New Battle Modpack Underway!

[Darthzeus]

Greetings, kerbalkind. Recently I have been really in to all the DMP battle servers going up, but am repeatedly dissapointed when each and every one has some combination of pointless military mods full of pew pew shot guns and rocket launchers. I view this as a waste of the ingenuity of the KSP core design, and while I won't get in the way of people making such mods, I don't like them. KSP is about creativity, ingenuity, design, engineering, piloting, and conceptualization. Slapping a pair of machine guns on the Ravenspeare mk IV and flying in circles attempting to gun down your fellow is sad. So, as the kind of person who rather seek new answers than just declare other's answers are wrong, I have begun the development of a list of mods for DMP combat. There will be no guns or other specifically military features, instead just a wide variety of versatile parts that one can shape into varied ways to smash the opposition. Rather than hand you all guns, I would rather give you screwdrivers, and see what people can use the screwdriver to make. In the ideal server, every hostile encounter would be like a boss battle, like walking into the last room of a dungeon and having no clue what the spectrum of violence the enemy will deploy is. So to gather some ideas as to what I should add, remove, tweak or otherwise alter, I will post a list of currently employed mods. Any feedback is welcome!

WorldCup 2014

HL's SQUID tech

MK 2 cockpit internals

Lazor Systems (no sunbeam or missiles)

Planetfactory (Defaults removed, Super Eve installed)

ARM

Infernal Robotics

Kethane

KerbPaint

Kerbtown (Silo, Kerbin City, Extra KSC's)

Kerbal Attachment System

HL Airships & Submarines

Firespitter

ExtraplanetaryLaunchpads

Enviromental Visual Enhancements (Appears to be broken )

CrewXfer

Interstellar

Again, any feedback appreciated!

Edited August 6, 2014 by Darthzeus

[Greys]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/84239-Mod-Packs

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/84215-Request-A-big-ask!-Mod-Pack!

This comes up with annoying frequency and there are a wall of reasons that KSP doesn't have and doesn't need mod packs and why modders specifically do not want you to put their work into mod packs, but a lot of mods have licenses that permit you to do so, though arguably without a specific license grant for each mod you'd quickly be mired in a quag of legal documents that effectively forbid you from doing anything to anything because anything you could do violates somebody's license and many open licenses are infectious.

TL;DR: "Please no"

[sumghai]

I'm in complete agreement with all of the points Greys has raised.

In addition to licencing, there's also issues pertaining support / version updating. Third-party add-ons are updated on a semi-regular basis to fix bugs or to implement new features, and you will spend quite a lot of time checking for compatibility between updated versions and repackaging them; also, if there is a compatibility issue, the original add-on authors don't want to be flooded with exchanges such as the following:

newbie: X mod isnt working!!!!!!

original add-on author: Could you please describe what the problem is?

newbie: i downloaded this mod pack that had your mod in it and its broken!!!!! fix it!!!!

original add-on author: What version of my add-on was included in that "mod pack"?

newbie: um i dont know i think its version 1

original add-on author: *sigh* Version 1 was made for KSP 0.20, and is long obsolete - the current version of add-on X is 2.718, and already implemented a fix for **insert old problem**.

newbie: how am i supposed to know im not einstein i just downloaded this cool mod pack why isnt it working

I'll also add that the poll is quite misleading in the context of this topic - yes, generally speaking I do enjoy military themed add-ons for KSP, but no, that has nothing to do whether or not they should be packaged into some big "mod pack".

Edited July 11, 2014 by sumghai

[Majiir]

While defining a mod set (a list of mods everyone should go download) is fine, and very useful for multiplayer, mod packs (redistributing those mods in a single package) are problematic. (I should note that neither Kethane nor KAS may be redistributed.)

[sumghai]

While defining a mod set (a list of mods everyone should go download) is fine, and very useful for multiplayer, mod packs (redistributing those mods in a single package) are problematic. (I should note that neither Kethane nor KAS may be redistributed.)

Indeed - a simple list that users consult when manually downloading and installing add-ons themselves is the best bet.

[Darthzeus]

While defining a mod set (a list of mods everyone should go download) is fine, and very useful for multiplayer, mod packs (redistributing those mods in a single package) are problematic. (I should note that neither Kethane nor KAS may be redistributed.)

My mistake, been in that mind set from developing a mod pack for minecraft, this would be the point, in that there would be a list for people to consult, not a single modpack download or anything