No mods

[spacecadet1]

Is this game designed and/or possible to play without any mods whatsoever? I personally like to play a 'clean' version, just with the original software and patches that the game designers created and no mods at all. I think any mod just gives more chance for the game to be unstable or to even crash. Also, for all the of people questioning how to make this game more difficult, maybe that is the answer - play it with no mods at all.

[KasperVld]

Yes it's very possible to play this game without any mods whatsoever. Just download the game and... play?

[montyben101]

Nah i would have gotten bored of this game ages ago if it wasn't for mods

[Mandelbrot]

...for all the of people questioning how to make this game more difficult, maybe that is the answer - play it with no mods at all.

For a lot of us, playing without mods makes the game way too easy.

[zekes]

I only use a few things - hyperedit (awesome for testing before launch, saves time and money), cloud enhancing pack, and kerbpaint (COLOR!). But Stock can be very fun on its own.

[WWEdeadman]

Of course it's possible to play without mods. I have 212 hours of stock gameplay, according to steam. (I never start the modded versions via steam, since I always copy KSP to another drive for modding, so it is a pretty accurate number)

[sumrex]

It's entirely doable. The learning curve is just steeper out of the gate. I was of a similar mentality but I use mods as well. I just could not bring myself to use mods like hyperedit or mechjeb which I basically considered "autowin". Others have valid counterpoints to my mindset, but it comes down to preference. Personally, I just pick the mods that enrich the game. adding capsule IVA, spaceplane, robotics, clouds, etc.

[Speijker]

Personally, I also prefer playing games without mods. But with KSP, I've tried Kethane and some others, but it disturbed me too much to make such alteration to my gaming experience. That said, Procedural fairings is debatable, as it doesn't give any advantages or influences gameplay apart from nicer-looking rockets, but the purist in me won't let me use it. It does sometimes let me use Astronomer's visual pack for E.V.E.; it just looks more awesome!

Apart from that, I'd suggest playing the original clean version untill you get bored with it, and then decide wether you want to up the challenge for yourself by setting up Kethane Mining Colonies on Duna or something like that (or not).

Hope I didn't just turn this into a "what's your favourite mod" discussion; these are just the two mods I feel that can be let into my Kerbal life without moving away from a "clean" KSP experience.

[Random Tank]

Also, for all the of people questioning how to make this game more difficult, maybe that is the answer - play it with no mods at all.

Actually, some of the most popular mods that people use make the game harder, as I (and many others) find the stock game too easy. A few examples: FAR, Deadly Re-Entry, Real Solar System and Planet Factory.

Also, people, please don't turn this into a modded vs. stock argument, it's been done to death and the first time it was stupid anyway...

[problemecium]

A lot of people use mods with the express purpose of making the game harder for themselves, so no, I don't think playing stock is the answer in that respect

[regex]

as I (and many others) find the stock game too easy

The stock game is incredibly easy once you understand what you're doing. About the only difficulty comes in the form of "trial-and-error gameplay" which gets pretty tiresome after launching for several hundred hours.

[Lysergic]

I've played stock for a few hundred hours. It's great. It's tons of fun. I've played lightly modded for a few hundred hours. Just as fun. It's all fun. Knock yourself out.

[Renegrade]

Is this game designed and/or possible to play without any mods whatsoever? I personally like to play a 'clean' version, just with the original software and patches that the game designers created and no mods at all. I think any mod just gives more chance for the game to be unstable or to even crash. Also, for all the of people questioning how to make this game more difficult, maybe that is the answer - play it with no mods at all.

I always like to play games 'clean' at first as well (and usually when any major updates come out), so that I can get a good feel for what they mods actually do.

And yeah, it is a bit more stable without mods. They can introduce their own bugs, or invoke existing latent bugs by accident.

My biggest complaint is stock is kinda sparse on information during builds. To manually calculate delta-v capabilities of a craft in pure stock, you either have to manually add up all the masses of the components, or do the launch/map info/recover dance.

[r_rolo1]

I always like to play games 'clean' at first as well (and usually when any major updates come out), so that I can get a good feel for what they mods actually do.

This. How can you decide what to mod if you don't know the base game?

That said, I agree with your opinion on the intel during builds ( especially given that not all of the parts actually have weight :/ ). I would add the complete zero intel you have on the effects the atmosphere have in your ship ( both drag and lift ) both in build and in flight, and even in space ( when you want to know how much the atmopshere will slow you down or where will you actually drop ... ). In that aspect we are pretty much in a similar spot where we were in 0.15 regarding interplanetary burns, when they added planets, but there was zero way of knowing if your burn would be effective in getting there ( or how close you were of getting there ) ...

[Wheffle]

I used to be a stock purist. That's perfectly fine, especially when you're new to the game. Eventually, though, I figured the game is in alpha and is not feature complete. Because of that, mods are very powerful tools for filling in the holes and expanding gameplay.

On top of that, KSP is built to support mods. Some huge, extremely game-changing mods are impressively stable, all things considered.

Personally, I can't play without FAR/NEAR and Deadly Reentry. Like others have said, the game is just too easy. Besides that I try to keep my mod list small. I usually throw in a life-support mod (usually TAC), something that gives me fairings for FAR/NEAR (I either use procedural fairings or just pull out the fairing parts from KW Rocketry), maybe a resource mod (usually Kethane), plus RemoteTech and Kerbal Attachment System when they are latest-version stable. I guess that's not a tiny list, but it's pretty small compared to some players

[Renegrade]

( especially given that not all of the parts actually have weight :/ ).

Oh yeah, that too! Especially since the stock indicators THINK the parts have weight. I don't know how many hours I've wasted carefully adjusting planes so their landing gear isn't messing up their balance, only to find out that they fly terribly afterwards because the mass is a lie.

I didn't find out that they were massless until fairly close to 0.24.

Squad could at least set the display to show '0.0' for those parts, if not something better like "none" or "N/A" or such.

I would add the complete zero intel you have on the effects the atmosphere have in your ship ( both drag and lift ) both in build and in flight, and even in space ( when you want to know how much the atmopshere will slow you down or where will you actually drop ... ).

I'd definitely be in for more information in that respect too. They might be avoiding that because they may still eventually fix up aero...

[merendel]

While its fully possible to play compleatly stock I can only really handle it for so long before I at least upgrade to what I call Near stock. There are a few mods that dont add parts or change game mechanics in any way but are quality of life improvements that are hard to do without once you have them. Most of these fall into the catagory of interface tweeks or information mods.

Enhanced navball- Lets you move/resize the navball and displays radial and normal markers on the navball.

Kerbal engineer redux - Gives alot of information about your craft and orbit in a configurable window. Some you'd have to do a bit of math to figure out stock and others it just puts the info all in one place. Simplifys mission design as it gives very good dV estimates and burn times for stages.

Precise node - Gives much more control when makeing nodes. The base node system works but click and drag is clunkly for fine manipulations to hit an exact orbit/transfer.

Kerbal Alarm clock. Alows automatic shutdown of timewarp based off alarm conditions you set. No more zooming past that maneuver node because you timewarped too high.

Those are my core mods that I always install just because of the quality of life improvements they provide and I consider them my near stock pack. I also tend to have a full moded install as well but the skys not even close to the limit on that one, only ram usage. Technicly kerbal engineer does add a couple parts to add its funtionality to a ship but I often use a 5th mod, Module manager to just add KER to any command pod/probe core and delete the parts.

Edited July 31, 2014 by merendel

[TotalNewb]

I used to be a purist like you, until I took a +kerbal engineer redux+ to the GameData folder, adding and replacing files through the folder structure!

The player is blown backwards by the force of the blow!

The player's cursor skids along the mod list, downloading some of them!

The player installs more mods.

...

A fever apparently helps creativity.

[Red Iron Crown]

I can think of a few players here off the top of my head who play completely unmodded, some of them are able to accomplish some awfully impressive feats that I can't do even with the info and control mods I use. The game is definitely playable and enjoyable in stock form. Mods can make for a better gaming experience, but I would recommend playing around in stock for a while at first.

[r_rolo1]

I used to be a purist like you, until I took a +kerbal engineer redux+ to the GameData folder, adding and replacing files through the folder structure!

The player is blown backwards by the force of the blow!

The player's cursor skids along the mod list, downloading some of them!

The player installs more mods.

...

A fever apparently helps creativity.

So the player is a !!player!! , I guess ( apologies to the readers that never played Dwarf Fortress )

[Sirrobert]

I have to say you're wrong about the stability, the most popular mods are perfectly stable and will never cause crashes.

However, to each their own, and the game is perfectly playable without mods yes. This isn't some shoddy concole port, this was made for the PC (if that's your concern)

[Tortoise]

Not more difficult...Just more realistic.

But anyways you'll get bored of stock once you spend more time playing KSP.

And you'll realize the glory of mods

I have about 30 mods and they don't make me crash or anything (although the new 64bit does).

[Frank_G]

Possible and fun! Lots of

[LethalDose]

As stated above, many mods actually increase difficulty (e.g. RemoteTech2, Deadly Reentry, Life support, etc). Other mods give information to the player that really should be available in the stock game, like dV and TWR indicators. IMHO, playing KSP w/o a stock dV indicator is like playing an FPS with blindfold on. In both cases, you aren't getting the information you need to play effectively and you're basically just shooting in the dark.

Yes, adding multiple bits of 3rd party software to your install can really only decrease stability, but for what you get out of the mods, the exceptionally rare issues you'll see from the better mods are worth the hassle. Thousands of times over.

If you like the stock game, great. But playing stock is absolutely not the solution to increasing game difficulty, and even suggesting so is rather ignorant of what mods are out there. I started playing stock, put a few hundred hours into it, then started with mods and never looked back.

[Red Iron Crown]

I should add that I always play stock for a while when a new release comes out, just to see how the new features work as I wait for the mods I use to be updated.