Hoarding, I have a problem

[Bosun]

Does anyone have any tips on how to Marie Kondo your GameData folder?  

I mean...I might use that mod one day.  I don't always play RSS, but maybe I will....sometime.  I've never used the Albucierre, but that's not to say I wouldn't!  

Ugh, this is hard.

[Superfluous J]

Restart the game from scratch every career. Copy the entire KSP folder to a new place, wipe everything from GameData except Squad and SquadExpansion, Decide what your new career is going to NEED for mods, and then selectively copy only those mods over.

Of course, then you will just have dozens of different installs but I assume your problem is load time, not "I want less stuff on my drive." If it's the latter I can't help you as there is no real practical reason to not have as many ksp folders as you want.

[Ratwerke_Actual]

^ Have to agree with @5thHorseman ....

New laptop already has 6 installs. Old one had over a dozen. 

Comes in handy to have a pure stock, vs. A mod testing version.

Or in one case, I wasn't sure if attaching 17 asteroids to one craft was possible or game breaking, so a new test version was created.

Also handy to have older versions hanging around like 1.3.1 for SSRSS stuff.

Edited May 7, 2019 by Ratwerke_Actual
spelling

[fulgur]

Generally, at some point mods either become "I use some parts on every other ship I make" (i.e. KIS or USI-LS) or they become "Meh, maybe I'll put this cool feature in one in ten ships" (ie Alcubierre drive). At that point I delete the latter. And there's also the "Personally I think these are cheaty" mods such as airships with electric propellors. I collected ALL the Duna science in one career this way. It made the game boring, so I deleted it. I only keep mods which make me enjoy the game more.

[ExavierMacbeth]

My recommendation, Learn to make your own MM Patches

I have a mod folder in my gamedata that contains nothing but my own personal MM patch files for each mod I use. If during gameplay I find that I like a mod I have installed but it has components I don't use then I add a line to my personal patch file to disable that part or update that setting. Now everytime a new game version is release (or I reshuffle my installed mods) I just clear the whole gamedata folder as 5thHorseman suggested, use CKAN to download the ones i want to continue to play with, and drop my custom MM patch mod into gamedata.

I don't think I have had to directly touch the contents of one of the mods (outside looking at it when making a new patch entry) in several game versions now. And it wouldn't be hard to just keep a copy of the patches set aside if you want to change whole game types (like a set specific to RSS).

Edited May 7, 2019 by ExavierMacbeth

[WWEdeadman]

Yeah, I also just always start with fresh installs for new modded saves. It makes everything much easier.

[Cavscout74]

In addition to separate installs for different mod setups, the mod Janitor's Closet can be used to prune unwanted parts out of other mods so they don't load at all.

[Loskene]

Being bottlenecked by RAM I'm limited in how much I can allow the gamedata folder to balloon before I start getting crashes on the loading screen, so with every new update I peruse my mod list to review which ones I actually used and which are just dead weight that sounded good at the time. Suffice it to say the recent updates making popular mods stock has helped with this process quite a bit. Now if only I could do away with the long dependency trees of visual overhauls...

[LameLefty]

I usually start a clean new Career save with every point release. Each time I'm amazed how fast and responsive KSP is without the overhead of dozens of mods loaded and many hundreds of flags, stations, probes, satellites, orbiting stations, mining and colony modules scattered around the Kerbol system to keep track of, not to mention the limited (250) pieces of persistent debris. Each time I vow to do better - to play a minimally-modded game, to deorbit all my debris, delete obsolete craft and stations, to run no more than 2 - 3 concurrent missions, and each time I break my own rules a week or two later. I've been doing this regularly since 2013 so I should know better.

Now I just embrace the suck of loading 50-odd mods and doing my darnedest to bring a 16GB Core i7/GTX1070 rig to its knees again.