A New Idea

[BNSF1995]

This is an idea I'm putting into effect today.

Rather than try to fit all of my addons into one GameData folder, I came up with something: divide them amongst two KSP installations!

One installation is for Kerbal spacecraft, while the other is for replicating real-life spaceflight.

Does this sound like a good idea?

[Pecan]

There is no reason not to have as many installs of KSP as you wish. From other similar threads recently I think a lot of us have three or more.

You can, of course, have as many saves within those installs as you want as well, but they share the mods in Gamedata.

There are mods that will activate/deactivate mods on a save-basis, within a single install, if you prefer to do it that way.

[worir4]

This sounds good. It should lower your load times, RAM usage and leave your assembly building's parts catalogue less cluttered. But make sure you have enough hard drive space.

(WOOP 400th post!)

Edited December 10, 2014 by worir4

[*Aqua*]

Today's computers easily have at least several hundred gigabytes of drive space. That's not a concern anymore.

[theJesuit]

I have been considering this myself, especially in exploring the use of mods being added in half way through a career save! Yet, as an aside, does the KSP EULA allow for 'legal' additional copies even if they are on the same computer?

[annallia]

I have 3 installs myself.

One for stock (rarely used but I keep it anyway...) One for what I consider "essential" mods (KAS, Procedural fairings, RealChute, Chatterer, and new addition being Kerbal Flight Data) and one for experiments.. This is where I put goofy things like BD Armory to play with or test out mods I havent tried yet.

[cantab]

1. GRANT OF LICENSE.

The SOFTWARE PRODUCT is licensed as follows:

(a) Installation and Use.

Electro Chango S.A. de C.V. grants you the right to install and use copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT on your computer running a validly licensed copy of the operating system for which the SOFTWARE PRODUCT was designed [e.g., Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Mac OSX].

Emphasis mine. IANAL but I'd read that as meaning multiple copies are fine.

.90 may have a new EULA though.

[prophet_01]

Yep, it's a good to have. I've been doing that since I started to use more than just 2 or 3 mods. Especially if you want to play in a more simulation orientated way that helps. If you plan to use RSS for that you basically don't have much of a choice

[Red Iron Crown]

Yet, as an aside, does the KSP EULA allow for 'legal' additional copies even if they are on the same computer?

KSP doesn't seem to have a EULA as far as I know, just a legal disclaimer absolving Squad of responsibility if KSP borks your computer. It is licensed as "All Rights Reserved".

That said, I think you're fine if you run multiple installs on multiple computers, as long as they are for one user. Installing it on your friend's PC for them to share your license is not fair use, though letting them play your copy on your PC to show off the game should be fine (and encouraged!). I think of my KSP license as a "seat", only one user at a time.

Multiple installs are incredibly useful for different mod configurations and bug testing. I keep three going for the current version (Pure Stock, Lightly Modded, Let's Use All the RAM).

Edit: Turns out I'm wrong, EULA can be read here: https://kerbalspaceprogram.com/eula.php Looks like it's just distribution to third parties which is forbidden.

Edited December 10, 2014 by Red Iron Crown
More info.

[John FX]

I have loads of copies. One is RSS, one is just to design craft with lots of `craft building mods` but not much to make the game pretty so I can build what I like without using all my RAM, I have another for just my career game with lots of pretty mods and so on.

Sometimes I am running two copies of KSP on my single machine at the same time with the craft being autosynced between installs every few minutes.

[kerbiloid]

This idea makes sense if you use many mods at once  to save RAM which is a critical point of KSP.

For example:

common+military mods  in one KSP instance,

common+colonization mods  in another one,

common+Vertical Propulsion Emporium+Bargain Rockets  in the third folder.

[Rakaydos]

Is there a way to get multiple installs to all show up in steam? Any way to signify which instal is which, too?