What set of mods would you use to make KSP1 play like KSP2 (if it was feature complete)

[Fihnakis]

Hear me out, I know KSP2 is still a ways off. What I'm asking for is what set of mods would 

1) keep ksp1 as minimalistic as possible

2) have the best visuals / audio a very high end system will laugh at. 

3) have new parts, resources, life support to allow kerbals to create colonies, gather resources and food to live, travel beyond our star system to another. 

 

[JadeOfMaar]

Hi @Fihnakis . Well, here's my contribution. It may not be an answer you're hoping for as much of what I say revolves around making new mods that less reference some existing ones and more are tailor-made to suit this scenario.

1. Achieving minimalism (or keeping things restrained with this as an ideal and not as much a hard target) can be quite a tall order, no matter how you look at things. The required (non-part) mods likely need to be written from scratch in order to work cleanly and do all that they need to and none of what they don't. These mods in particular need to: Manage kerbals (see: Ship Manifest, TRP-Hire and other very hand mods); Manage ship construction costs (some kind of fusion of Extraplanetary Launchpads and Kerbal Construction Time); Replace the contracts system entirely and be built with more basic logic and the distinctions for exoplanets and invalid planets (see: Missing out Duna contracts because you accidentally visited Eve somehow, and getting Ore from Jool and Sun); Reduce the profiteering focus on Funds and Rep and increase focus on Science, resources and manpower at the KSC and any external launch site); Extend the tech tree and populate it in certain ways, or not in certain ways.
   The experiment system needs to be completely replaced too. Experiments need to require time, resources, other parts, and certain conditions while at certain situations, and even only work at certain worlds. There should be less need to bring every experiment possible, and more value and reward to each experiment, and scatters should have science value to them by default. Wild Blue Industries is my favorite and which allows for all of this with experiments (except for providing and interacting with scatters), however, no one has thought to make a mod that alters progression based on WBI features.
   For bonus points, let's also replace the default means for attitude control (stock SAS) and steering of planes (binary state of key presses on keyboard). Something more intuitive than Atmosphere Autopilot, if possible, for the most common things people do while handling planes and also quite useful for bring rockets down, and up again. And as for steering input, something like Mouse Aim Flight + a keyboard input influence which eases the input signal and has a readily adjustable quickness (of in/out or attack/release separately).
    
2. Visual mods are already settled. EVE and scatterer, once the whole Patreon premium thing is over and done with. But also, a mod that improves the skybox and a TUFX profile that changes the lighting to suit (and doesn't make it annoyingly hazy or overexposed in the ship editors). Camera effects need to be tame in there. A new default scatterer sunflare needs to happen too. Audio effect mods can boil down to some combination of Rocket Sound Enhancement, Soundtrack Editor (which allows unique music per planet) and Jet Sounds Updated).
    
3. The existing Community Resource Pack, resource placement and resource conversion recipes as a whole need an inspection. There's just too much going on when mods that add realism through ISRU enter the scene. This aside, an all-new mod is surely required which provides the functions of marking locations and spawning vessels for resource harvesting and conversion, managing resources across a planet or moon, and spawning and upgrading colonies and interstellar vessels (both being in such size classes as "Huge" and "Damn huge") and handwaving away some necessary but lagfest-inducing practices. MKS and WOLF (of Umbra space Industries) are indeed a pair of mods that are all about planetary logistics, deploying colonies (though this involves deleting craft and crew) and off-world construction with some familiarity to the likes of Factorio.
   Colony class or interstellar class parts, when they're spawned, should have much less physics by default and should be very configurable in-game without (as far as possible) having to add and remove physical parts. WBI SandCastle allows for printing parts and having the process require diverse combinations of resources and even other parts (for more Factorio goodness) and an unfinished mod, "RackMount" happened, which allows for a host part to inherit the modules and tankage of parts stored in its inventory. A huge gameplay dynamic could arise out of just printing, shuffling, upgrading and scrapping inventory parts which are akin to virtual hardware in a virtual machine.
   Civilian Population is a poorly aged, but very nice mod that's all about starting and sustaining a large population within huge parts and getting to profit from it, get lots of trainable civilians that can become crew, and there is a measure for how long each kerbal has lived. (I don't think death by old age is a thing in this mod but I may be wrong.) That mod is compatible with USI LS, TAC and Kerbalism, maybe Snacks too. What's missing now is to more creatively use the population itself to influence ISRU and off-world construction with less total player effort required.
   Parts for interstellar travel? I'll eventually get (back) to that myself.