I want to build a modpack, BUT… please hear me out!

[ferram4]

Which doesn't exactly solve the problem, it just replaces it with a new one: successfully getting their stuff classified as a mod pack. Which should be easy, but we're going specifically with the letter of the license, not worrying about the spirit or intention here. It would simply be easier, clearer, and less likely to be argued away to forbid redistribution and modification, period, and that exemptions need your explicit permission.

[AlphaAsh]

Which doesn't exactly solve the problem, it just replaces it with a new one: successfully getting their stuff classified as a mod pack. Which should be easy, but we're going specifically with the letter of the license, not worrying about the spirit or intention here. It would simply be easier, clearer, and less likely to be argued away to forbid redistribution and modification, period, and that exemptions need your explicit permission.

It may still come to that. Depends on whether bullies get their way or not. I'm not going to give in and make it impossible for legitimate re-distribution (what I consider legitimate) until I have to.

[Jetwave]

I use a license that allows users to modify and/or redistribute my mod. Why? Because if all the mods on this community were "All Rights Reserved", it would not exist. This community is (in general) very open to people modifying other people's mods, which is great because it is a great resource for new modders, and more experienced modders can take an idea and make something amazing. If modders were forced into using "All Rights Reserved, Do Not Distribute, No Derivatives" because people were using their mods in a way they do not want them to, this community would become a lot more hostile towards new modders. Modders shouldn't have to close their license because people are making modpacks that are causing trouble for them.

If someone asks permission to use a mod, either in a remix of the mod or in a modpack, I'm willing to bet a lot of the modders (myself included) would be more than willing to allow that. However, if the person who made the remix/modpack didn't ask permission, or is causing trouble for the original modder, even if the license allows it, I'm fairly certain most modders would be rather annoyed at the person.

Again, like several others have said before, just because the license allows it, doesn't mean you should do it. You shouldn't have to say "Don't make a remix of my parts pack that replaces all of the textures with offensive ones". The license doesn't say you can't do it, but it should be common sense that you shouldn't do it. You're allowed to eat McDonalds all day every day for the rest of your life, but should you? No.

[JDCollie]

Figured I would hop into the thread.

I for one am ambivalent on what people do with my stuff - it's why I use open licensing, though that is more an issue with ensuring people are not left in a lurch in the event of my departure, and to encourage innovation more than anything else. People hack and modify and extend my stuff on a regular basis. The level of support I provide for that is directly proportional to the level of courtesy they give me when discussing extending the mods I build or curate. And I have no issues sending people right back to the source if there's an issue.

In the end, the problem corrects itself. It's why I don't sweat the whole 'I have to close my license so my creative vision is not spoiled'. The best stuff rises to the top, and if people toss out junk it gets buried and just goes away. I have no obligation to support it, and on a few occasions have made it pretty clear. I'll happily let you play with the tinker toy set I have over here, but if you decide to stick them in your ears, you're on your own.

Open licensing is worth it for a lot of reasons, even if we do have to deal with the occasional knucklehead who can't people. This is why we have ignore lists, and in the end the community will tend to expel these people out so that the rest of us can interact like rational, reasonable humans who want to build lego spaceships.

I really appreciate how you handle your mods, Rover. You both produce awesome content, and do a lot to support the community as well, both through your own attitude/actions, and through your licensing.

That being said, I would like to point out that should I continue to build my own mod pack (which I'm not sure I will; this thread has given me some valid points to think about) I'll make very sure that it is to me, the modpack builder, that people direct their concerns and issues. Mod interaction is a horrific pain to bugshoot, and I'd genuinely hate to waste the time of my favorite mod developers on something that I should be working out on my own if I wish to have a modpack.

(Also, if a mod license does not explicitly state that redistribution of the mod is allowed without permission, I'm not going to distribute it, regardless of the "spirit" of things.)

EDIT: After thinking about it and rereading this thread, I'm not going to continue with the modpack. There are some really valid points here, and I don't want to waste the time of the modders I respect.

Also, just a thought in regards to licensing: what is allowed by the license aside, if I am going to be making a modpack, I'd much rather make it with the mod authors, rather than in spite of them.

Edited August 28, 2014 by JDCollie

[WololoW]

I am just simply done with this thread. The rudeness and snide remarks towards my constructive discussion has gotten me to the point of not caring what you guys do with your mods and licenses.

I have read and responded to every single counter point, but have not been shown the same courtesy which I have given out. Every single point that has been brought up since my last post has already been addressed by previous posts of mine, which makes it painfully obvious that you all are either not reading, or not taking the time to correctly interpret my posts. I find that very rude.

I sincerely hope that you don't learn the hard way that your license is the legally binding document that you chose or wrote(and yes, you can write your own) to protect your rights; and that no one will uphold a "spirit" of a license since there is, objectively, no such thing.

I recind my previous statement that I will continue discussing this topic in this thread. You guys won, congratulations, you broke my will to help you.

I just find it funny that this all stemmed from mod authors saying they do not want modpacks, and has continued into the same authors or other authors stating that they want the modding community to thrive. Very contradictory.

Good day to you all, and I wish you the best.

P.S. Refrain from personal attacks and snide remarks, they do not help a discussion in a constructive way.

[Claw]

Yes, Everyone, please refrain from snide comments and personal attacks, even if veiled in sarcasm.

While I understand that all that hard work needs to be protected, there's no need to go after someone personally. Side comments eventually result in a derailed (and often locked) thread. Which just causes more angst. Please keep on track.

Respectfully,

~Claw

[ferram4]

Since you're done, I'll just address one last point then:

I just find it funny that this all stemmed from mod authors saying they do not want modpacks, and has continued into the same authors or other authors stating that they want the modding community to thrive. Very contradictory.

This assumes that the existence of mod packs would be the same thing as the modding community thriving. It is not. Mod packs offer no value, they are nothing but their constituent mods thrown together in some manner that often makes no sense, and with the serious risk that the constituent mods' original authors will have to clean up the support requests from that pack. Having to deal with support requests for an out-of-date version (because someone made a pack, got bored, and left the old pack up) hinders fixing actual bugs and adding new features. Which means the modding community does not thrive.

[JDCollie]

I actually think that Tiberion has brought up a really good point with Minecraft a few pages ago. Look at the ludicrously successful mod pack Feed the Beast; it is amazing, but it also has the benefit of being almost completely built by the mod authors themselves, along with some individuals who are wholly dedicated to supporting and troubleshooting. Also of note, I believe it was in development for almost a year before it was officially released.

I don't think a true modpack for KSP could really succeed with much less; I.E., a concerted effort by a core group of KSP modders working to create a coherent mod experience together. I sincerely doubt ferram is off the mark with how much work that would be.

In lieu of that however, I really like what the people involved in ORS have been doing, along with several other community comparability mods. Working to create standardized systems for often used items both makes modding easier for the users, and (I hope) reduces the incoming compatibility complaints directed toward modders. I'm really hoping to see this system continue to take off, and that modders will join in where possible

Edited August 29, 2014 by JDCollie
Whoops, attributed the Minecraft reference to the wrong person; sorry!

[Alastair412]

Just a thought from a simple user - a closed license also means that the moment the author moves on to other things, or focuses on other parts of his life, the vision he so much desired to protect with a restrictive license also dies.

I cannot express how indebted I am to the modders for expanding KSP to make, out of a decent thing, a great one. I share very little back, but possibly a tiny bit of feedback, and mostly silent appreciation. At the same time, a closed license acts as a reminder that the mod it contains is not shared, it is lent. And that's perfectly fine, I am not entitled to anything. But the distinction is worth making. For us users, getting over-reliant on mods that are lent is a road to disappointment and resentment. It shouldn't, but that's human nature.

I sometimes do minor part tweaks for my own convenience - extremely simple changes that are within my grasp, cloning parts and retexturing, adding other modules to .cfg. Extremely derivative stuff for my own use. The thing is, even if suddenly something were worth sharing back, a closed license would provide a barrier to entry that I would probably not seek to overcome. Wikipedia kinda trundles on after nearly a decade and a half because the barrier to entry for contributing and expanding on other people's work is extremely low (and it also comes with its own share of problems). All closed license alternatives haven't ever thrived.

TLDR: mod authors owe us nothing. However, if the prospect of becoming the giant on whose shoulders others are standing is appealing, I urge those of you modders who are thinking of restricting your licenses further, in part because of this thread, to reconsider. There will always be a few obnoxious types around who will tend to ruin everyone else's experience, but just because they PM you won't make them less obnoxious, only, perhaps, more courteous until the moment you tell them no.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Alastair412

[Volatar]

Mod packs offer no value, they are nothing but their constituent mods thrown together in some manner that often makes no sense

They are of significant value to the end user in ease of use. That is value in itself.

And saying that they are nothing but a mashup of mods that make no sense is a massive generalization. I am making a mod pack that makes sense. Not just a collection of things.

I'd also say that we should advise everyone to go as restrictive as they possibly can just to make sure that they don't accidentally forfeit a right that they wished to reserve for themselves. It's the only way to be sure that there are no misunderstandings: restrict EVERYTHING.

This will create nothing but confusion throughout the community. Right now we use the CC and GPL liberally, which people (seem) to understand. Both the CC and GPL forbid modification to the license itself without at least changing the name, and many of the proposed restrictions by you or others in this thread (like "no use in mod packs" as an example, ignoring the whole definition of mod packs thing) cannot be added to these licenses without conflicting with existing wording. Entirely new licenses would have to be created, and that would most assuredly be a mess.

It's quite simple really. These licenses say that the work can and must remain freely distribuitable and modifiable (excepting the -NoDerivs CC, which no one here seems to use), the GPL adding the additional requirement that the source code must be included.

Now, changing the license to another (such as all rights reserved) is possible... but not for CC licensed works. The CC license is not revocable. Even new versions by the original author are bound by the modifications clause and must also be under the same license.

Now, the GPL (which Ferram uses) is a bit different in that aspect. While it cannot be revoked or changed for already published works, another version can be published by the copyright holder (original author) under a different license. Nothing is stopping someone from continuing work on the old version though. Heck, if they do a better job the original author can quickly get sidelined to nothing. I have seen that happen. (heck, look at what happened to Open Office.)

---

I'll be honest Ferram, you say that the open licensing used thus far in the modding community only works because the community was small, and now that it is larger we need to switch to more restrictive methods. This really, really does not make sense to me. Look at the FOSS community at large. We have amazing works such as Blender, or Gimp, OpenLibreOffice, or the whole of the Linux community. We here at KSP are a speck compared to their massive works, accomplishments, and communities, and things seem to be working just fine. Why would it be any different here?

[regex]

Now, changing the license to another (such as all rights reserved) is possible... but not for CC licensed works. The CC license is not revocable. Even new versions by the original author are bound by the modifications clause and must also be under the same license.

Is there a citation of that being upheld in a court of law, because that's a mighty big claim and I have a hard time believing that anyone who would use a license in the first place would revoke their right to use their own copyrighted work in whatever way they please.

E: Ah, that's actually misinformation. The original author, as always, is free to relicense whenever they want. That does not include past versions that someone may already have in use, of course, since you can't actually revoke someone else's rights that you've already granted.

Edited August 29, 2014 by regex

[ferram4]

They are of significant value to the end user in ease of use. That is value in itself.

Do you really think so little of users that replacing extracting multiple archives is more work than extracting one? The value of a modpack over the mods individually is the convenience (miniscule) - not having the guaranteed most up-to-date-version (rather important) - certainty of what mod causes what (fairly important). Thinking about this more, this seems like a negative value for users, not a positive one. It's just branded well, like potato chip bags that are half empty to make you think you're getting more than you actually are.

And saying that they are nothing but a mashup of mods that make no sense is a massive generalization. I am making a mod pack that makes sense. Not just a collection of things.

And what, pray tell, is it? Everyone will tell you that any modpack they could come up with makes sense, but it's still just a collection of things. More specifically, it's a collection of things that will quickly rot whenever you become bored supporting your particular collection and leave, but don't take down the download.

This will create nothing but confusion throughout the community. Right now we use the CC and GPL liberally, which people (seem) to understand. Both the CC and GPL forbid modification to the license itself without at least changing the name, and many of the proposed restrictions by you or others in this thread (like "no use in mod packs" as an example, ignoring the whole definition of mod packs thing) cannot be added to these licenses without conflicting with existing wording. Entirely new licenses would have to be created, and that would most assuredly be a mess.

Nah, All Rights Reserved is a fairly good thing to advocate for any new mods. It's pretty simple and easy to understand: I have absolute power over this, you have no rights to it. There's no confusion there, because the answer to nearly all the important questions regarding what you can do with someone else's work is no. It's actually simpler and clearer than any of the licenses we have so far.

I'll be honest Ferram, you say that the open licensing used thus far in the modding community only works because the community was small, and now that it is larger we need to switch to more restrictive methods. This really, really does not make sense to me. Look at the FOSS community at large. We have amazing works such as Blender, or Gimp, OpenLibreOffice, or the whole of the Linux community. We here at KSP are a speck compared to their massive works, accomplishments, and communities, and things seem to be working just fine. Why would it be any different here?

Simple. Previously, with a smaller community, the effects of someone going off and doing something regardless of our wishes (but that the license allowed) wouldn't be that big: fewer users in general meant fewer support requests, which meant less effort for us. Someone creating a pack against our wishes wouldn't increase the workload that much, and we were a large enough part of the community that we could say that X pack is causing an issue, you shouldn't use it, and that would be effective. Further, we could generally expect people to respect the wishes of modders more than they do currently, and that they would think about the best interests of the project.

That's not the case anymore. With WololoW pointing out that no one needs to listen to anything but the licenses exactly, and you going forward regardless of whether we think it's a good idea or not, we will have to make a choice: maintain the current level of support that we do for our works by reducing the negative impact that you can make through restricting licenses, or invoke the, "Nope, you aren't entitled to support, get lost" clause of those licenses. We'd prefer to do neither, simply because that encourages more people to get into modding and come up with cool stuff, but given that most of us care about our projects and the users we have, but need to prevent ourselves from being burned out, I think most of us are likely to start restricting anything that they easily can.

I hope you understand the full consequences of what you intend to do.

You will be responsible for every bit of code in every mod you distribute; you will need to be familiar with the very large codebases of many plugins.

You will be responsible for any odd interaction.

You will be responsible for any time wasted dealing with users of your pack that bother the rest of us about anything from it; it's not as if we can keep track of what changes you've made to anything.

You will be responsible for keeping every mod exactly up-to-date.

You will be responsible for making sure that everyone re-downloads the pack (and 90% of the stuff that didn't change) every update to avoid issues.

and most importantly, when you lose interest, you will be responsible for cleaning up whatever mess you have created.

You will not be able to do this. You're taking on the workload of as many people as you have mods to include. You will not be able to meet the responsibilities implicit in the role that you are taking on, and we will have to deal with the consequences of that. You are taking on a massive workload for little benefit for anyone, but a huge cost to modders during and after you leave (You're not going to keep all of the support in your thread(s); they will spread to the thread of any mod you pack, simply because enough users gloss over the statements in the OP for it to be a problem). Any miniscule value that you add in the meantime will be destroyed by value lost by modders as a dealing with the consequences.

[Volatar]

Is there a citation of that being upheld in a court of law, because that's a mighty big claim and I have a hard time believing that anyone who would use a license in the first place would revoke their right to use their own copyrighted work in whatever way they please.

E: Ah, that's actually misinformation. The original author, as always, is free to relicense whenever they want. That does not include past versions that someone may already have in use, of course, since you can't actually revoke someone else's rights that you've already granted.

I got my information directly from the Creative Commons foundation themselves. From my reading of the whole thing, even the original author is restricted from relicensing their own work. CC is really a sort of Public Domain with attribution and maybe a couple other requirements.

[ferram4]

Except that states that you cannot change the license of versions already distributed; it says nothing about the original author being stuck with a CC license forever if they use it for a given project.

[Volatar]

Do you really think so little of users that replacing extracting multiple archives is more work than extracting one?

Oh come on. This entire idea stemmed out of the DAY AND A HALF I spent last week putting together a working collection of mods for my KSP install. Extracting multiple archives is not the problem. There are far more kinks to be worked out. I am not thinking little of users. I am coming from personal experience.

And what, pray tell, is it? Everyone will tell you that any modpack they could come up with makes sense, but it's still just a collection of things. More specifically, it's a collection of things that will quickly rot whenever you become bored supporting your particular collection and leave, but don't take down the download.

You can say the same thing of every single mod created for this game. Modders are just as liable for boredom and quitting. Yet your complaint is only about mod packs.

Nah, All Rights Reserved is a fairly good thing to advocate for any new mods. It's pretty simple and easy to understand: I have absolute power over this, you have no rights to it. There's no confusion there, because the answer to nearly all the important questions regarding what you can do with someone else's work is no. It's actually simpler and clearer than any of the licenses we have so far.

And by doing that you, and any that follow along in that will be the ones that kill this modding community. Do not try and shift that blame off on me or anyone else. If you can't handle derivative works and distributions, then that is your perogative. But changing your license is your choice and yours alone. And you must take the responsibility for that.

Simple. Previously, with a smaller community, the effects of someone going off and doing something regardless of our wishes (but that the license allowed) wouldn't be that big: fewer users in general meant fewer support requests, which meant less effort for us. Someone creating a pack against our wishes wouldn't increase the workload that much, and we were a large enough part of the community that we could say that X pack is causing an issue, you shouldn't use it, and that would be effective. Further, we could generally expect people to respect the wishes of modders more than they do currently, and that they would think about the best interests of the project.

That's not the case anymore. With WololoW pointing out that no one needs to listen to anything but the licenses exactly, and you going forward regardless of whether we think it's a good idea or not, we will have to make a choice: maintain the current level of support that we do for our works by reducing the negative impact that you can make through restricting licenses, or invoke the, "Nope, you aren't entitled to support, get lost" clause of those licenses. We'd prefer to do neither, simply because that encourages more people to get into modding and come up with cool stuff, but given that most of us care about our projects and the users we have, but need to prevent ourselves from being burned out, I think most of us are likely to start restricting anything that they easily can.

Ok, that is consistent with the points you have made. I accept that, but do not agree.

I hope you understand the full consequences of what you intend to do.

You will be responsible for every bit of code in every mod you distribute; you will need to be familiar with the very large codebases of many plugins.

You will be responsible for any odd interaction.

You will be responsible for any time wasted dealing with users of your pack that bother the rest of us about anything from it; it's not as if we can keep track of what changes you've made to anything.

You will be responsible for keeping every mod exactly up-to-date.

You will be responsible for making sure that everyone re-downloads the pack (and 90% of the stuff that didn't change) every update to avoid issues.

and most importantly, when you lose interest, you will be responsible for cleaning up whatever mess you have created.

You will not be able to do this.

Challenge accepted.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Volatar

[regex]

I got my information directly from the Creative Commons foundation themselves. From my reading of the whole thing, even the original author is restricted from relicensing their own work. CC is really a sort of Public Domain with attribution and maybe a couple other requirements.

Read again.

https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Can_I_enter_into_separate_or_supplemental_agreements_with_users_of_my_work.3F

Don't spread misinformation.

[Volatar]

Except that states that you cannot change the license of versions already distributed; it says nothing about the original author being stuck with a CC license forever if they use it for a given project.

I seem to be reading it differently than you.

If you are right then that puts CC and GPL on the same level and nothing is different about the discussion anyways.

Read again.

https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Can_I_enter_into_separate_or_supplemental_agreements_with_users_of_my_work.3F

Don't spread misinformation.

Thank you for that clarification. I missed that section, even after searching for such a thing in several manners. Thank you for clearing that up.

Edited August 29, 2014 by sumghai
Consolidated consecutive replies by the same poster

[ferram4]

Oh come on. This entire idea stemmed out of the DAY AND A HALF I spent last week putting together a working collection of mods for my KSP install. Extracting multiple archives is not the problem. There are far more kinks to be worked out. I am not thinking little of users. I am coming from personal experience.

What kinks? I've installed mods like mad, and never run into any. Mods in KSP are amazingly compatible, unless you insist on getting out-of-date unsupported ones.

You can say the same thing of every single mod created for this game. Modders are just as liable for boredom and quitting. Yet your complaint is only about mod packs.

That's because I'm not bundling someone else's work. If I up and leave now, it's not like there will be versions of FAR 0.14 still being downloaded when FAR 0.15 is the most recent version. But if you were to bundle my work, and then abandon it, there's suddenly a download where the "most" up-to-date version is still FAR 0.14 while FAR 0.15 is current. This is a problem of redistribution.

And by doing that you, and any that follow along in that will be the ones that kill this modding community. Do not try and shift that blame off on me or anyone else. If you can't handle derivative works and distributions, then that is your perogative. But changing your license is your choice and yours alone. And you must take the responsibility for that.

Sure, but anyone who asks why will receive a simple answer: there were people who wanted to do stuff with my work that I did not agree with. They were unwilling to respect my wishes, and so, now I must do this to compel them to follow those wishes. I did not want to do that, but was left no choice other than to see someone act in a way that I think would harm this project. It was a difficult choice, and it has ugly consequences, but it was necessary due to the actions of a few in the community.

I will rake responsibility for arguing for All Rights Reserved and highly restrictive licenses, but you need to take responsibility for being the root cause. You are the first mod packer to decide to ignore the points made by modders; you are not changing things for the better.

Challenge accepted.

At the very least, this will be an entertaining disaster.

[JDCollie]

*Sigh* . . . guys, please don't go here.

Licenses which restrict modification and redistribution hurt the community. This is fact. While I wouldn't mind if Ferrum was more open to modpacks, his concerns are valid. More importantly, if the creation of a modpack becomes such an issue that it pits the modpack makers against the modpack developers, then the modpack has already failed.

Basically, I agree with a lot of your points, Volatar, but you're going about this the wrong way.

[godarklight]

I'm not quite sure how we got here, but perhaps we should get back on track?

If the mod licence allows you to redistribute, then you can redistribute. If the mod licence allows edits, then you can edit, I'm not really seeing anything stopping you from doing so either way.

I might be slightly biased here, but you're not the first to have this idea, and you won't be the first to implement such an idea. From a multiplayer perspective, having a mod pack for heavily-modded servers is a good thing. I'm near certain that nobody has joined AlzonoTG's server because of the crazy amount of mods that need to be acquired to play on it, but stock servers on the other hand are generally quite popular as you can join them with no effort.

Some server admins have even saved some people the effort and maintain a pack, or at a bare minimum, a list of links to the forum thread for their users.

But what you're intending is a little different, you're not trying to maintain a pack for a handful of users, but for the whole community. It would be a really good idea to get in contact with the mod devs for those mods you intend to distribute, and almost certainly required to get in touch with the mod devs for those mods you intend to edit.

This may or may not work without co-operation, but if the KSP community can actually work together here, I'm sure that something good can come out of this .

I also definitely understand ferram4's concerns. Modders have different amounts of patience with respect to dealing with players, ferram4 likely does not want to fix bugs or problems that simply do not exist.

[Nibb31]

What's the point of a mod pack in KSP ?

Each time a mod is updated, you have two solutions: either you struggle to keep your zip up to date and users have to redownload your entire mod pack every couple of days, or you do regular updates by rolling them together, but in that case, you are going to constantly lag behind the individual mod versions.

This isn't minecraft. There is zero complexity involved in downloading and installing individual mods. There is no compiling involved, all you would be doing is unzipping mods and rezipping them in a single file. I don't see the added value in that.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Nibb31

[Murph]

I'm not against someone giving a mod pack a go, as long as they respect licenses and show a general courtesy to mod authors, but I share the view that I don't believe there's really much value in it for KSP.

I can't ever really see myself wanting to use a mod pack, as it's just another layer for errors to creep in from my point of view. I'd much rather get the unmodified mods direct from their authors, to be certain of what I'm installing.

Good luck to the folks wanting to do this, but I think your efforts would be better placed creating something new, rather than re-packing the work of others with all the possible problems that introduces.

[Lanterfanter]

Hey Molo, a very nice attempt at something that has been tried & shot down (usually within hours) in KSP before, from a player's perspective I appreciate the effort

I'm probably going to be ignored/recieve a lot of flack for this, but as a player I LOOOOVE modpacks.

The thing is I play a dozen or so games on and off usually over like a 3-6 month cycle (nothing neurotic, just the way my interest pans out) So last couple of weeks I played minecraft: no need to sort through dozens of threads/several different mod-sites, just fire up FTB, select "Monster" & go.

Since two days I felt like playing KSP again, there having been an update I started browsing Curse, the anti-Curse-KSP-Modders site and several threads on this forum. Download mods, download dependencies, download dependencies of dependencies. Installation is easy (as mentioned constantly in every response by the modders community to anyone suggesting a modpack) but time-consuming. Removing duplicates and outdated files, launching the game, getting a message that a few mods dont work with 0.24.2., removing those, still getting a strange bug that leaves my ships uncontrollable at times. Is it KSP? is it a mod? is it a mod interacting with another mod? I decide to go back to 0.23.5 for a bit, but darn it, in my mod-backup i replaced some of the mods with the newer versions, launch KSP, yep half of the mods wont work with 0.23.5, lets go back to the modsites/threads and download older versions.

Nevermind I'll just play vanilla for a bit. Hmmm i really miss my mods :S I'll start adding them one by one, see if I encounter any problems and restart with another mod. Hmm 5 mods installed, so far so good, the endless restarting is getting a bit annoying though :S

Oh screw it, I've spend an entire evening and morning of a free day getting to the actual playing of a game, I'll just go play Hearthstone for a bit, haven't played that in a couple of months now...

I realize that this is totally the perspective of the "entitled gamer" who doesn't appreciate all the effort of the modding community and their legitimate concerns, but I just thought I'd share this experience with the community, since I doubt I'm the only one who goes through this...

[Ippo]

IMO the best option would be a bundler like the one that there was once for RSS + RO.

For those that haven't used it, it was a custom made program that allowed the user to select what parts of Realism Overhaul to install, and then went and fetched each mod from its source and built the whole package together.

Of course it had a lot of problems because of the way mods are distributed, but it did work like a charm. I think these kind of programs might fit both parties: each mod is fetched from its official source and therefore you don't have version problems, and the user doesn't have to manually follow the installation process.

Maybe it has some drawbacks that I can't see right now?*

* I am aware that it was hand built to deal with a lot of different download locations, packaging, and installation processes

[jandcando]

I used that bundler and it worked pretty well for me. But that was a few months ago and I'm relatively sure that it no longer works well at all. Maybe a bundler could be created that allows any mod on Curse to be added to the GameData folder (is that even possible??). Of course, not every mod is on Curse and some are unique to particular KSP mod hosting websites like KerbalStuff. (can that be accessed?)

Remember the days of SpacePort when everything was all in one place?