Should I get B9 Aerospace Mod?

[michaelsteele3]

So I am looking around the forums, and I see that most people seem to have it. I looked on the curse site and saw that everybody was complaining in the comments how it messed things up. (Or were they just talking about some parts?)

So I came here. Should I get the mod or stay on the vanilla version?

[Red Iron Crown]

Do you like the parts in it? Is so, try it out. You can always remove it later if you find you don't like it.

Don't mind the complainers, IME more than half of complaints about mods are caused by user-error.

[Raven.]

So I am looking around the forums, and I see that most people seem to have it. I looked on the curse site and saw that everybody was complaining in the comments how it messed things up. (Or were they just talking about some parts?)

So I came here. Should I get the mod or stay on the vanilla version?

There are a few repackaged distros of B9 that were made to addressed compatibility issue with an old version of B9 loaded onto Curse. Get the latest from here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92630-0-25-B9-Aerospace-Release-5-2-6-(updated-22-10-14)

The latest version does not have any kind of major issues with it, such as messing things up. Most problems with B9 are user induced or a result of an old version of B9.

[Oafman]

The B9 pack is excellent. I put off getting it for a long time, due to concerns about RAM, but in the end I installed it, removed some of the parts which I felt i didn't need, and it's running very well.

If you like building planes - especially if you like building big planes - then B9 gives you so many more options.

[michaelsteele3]

Alright, thanks.

But what's this thing I hear called "Texture manager" or something like that?

And is it easy to install? (I can drag files into correct folders, I just hope it isn't too many)

Thanks!

[Red Iron Crown]

Active Texture Management is a mod that reduces the RAM footprint of KSP to stay within limits if you have a lot of mods installed. I believe it is installed like any other mod, just drop the folder in Gamedata.

I would try installing B9 without it first, and only use it if the game crashes when loading (not sure how heavily you're into mods).

[michaelsteele3]

I have no mods installed. So should it work well?

[Alshain]

I like parts of the B9 Pack, but I usually delete everything except the HL and S2 series. The Mk2 series isn't as good as the new stock and the HX series doesn't interest me. Most of the remaining parts are just flair, which would be fine if we didn't have memory restrictions.

It's actually quite the pain to go through and remove the parts each update because not all of them are well organized, lately I've taken to just not using the pack at all.

Edited October 29, 2014 by Alshain

[Red Iron Crown]

I have no mods installed. So should it work well?

Try it and see? The description of B9 says ATM is practically a requirement, but if you have no other mods it might work without it.

[Alshain]

Try it and see? The description of B9 says ATM is practically a requirement, but if you have no other mods it might work without it.

That description was put there before the PNG conversion in 5.2.3, which dropped over 1GB of memory space according to their notes. It may not be a valid statement anymore.

[Hyomoto]

A issue some people have with B9 are it's dependencies and the sheer number of parts it adds. Firespitter is a pretty common one, but Kinetech animation? There's not much you can do about it, but many users remove parts they don't care for to deal with the second. I use a stripped down version of B9. I like the turbojet and turbofan engines it provides, as well as some of the fuselage options and landing gear, but none of the structural or wing pieces. Not just for due to memory limits, also because there are major portions of the pack I simply have no interest in and will never use that only serve to waste memory and clutter up the part list.

[Red Iron Crown]

That description was put there before the PNG conversion in 5.2.3, which dropped over 1GB of memory space according to their notes. It may not be a valid statement anymore.

I didn't notice that, thanks for pointing it out.

[Alshain]

Another warning about B9. The authors have chosen to take "liberties" with the stock parts. They decided that rather than make their parts fit with stock, they would rather break your existing designs ensuring that you can't share stock craft you design while it is installed as "stock", even though it has nothing to do with B9 at all. You can undo this by finding the ModuleManager file that makes these changes to the stock parts and remove it.

tl:dr; You can't design and share a stock craft or even Stock craft with FAR if B9 is installed because the plane's engine balance will be wrong for other players not using B9.

I didn't notice that, thanks for pointing it out.

No problem, I can't say for certain what will work because, as mentioned, I delete most of the parts and mod the mod heavily, but it is worth a try after the PNG conversion.

Edited October 29, 2014 by Alshain

[Icarus II]

Yeah you will be fine.

This is how many mods I have installed (Along with 2600+ module manager patches) and my PC specs in the same image. I run the game with AA and vsync off and everything else is full res / default, looks wonderful and plays wonderful. Go get your B9 pack!

All mods are the high res versions too!

[Vastronaut]

Also run B9 for some time now, but only for parts. Great mod to use. To save RAM you can delete parts you don't need.

[Dangerous_Beans]

Try it and see? The description of B9 says ATM is practically a requirement, but if you have no other mods it might work without it.

i was running B9 without ATM up until a few days ago, along with a few other mods (interstellar, karbonite). i was using pretty much all the ram, to the point i was getting the occasional out of memory crash, but it was working. if you are just running B9 without any other part mods it's worth a try