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

[troyfawkes]

I'd Love Category Bundles:

E.g., the "Lazy Newb Pack" from Dwarf Fortress (...YEAH THAT GAME) included utilities and non-gameplay affecting tools. So you might have Enhanced Navball, a Docking Port mod, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Toolbar, Active Texture Management, Custom Biomes, Community Science Defs, Editor Extensions, Science Alert, Simple Part Organizer etc. all in one maintained bundle plus whatever other utilities. Any mod that is just slightly out of category you include links to in the thread, same with any modder who doesn't want to be involved.

Examples:

1. Lazy Newb (as above)
   
2. Graphical (EVE, links to EVE expansions, Distant Object, Hot/Cool-rockets)
   
3. Difficulty (Deadly Reentry, FAR, TAC Life, RealChute, RT2)
   
4. RSS (yeah this could be its own project; I've never gotten this install fully working :/)
   
5. Parts (Procedural Parts, Procedural Fairings, Procedural Wings, graphical packs for procedural parts/fairings + best of part compilation, list of full mod packs below)
   

Even having just the lazy newb pack would make life a lot easier.

[frisch]

Hello Ferram4

First - your FAR package is fantastic - really. A spectacular improvement to playability.

Same for the realism overhaul stuff - after getting bored with a generic asparagus staged kerbal rocket, needing a "good" design makes the game far more interesting. Finally rockets that look and act like real rockets!

The mod packs are such a dramatic improvement that I've completely lost interest in playing without them.

But: It is just too much work to find the combinations of mods that work. I spend far more time adding and removing packages (all on on the RO "approved" list by the way), to get a game the doesn't crash, where all the parts work etc. I've finally given up. I've probably spent 10 hours trying to get reasonable set of RO packages after kerbal 25 came out and I still haven't succeeded. (is it 64 bit? Maybe the 8192 res pictures for real solarsystem? Or maybe I'm using the wrong module-manager dll - some packages have newer ones than others. KAS add=ons seem to reliably break things. there are 2^n possible configurations to try).

I know there are working sets of packages out there -and it is just frustrating that I can't get one. After much time I had a working 0.24 set, and maybe I'll eventually get there.

I'm not completely computer illiterate -my day job involves writing controls and feedbacks for large particle accelerators.

You guys are all volunteers - so you are not *required* to do anything, and what you do is very much appreciated. Its just a shame that so much good work has gone into these mods and that many people are not able to use them.

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.

(snip)

.

[Ippo]

...

I don't want to belittle you or anything, but you must have done something wrong.

If you follow the Realism Overhaul instructions to the letter, you get a working install in about 30 minutes (depending on how fast you can download the textures).

That being said, the bundler sure was handy. As I said before, I feel that would be the solution for everyone: users get their "mod-pack" (kinda) and still the mods are downloaded from their respective source avoiding fragmentation.

[NathanKell]

The bundler worked because jamis hand-created the metadata for every (hand-selected) mod, and updated (all! of) it whenever new versions were released.

It is currently in a protracted state of almost-doneness, due to how much work doing that is.

[Falconer]

I know lazynewbpack for dwarf fortress... it is a great boon there because almost everyone I know who played DF plays it either vanilla or simply uses the combined modpack and doesn't bother with individual mods. It's not like this where it feels like every player has their own set of mods (without even touching the MechJeb vs KerbalEngineerRedux holy war). I simply don't see the OP providing much value-added and a lot of hassles to the modding community.

I think Ferram has the better argument.

What it really comes down to is most people here are looking for a compatibility list (or incompatibility list).

I mostly get that by looking on forum threads to see what mods people are running together. Quite frankly the best way to do a 'modpack' would be to simply maintain a thread with a list of mods... complete with links to the mods in use that they've found work well together.

[Ippo]

The bundler worked because jamis hand-created the metadata for every (hand-selected) mod, and updated (all! of) it whenever new versions were released.

It is currently in a protracted state of almost-doneness, due to how much work doing that is.

Yeah, I know it was a pain to make it work.

I wonder if we could resurrect it somehow... I also had the worst idea ever*, but it would work quickly.

* it involve's python's eval on user created files. Just... no.