts and quite a number that alter the tech tree and science collection in various ways.  I'm not familiar with most of them, but this forum is the right place to find them.

Glad to have you aboard.

Happy landings!

 

11 hours ago, Mad Rocket Scientist said:

I don't play much career or science, so I don't know about contract mods.

 

6 hours ago, Dman979 said:

Hello, @Nathangun, and welcome aboard!

One other contract pack I know about is @inigma's GAP pack- Giving Aircraft a Purpose.

Also, you don't have to do every mission offered.

And if you end up not liking career mode, try Science or Sandbox. Science mode might end up being exactly what you're looking for.

 

Thank you everyone for the kind welcome.

 

[Streetwind]

You could try Community Tech Tree. It extends the stock tech tree without replacing it, so you have more of a reason and motivation to go out there and continue to bring home the science from various interplanetary destinations.

There is no exhaustive list of mods that support CTT, because the supporting is done by the mods themselves, so the CTT author can't keep track by definition. However, you'll find that that's not much of a problem. Mods that support CTT will make use of the extended nodes, mods which don't will behave as if CTT wasn't there, and nothing will conflict or go missing at all. It just works. (Standard disclaimer: weird things may or may not happen if you install tech tree mods on top of existing saves, especially if those saves contain mod parts and have unlocked a lot of stuff already. CTT is no exception. It's in the nature of KSP itself. Keep a backup!)

Many of the part mods that Mad Rocket Scientist linked above do support CTT. But I'd like to offer two warnings:

- Be wary of Stock Part Revamp. On the surface, it looks like a mod that makes all the stock parts look better... but it isn't. It actually changes a lot of stock parts to work differently as well, sometimes in quite questionable and subjective ways. If you want to install that, I recommend that you carefully go through every single change it makes, or you might get caught off guard. I certainly was.
- Be wary of USI Kolonization System. It's an amazing mod that lets you do immersive basebuilding like no other mod in KSP... but it's also one of the most complex mods in all of KSP. You will be utterly confused, and you will have to test and Google and post questions and re-test until you can begin to appreciate just how all the various separate modules, resources, production chains, parts and Kerbal professions mesh and interact with one another. It's very rewarding if you put in the effort to learn, but putting in that effort isn't optional.