Oh man, that mod so has to go ...

[Pecan]

My old machine never met KSP requirements but has always behaved well until 0.25. Whether it's the extra Mk2 parts or what I don't know, but something seems to have pushed it over the edge. I either have a bad install (unlikely, as there are three of them behaving similarly) or I just don't have the 32-bit memory I used to.

Either way, I have to reduce my mod-list and I need you to help with the decision as I've already pared it down to those I consider 'essential'.

There are three I'm not deleting:

ATM - It's SAVING memory! Deleting it would make things worse.

KAC - Prise it from my cold, dead, hands.

MJ - If not this I'd want KER/VOID and still be bored during transfer burns, so no gain in removing it.

Which leaves ten (conveniently for the poll):

Chatterer - Totally useless, but KSP wouldn't be totally fun without it.

NavballDockingAlignmentIndicator - Smaller than NavyFish's but I could live without it.

NavUtilities - I like instruments! (And landing in one piece).

NRAP - Saves a lot of testing time, but ...

ProbeControlRoom - IVA for unmanned ships, what's not to love (unless RPM goes ...).

ProceduralFairings - Just aesthetics, since I'm using stock aerodynamics.

RPM - The reason to use IVA.

SCANSat - Maps are cool, visiting anomalies is cooler. But do I need to do it again?

Toolbar - Required for ProbeControlRoom and SCANSat (unless they go ...).

VesselViewer - Nice in RPM, but ...

Don't be nasty about any mods or modders. Just tell me which one you think needs to go first.

[Taki117]

I would get rid of Probe Control room, NRAP, and Chatterer, mostly because you don't really need those (Especially NRAP) because you have MechJeb, so as long as you have enough dV and a high enough TWR you don't really need NRAP.

[The Destroyer]

I voted for RPM, that probably uses a bit of ram

[Wanderfound]

Docking aids: unnecessary if you're good at docking, and totally redundant if you have RPM. Docking from IVA is easy with the docking cameras.

Also:

NRAP was not updated for .25 compatability, as far as I knew...

I'd be inclined to swap in Kerbal Flight Indicators in place of NavUtilities; just put your prograde marker on the runway and cruise in.

[LABHOUSE]

ScanSat and Procedural fairings you can do both in stock, just not as well (new wings fairings, and low polar orbit screenshot)

[Malah]

I also voted for RPM, but I don't really know how much ram you will win without this (on my slower computer, I also deleted it). But I'm not imparcial, I never use the IVA

[CalculusWarrior]

I just use fuel tanks, rather than NRAP. You don't really need it.

[numerobis]

What mostly takes memory is the textures for the parts. So you can remove parts you aren't using, and save memory that way. MechJeb, for example, you can remove the parts and add the module directly into your probe cores and cockpits.

[Zylark]

What mods take the most space on disk? All assets are loaded at launch of game, and the big memory thieves are mods that contains a lot of textures and/or sounds.

Of that list of yours that narrows it down to Chatterer, SCANSat, Procedural Fairings and ProbeControlRoom. The rest is basically just some code with a GUI. Apart from RPM of course, but I find that mod so cool that it would be heresy to uninstall it. Besides, it is quite small weighing in at just a smidge over a megg. Which is nothing in the world of KSP mods.

[numerobis]

You can also remove stock parts you never use.

[Alshain]

None of those are going to make a big difference. If you want to save memory, you have to remove parts. Removing plugins is not going to save much. Proc Fairings will likely make the biggest difference of those listed, but one of the whole points of proc fairings is to reduce parts, so even that one won't be a large impact. Chatterer might also make a slight difference due to sounds, but even still not that much.

[NWDogg]

Well, question is are you crashing to desktop due to running out of memory, or are you getting really bad slowdown/crashes while flying etc... If the latter, then the best bet is remove RPM. It looks awesome, takes up very little memory space, but is quite the process hog. You'll gain some FPS by removing it, as well as some memory from Probe Control Room.

If the problem is running out of memory before the game loads, then you'll need to remove some larger part packs. As was said above, none of those mods take up much space (except maybe Chatterer, but even it isn't a lot compared to some packs.) Have you tried running in OpenGL? It works a miracle for many of us, I'd at least give that a shot before you remove anything.

[rdwulfe]

Do you use Active Texture Manager? If not, you might not even need to remove those mods. I don't see any really memory intensive mods, except maybe VesselViewer. It doesn't seem to get along well with low memory, especially when it generates a pic. It crashes me every time.

What are your system specs?

[prophet_01]

I voted proc fairings, they are pretty awesome. But without proper aerodynamics it's rather pointless for now

[velve]

Voted procedural fairings, but might I just add do you not rather want to do a bit of PC maintenance, for instance, disable anything in the process manager that you don't need to free up some RAM. I just don't see how so few mods could possibly be crashing KSP. I run with at least 3 times your list with massive parts packs and KSP is still fine.

This is assuming you do at least have 4GB RAM in your machine, if not then I understand your predicament.

[KerbMav]

Instead of deleting Chatterer completely, you might just delete some of the sound folders. I usually only use the Apollo one, the STS sounds to sedate and the russian ones to much like Mars Attacks.

If you want to save on RAM, then deleting the "little helpers" will not do much, you would have to get rid of mods with lots of parts - which is only half true if these parts (only differing in size and/or function for example) share the same textures, so you would want to delete part (packs) that have lots of big textures.

[Red Iron Crown]

Honestly, I'm surprised you're having memory issues with so few mods. I run more than that, including a couple of small parts packs, and have never had an out-of-memory crash (no ATM, Win32 KSP, 4GB RAM). Are you sure you're running out of memory? If it actually is a memory issue, I'd suspect one of the plugins being used has a memory leak.

[John FX]

Have you thought about running OpenGL, DirectX 11 or trying DDS loader?

Then you could maybe remove ATM and have the same memory footprint and better textures...

[elpollodiablo]

Have you tried OpenGL (create a shortcut and add -force-opengl to Target)?

Another thing that worked for me is deleting internals, but that might be a step too far for you.

These two things, in combination with ActiveTextureManagement and deleting redundant parts or stuff i never use, allows me to run an almost crazy amount of mods (including big parts packs, both Kethane and Karbonite, RSS, Science Packs, OKS/MKS and many moer) on my 5 year old rig with 3gb RAM.

[Random Tank]

Honestly, I'm surprised you're having memory issues with so few mods. I run more than that, including a couple of small parts packs, and have never had an out-of-memory crash (no ATM, Win32 KSP, 4GB RAM). Are you sure you're running out of memory? If it actually is a memory issue, I'd suspect one of the plugins being used has a memory leak.

Yeah, I'm thinking this too... I have 73 mods (currently) and my KSP idles on the Space Centre screen using 1950MB of RAM... You tried -force-opengl Pecan? Also, most of those mods aren't very RAM intensive, only part mods are usually...

I voted for Navball Docking Alignment Indicator, as (as said earlier) RPM has stuff like that built in, and it's not too hard to learn how to dock in stock, and when you can, you don't need that mod... But it won't change much. I wouldn't delete RPM, as if you IVA fly (which it looks like you do because you have Probe Control Room) it gets a lot harder if you do. Honestly you shouldn't need to get rid of anything, what's actually happening? Crashing on start-up, or when you revert/return to space center? Also, wasn't ATM unstable for 0.25? You tried KSP without it?

[Wanderfound]

It's not the bulk of the mods, I don't think. I've similarly got an old, battered and underspecced computer that is running lowish resolution graphics settings and a fairly modest mods list (all flight, contract and build utilities, no parts except DRE, TAC-LS, Scansat and RPM). Even if I scrub the install and redownload everything regularly, it reliably crashes after every 3 or 4 uses of quickload or revert. It doesn't like too many scene changes or big subassemblies in the construction buildings, either.

I get less crashes if I strip down the mods list, but it's never zero.

(no, not x64)

[MartGonzo]

Wouldn't recommend getting rid of chatterer, when I took that one off the universe suddenly seemed a boring and quiet place, plus it probably uses virtually no resources.

From playing experience I'd say Scansat has a huge impact while scanning equipment is active but is a really useful mod so it's down to whther you can live without it.

personally vessel viewer would be the first choice to go, cool mod but doesn't really add anything.

[John FX]

I just had a thought, I`ve had crashes due to the .TGA input code. Have you tried converting your textures to .PNG or.DDS?

[katateochi]

none of those are particularly 'heavy' mods, so I wouldn't think that your hitting the 32bit memory limits, but you might be hitting your physical memory limits because of other programs. I'd try bringing up the task manager, sort by memory usage and then kill the high mem requiring programs (browsers often being the worst culprit). On my old machine I used to really prune windows, If you're on win7 and dwm.exe is running try killing that (u have to kill it twice).

[John FX]

none of those are particularly 'heavy' mods, so I wouldn't think that your hitting the 32bit memory limits, but you might be hitting your physical memory limits because of other programs. I'd try bringing up the task manager, sort by memory usage and then kill the high mem requiring programs (browsers often being the worst culprit). On my old machine I used to really prune windows, If you're on win7 and dwm.exe is running try killing that (u have to kill it twice).

The low amount of mods is what made me think it was the .TGA input bug causing crashes.

I would suggest doing the suggested actions in the post from katateochi and if that does not help then converting all the images in your gamedata folder to .png might do the trick (then you can keep all your mods)

Just remember to back up first and delete the old image files from the converted folder