Why don't you use [certain] mods?

[Ser]

The question is more related to the whole mod types rather than a concrete mod. So, why don't you use some mods (or any at all)?

My answer is:
1. I don't use balance altering mods because I doubt that they are well tested (at least not as well as stock game is) and it would be a bad surprise to find that things are significantly unbalanced in the middle of a career.
2. I avoid part mods because of balance and they often have inconsistent cost/usefulness ratio (at least in the context of the stock game), also because of visual inconsistency with stock parts (and other part mods).
3. I don't use mods that simplify things because the game is already simplified, except for boring calculations aids.
4. I don't use mods that reduce realism, not to mention the ones increasing absurd level of the game (various space sausages etc.)
5. I don't use planet packs because I haven't visited all of the stock bodies yet.
6. I don't use military mods because it's out of this game's scope.

What about you?

[Streetwind]

My main reason to not use a mod is "I've already got a mod that does the same thing". For example, if I installed SpaceY Heavy Lifters, I won't need KW Rocketry. Or vice versa. Sure, each one has some unique bits and bobs in it... but major parts fall into the same niches, which makes them feel redundant with one another. For me, the little bits and bobs where they differ would be what helps me decide which one to pick, not a reason to have both.

Other than that, my decision process can't be so easily put into words. I prefer my setups to feel consistent... which is a difficult to define concept at best. It's very much about gut feeling. Sometimes its obvious: I wouldn't put KSP Interstellar and Near Future Technologies into the same install. They just make different decisions about gameplay style and mechanics. They can be used together, and I know people who do, but my gut feeling says "it isn't consistent enough. Pick one and ditch the other". At other times, it's less clear-cut. For example, which life support mod do I run? Answer: the one that feels most similar to the rest of my installed parts and game mechanics. But how do I determine that, when none of said installed parts and mechanics deal with life support? After all, if I already had a LS mod, I wouldn't be installing another! So, yeah: gut feeling. Even I couldn't tell you exactly what I look for.

And sometimes that gut feeling is skewed by thoughts like "I never used this before, maybe I should give it a chance instead of judging it by its forum thread".

Edited February 3, 2017 by Streetwind

[Superfluous J]

45 minutes ago, Ser said:

The question is more related to the whole mod types rather than a concrete mod. So, why don't you use some mods (or any at all)?

My answer is:
1. I don't use balance altering mods because I doubt that they are well tested (at least not as well as stock game is) and it would be a bad surprise to find that things are significantly unbalanced in the middle of a career.

I hate to break it to you, but things are pretty unbalanced in the stock career too

I don't use part mods or physics-altering mods, because most of my KSPing ends up on the internet somewhere and I want people to know that if they build my ship in their also-mostly-stock game it'll function similarly. I make exceptions sometimes but when I do, I explicitly state it.

I don't use Life Support mods because I personally find it tedious.

I am starting to shy away from visual mods because I value load time more than clouds on Kerbin.

 

[KSK]

For me, the sheer number of mods available means that I'm way past the point of too much choice. So I give up and play stock instead, perhaps with KER at a push. Plus I have a relatively limited time to play stock let alone fiddling around with the umpteen-gazillion-and-one possible combinations of mods.

I'm certainly not anti-mod (although I do get a bit tired of the 'there's a mod for that' meme) - I just don't have the time to get into them much.

[seaces]

I do not use the mods that do not fit in the scope of the game or add parts that are too much sci-fi and unbalanced. Also I am not using life support mods simply as they add many complications and limitations for me and you need to manage it very well to maintain kerbals. 

[Kurld]

I tend to pick and choose stuff based on if it's something that fills a gap or enhances something in the game. KER is pretty much a "must have."  KJR is another one, though the auto-strutting has helped a great deal. I like KIS and KAS but don't use them extensively unless I am building bases. I still like the procedural fairings way more than the stock ones.

One day I will make a serious commitment and go down the RO/RSS path because I hate the tiny planets and short distances between them. I'd like going to the Mun to feel like Going To The Moon, not just popping out for an afternoon drive.

The only time I play stock is when I am working on or testing a mod I've created, to make sure it's got some baseline compatibility and there isn't weird behavior because of some mod I've installed.

The #1 reason I wouldn't use something is if it just doesn't work very well or is poorly documented. There have been a few things with really horrible/overwhelming UI that I threw up my hands and bailed on.

Edited February 3, 2017 by Kurld
a

[InterCity]

I don't use some mods...

... Because my poor laptop wouldn't handle it. I'm looking at you, Astronomer's visual pack.

[Allocthonous]

Mostly, I just haven't felt the need. I'm still having fun with stock, and I certainly haven't exhausted the possibilities for new things to do yet.

That, and I've been frustrated with other games where I've used mods (mainly minecraft) and had them be abandoned with a game update. Once KSP is definitely done being patched I may change my mind.

[steuben]

Answering this one from the other direction, mods that I use:
KER
Hyperedit
Hanger Extender
Ubio Weld
KerbCam
RCS Build Aid
My own hacked up parts which do interesting things... usually blow up if I don't watch them carefully.

So looking at the list I use design mods and don't use part mods, excepting my made of explodium parts.

But the other bit is, I'm a lazy man. I don't want to have to gather up the hundreds of file clusters every time I want/have to reinstall the game.

It's kind of like OpenTTD. You can play vanilla, or you can install any of the many, many, econ and vehicle mods.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Mechjeb.

If I wanted to watch someone else fly rockets I'd load up a Scott Manley vid on Youtube.

(No offense to those that use it, just personal preference.)

[eddiew]

I don't use mods when I don't want to do the thing the mod does... or I already have a mod that does that thing and I'm happy with it.

I have no specific "I will never use <this sort of mod>" attitude, although I do find that different careers are better suited to different setups. In 1.1.3, I was heavily into spaceplanes so I had a lot of parts expansions for such. In 1.2.2 I'm running at 3.2x scale, so spaceplanes are really, really hard and I'm more focussed on large rockets and high efficiency propulsion.

[Snark]

Mods I don't use:

• Anything that provides automation (e.g. MechJeb, KER).  For me, the nitty-gritty details of piloting and flying are the fun part of KSP, and running a mod like that is directly taking the fun away from me.  Like watching someone else play the game.
• Anything that has significant UI in it.  I loathe UI clutter, and I want a very, very spartan UI experience so I can focus on the visual look-and-feel of ships, planets, and space.  It's really, really hard to design complex functionality without grafting complex UI onto it.  I think the stock game does a brilliant job of this... but most mods don't.  For me, the best mod is one with no UI at all.  So, this would put KER beyond the pale for me, even without the automation consideration described above.  It's why I don't like this docking alignment mod, but I love that docking-alignment mod.  The former has UI, the latter doesn't.  No contest.
• Anything that significantly impacts the game performance and throws the framerate into the toilet or sucks up my RAM and brings the machine to its knees.  This used to disqualify Scatterer and SVE for me, for example.  (Not any more, though... added some RAM and got a new graphics card, and now they run great.  Holy heck, those things are gorgeous!)
• Anything that tweaks the game's physics balance, either to make it harder (FAR) or easier (KJR).  I like the stock physics as they are, I like being able to talk about ship designs with people who are playing under the same rules as I am, I simply don't want to tinker with this.
• Anything "science fictional", e.g. warp drives, fusion reactors, etc.  Breaks the "willing suspension of disbelief" for me, and makes the game feel like a fantasy rather than engineering.  (You might ask why I seem to have no trouble swallowing a scenario of "little green guys in a 1/10 scale fictional solar system with freakishly dense planets", etc. ... well, I dunno.  I'm a physics major and a software engineer, not a psychologist.) 
• Anything that significantly alters game balance.  Karbonite+, for example.  I'm happy with the game as it is, I don't want to make it significantly easier or harder.  I might occasionally play with something like that just for fun and variety, but generally not in a "serious" career that I'm sinking lots of time into.
• Mods that have dependencies on lots of other mods.  I just don't want to get embroiled in "version hell", and/or have to put up with the side effects of the dependencies, and/or bloat my GameData folder with a zillion mods.  I'm fine if they depend on ModuleManager or Kopernicus, but that's about it, unless the thing they depend on is something that I already have installed anyway.

 

So, by contrast, what do I like to run?  Broadly speaking, two categories:

• Stuff that adds fun / interesting / challenging content to the game, such as planet packs (like OuterPlanets, New Horizons, Galileo's Planet Pack) or well-balanced part packs (like SpaceY).
• Stuff that fills in "holes" in the game, i.e. addresses problems or missing features in stock, where by "problem" I mean something that annoys me by making life more inconvenient without being challenging or interesting to me.  Examples include the navball docking alignment indicator I mention above, or my own mods (see my sig) -- that's my motivation for creating the mods in the first place.

 

For me, mods in general fall into three categories:

• Mods I view as mandatory, and will always run in every career I play.  This is a pretty short list.  It includes my own mods. 
• Mods I will never run, for the various reasons discussed above (e.g. MechJeb, KER, KJR, FAR, etc.)
• Mods that I "sample"-- i.e. I'll run them occasionally, for the spice of variety, to help keep KSP fresh, so that every career play-through is different and therefore interesting.

My "variety sample" mods are typically things that add some major element to gameplay, but which I don't necessarily want to run on every career, and will mix-and-match to make every career different.  Examples of such mods are planet packs, Extraplanetary Launchpads, life support mods, Karbonite, etc.

[Nathair]

I use RT and TAC-LS and Persistent Rotation and mods like that with the goal of increasing operational requirements/complexity, so I don't use mods that do the opposite. I don't use military or futuristic mods because I enjoy the early NASA kind of flavour of the game. I don't MechJeb for all the usual reasons.

[Freshmeat]

I have about a page of mods, but I tend to shy away from new engines.

I want to be able to do the stuff I do with the stock means at my disposal, so I did the fist dV calcs and the first Mun transfer calculations by hand, as well as docking without DPAI. Now I have proven to myself that I can do it, but it really isn't my cup of tea compared to engineering new missions. New engines, on the other hand, can not be crafted by careful calculation or flying - either you have the ISP and thrust, or you don't. I am aware that I just cluster more nukes, but that option eventually makes for horrible crafts, so I need to keep clever about how I do it if I want to go interplanetary.

[Firemetal]

I avoid KER and mechjeb because I like to calculate my own TWR and DV. I also don't think auto pilot is fun.

Fire

[Spacetraindriver]

I only use mods that "Enhance" the KSP experience. Not add to or change it. Examples include Chatterer, Camera Tools, and thats it. There are more I just haven't installed them yet like rover sounds, or clouds etc.

[KerikBalm]

4 hours ago, Ser said:

1. I don't use balance altering mods because I doubt that they are well tested (at least not as well as stock game is) and it would be a bad surprise to find that things are significantly unbalanced in the middle of a career.

What do you mean balance altering? like rescales of the solar system? I'm thinking about starting one of those for the challenge. FWIW, career mod of stock isn't super well balanced with all multipliers set to 1 - its too easy IMO. So a rescaled system just has a different set of multipliers that you have to play with to find the right balance like one has to in stock.

In the Outer planets Mod however, I delete its "balance altering" mods - I get rid of the antenna Buff (its not needed, makes things too easy in the inner solar system), and get rid of its modification of the stock science amounts (again not needed, as adding more bodies that are even more distant to increase the total pool of science available doesn't make it any easier to complete the tech tree)

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2. I avoid part mods because of balance and they often have inconsistent cost/usefulness ratio (at least in the context of the stock game), also because of visual inconsistency with stock parts (and other part mods).

I generally do as well, but I also make my own part mods to my liking. Recently though, I've looked into Kerbal Planetary base systems, and I plan on doing life support mods too. None of these parts are over powered, and its mostly just for looks for nicer looking surface bases (although if I install life support mods, they will matter)

Also, the Atomic Age parts pack seems good, although a little bit OP'd with the nuclear lightbulb (should go fine with a re-scaled solar system)

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3. I don't use mods that simplify things because the game is already simplified, except for boring calculations aids.

I'm not sure which mods you refer too... but I don't use mech jeb, I do use Ker - sometimes I use a transfer window planner.

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4. I don't use mods that reduce realism, not to mention the ones increasing absurd level of the game (various space sausages etc.)

I don't either, and there are some planet packs that I don't use because I consider the planets to be too unrealistic. Life support does increase realism, as do scaled up systems, which is why I consider them.

-Unless you consider mods that move KSC to another planet... like Duna Space program or Laythe space program - less realistic, but its fun

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5. I don't use planet packs because I haven't visited all of the stock bodies yet.

I have, when I had missions to every planet in the last career I started - not just flag and footprints, but orbiting stations, mining operations on most of them... I went for OPM. Also, I'e made my own planet mods. OPM increases realism (you don't like decreased realism) by adding destinations where you really can't rely on solar, and communication is not a simply matter (assuming you get rid of the buff to comm systems included in that mod)

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6. I don't use military mods because it's out of this game's scope.

Same here

[Ser]

45 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

What do you mean balance altering?

Actually I mean various science-from-funds, funds-from-nothing stuff, alternative tech trees also. And I avoid the mods adding new science experiments, especially easy reachable because that means to have just more science for almost free.

45 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

I'm not sure which mods you refer too...

For me simplifying mods are automatic science gathering, 100% transmit etc. KER just lets me to not waste time on calculations on paper so it doesn't count.

Edited February 3, 2017 by Ser

[cantab]

I don't use visual mods. I want to. I see other people playing with them and it looks fabulous. But I feel KSP already runs badly, any mods will make it run worse, and I have to prioritise performance and gameplay over pretties. The modded installs I have run have often seen a 20% or so fps drop compared to stock, with no single mod responsible for that but rather the aggregate impact of a bunch of them.

[Alpha 360]

Visual mods are a winner for me, nothing beats scatterer when looking at Jool's moons, or Kerbin shrinking into a pale, blue dot. Another example is when plotting a duna lading you gaze at the thin dusty sky above you, so beautiful! Another winner is KSP-I, been playing it since 1.1.3, amazing mod that gives me a lot of high Isp engines. Near future propulsion is fine, it has so pretty good, high Isp engines. When I had CKAN, USI mods won most of the space on the hardrive. Tweakscale and KER are essential to the program as well.

Edited February 3, 2017 by Alpha 360
"Kouston, we have several problems, but that doesn't matter so we want to continue on with the mission."

[regex]

i don't use mods that I don't like.

[MalevolentNinja]

Interesting question. I appreciate your attempt n the OP to avoid turning this thread into mod bashing

I've been playing a long time, and my current play through is all about increasing the challenge while remaining a fun game. But in general:

• I don't use anything that's not fairly realistic. Warp drives are right out, for example. I try to make every launch look like something you might see on TV. Even with hardcore realism mods, I can get some monstrosities into orbit that just aren't right. So I make my own rules and I just don't do it.
• I don't use military mods, I want to focus on peaceful space exploration.
• I don't use mods that automate spaceflight. I do use kOS, but I write my own code. To me this more like how real space flight is done.
• I don't use anything that I feel overly complicates the game, even if it is realistic. I still want this to be a game and fun. For example I do use life support, but not (the impressive and quite excellent) Kerbalism - it's just too complicated for what I enjoy.
• I've tried, but I just can't give up the stock Kerbin system. So I don't use mods that replace Kerbin, Duna, Eve, etc.
• I don't use mods that are too specific in purpose. I like mods that continue to be useful all the way through the game
• I don't use plane part mods. Another thing I've tried many times but I just like rockets over planes.

Each time I start a new career I try to completely change it up. I think the only mod I've used in every single career is KER. For the first months I played I didn't even use that, but after I proved to myself that I could calculate DeltaV and other critical information, I gave up on the tediousness and installed KER as my first mod. Now, after 1000s of hours with KSP, my current career has around 80 mods.

 

Edited February 3, 2017 by MalevolentNinja

[Randazzo]

I'll try just about any mod, because why not?

My favorites are parts mods, because I like to be able to build vehicles with lots of variations. The first mod I ever downloaded was Modular Rocket Systems, specifically for the 1.25m and 2.5m cargo bays, but I stayed for all the other awesome parts.

 

[Ten Key]

I don't use autopilots or docking aids. I enjoy flying the ship myself-- docking maneuvers using nothing but the navball and the view out the window are a lot of fun.

[StarfishLeader]

I don't use stock... RSS/RO/RP-0 master-race