Deprecated "Extra mods"

This is the deprecated list of extra mods. It's an archive of RO Instructions Past.

If no link is provided for a mod, it is available via CKAN. Remember, when setting up a new install, only add non-CKAN mods after you've installed all CKAN mods. If there's a link, use it; either it's not on CKAN, or CKAN will give you the wrong version.

This guide skips all mods that are installed by default when you install RO/RP-1. If you have not installed RO/RP-1 using that guide, please do so first before returning here.

NOTE: Unless otherwise mentioned, install all mods through CKAN. This will ensure you have the most up-to-date version possible, and that all dependencies are correctly installed.

NOTE: If you don't know how to install non-CKAN mods, read the simple guide!

Table of Contents

1. Principia

2. Major Gameplay Additions

3. Pretty Graphics & Sound Mods

4. Other High-Quality Parts Mods

• Rocket Parts
• Misc Parts

5. Quality-of-Life Mods

6. The Blacklist: Mods to Avoid

Note: this mod list is intended as a menu, not a bucket list. While installing the mods from sections 1, 2, and 3 is highly recommended, trying to install everything at the same time will likely cause a mess.

§1: Principia

• Principia, Requires Manual Install, check the README - Replaces stock's patched conics approximation of celestial gravitation with a much more substantial n-body model, enabling Lagrange points, sun-synchronous orbits, and perturbation due to mascons.

  • Reading the Principia wiki (linked in the sidebar) is highly recommended.
  • Because Principia is written in C++, not in C#, you can't install it like other GitHub mods. Click the link, scroll down to the readme, and follow the download instructions.

§2: Major Gameplay Additions

• kOS - A scripting utility for your rockets. Extremely powerful and very useful. Has extensive documentation (linked in the sidebar) and a very helpful Discord server.
• Headlines - Introduce reputation management, elements of storytelling and crew careers. It adds a significant increase in gameplay complexity.

§3: Pretty Graphics & Sound Mods

• Conformal Decals - shader-applied decals that conform to whatever part's surface they are placed on. Highly recommended, though it has some (avoidable) known issues around text (get your text looking the way you want it before applying it in symmetry).
• Oinker's Skybox - Makes the sky dark and the stars pretty. Requires TextureReplacer (not TextureReplacerReplaced!).
• Audio Muffler, from master branch - Makes audio fade out as you enter vacuum. Can be very CPU-intensive.
• Docking Port Sound FX - Adds sound effects to docking. Check the thread for alternative sounds.
• Real Chatterer, Requires Manual Install - from the forums - Replaces kerbal gibberish normally played from the Chatterer mod with recordings from real astronauts during their historical missions. Requires Chatterer by Athlonic, which should be installed through CKAN.
• Soundtrack Editor Requires Manual Install - from the forums - Allows you to add and remove music from the game, and set up playlists which decide when each song plays.
  • RedStapler's music pack + playlist has a large variety of thematically appropriate tunes and ambient sounds ready to go. Be sure to read and follow the installation instructions. Use the latest version of SpaceTux Libraries (dependancy), the 1.8.x version is compatible with 1.7.3.

§4: Other High-Quality Parts Mods

Rocket Parts

• Bluedog Design Bureau - High quality stockalike American rockets, probes, space stations, and more. Unfortunately, due to its size it is very hard on game performance, and only a small fraction of it's parts function properly with RP-1.
• Near Future Launch Vehicles - Adds a few high-quality engine models and streamlined RCS pods.
• Near Future Propulsion - Adds various ion, hall-effect, PIT, MPD and VASIMR engines.
• Photon Corp. - Adds Space Shuttle Reusable Solid Rocket Motors.
• Real Scale Boosters - Replica versions of Saturn to modern era of real world rockets. Well done and features many rockets from US and India as well.
• Raidernick's Mods (US/Soviet Solar Panels, Soviet Probes, US Probes, etc.) - RN has a LOT of mods that are faithful replicas of real world parts. However, RaiderNick has stated that he does not offer support when his parts are used in career mode. Install with caution alongside RP-1. Note that installing RN SovietSpacecraft mod is currently the only way to obtain Soyuz/Zond/LOK/LK.

Misc Parts

• Coatl Areospace, aka ProbesPlus! - Adds a modest number of useful small parts suited for probes and unmanned landers.
• Hullcam - Allows you to lock the view to a camera mounted on your rocket for Saturn V and SpaceX style shots.
• InternalRCS - A pack that adds a number of small configurable RCS parts that mount flush with your rocket's body ala the Space Shuttle's orbital maneuvering system.
• Near Future Construction - Adds various constellation-inspired large structural parts for large ships or space stations.
• Near Future Electrical Requires Manual Install - Adds nuclear reactors. Must be installed manually (for the moment), due to conflicts with Dynamic Battery Storage.
• Near Future Exploration - Adds antennas and other probe parts, including some extremely large folding antennas.
• Near Future Solar - Adds large solar panels, although it is largely made redundant by ROSolar.
• SCANsat - Adds radar, optical, multispectral, and other observation equipment to make orbital maps of planets. However, it also consumes an extremely large amount of memory, particularly the visual maps. They should be disabled, by setting VisibleMapsActive = False in Gamedata/SCANsat/PluginData/settings.cfg
• Shuttle Orbiter Construction Kit Requires Manual Install - A high quality (but stockalike) Space Shuttle mod from benjee10
• Space Shuttle System Requires Manual Install - A high quality, photorealistic Space Shuttle Mod from DECQ. Outdated, but still works fine on KSP 1.12.3

§5: Quality-of-Life Mods

• BetterBurnTime - adds a nice pack of additional functions such as: time to closest approach of the targeted ship, maneuver burn time (especially useful for low TWR stages and which have some fuel leftover), time until you hit the atmosphere of a planet, rough estimate until impact for vacuum bodies, the difference between Geostationary orbit and yours and some other.

• Editor Extensions Redux - Gives more symmetry options, finer part angle control, and other VAB/SPH quality of life features.

• Historian - Adds an informative and RO-integrated HUD/infobar to your screenshots. Highly configurable.

• HyperEdit - Same as stock, good for testing, debugging, and saving yourself from the occasional Kraken attack.

• Janitors Closet - RO and RP-1 have a LOT of parts when you have the parts mods. Use this to clean up your VAB and SPH to make building your crafts easier. Use Alt+click to hide specific parts, such as hiding all propeller engines in the VAB.

• Kerbal Alarm Clock - Integrates with KCT and several RP-1 features to stop warp on alarms. Almost required for deep-space missions.

• Kerbal Engineer Redux - Get all of the important readouts on your vessel. dV calculations are not as trustworthy as MechJeb, but KER adds a number of useful overlays to the VAB.

• Kronal Vessel Viewer - Generates crisp orthorhombic projected images of your rockets. You might have to fiddle with your DirectX settings to get it working right.

• NavHud - Full-screen navball overlay. Helps a lot with lining up planes for a runway landing and also has alignment indicator for docking.

• Precise Node - Adds a UI when you place a maneuver node allowing for a more precise node settings up to 1 hundredth. KSP has it's own similar thing, but you may like this one more.

• Project Manager - Automatically numbers your missions and renames vessels to match. (Note: this breaks MechJeb's per-Vessel settings)

• Semi-Saturable Reaction Wheels - Makes reaction wheels behave slightly more realistically by allowing them to become saturated if they are used too much in one axis.

• Texture Replacer - Allows kerbal skin and suit textures to be changed, and is also required for the custom skybox textures listed above.

• WASD Editor Camera - A very different way to move around in the VAB and SPH, but can make crafting large and complex crafts much easier.

• Waypoint Manager - Display waypoints in flight and create custom waypoints.

• Werner Checklist Continued - adds a checklist to the VAB that detects if certain parts are on your vessel and also adds a pre-flight checklist that you can access while on the pad and in flight. It helps you remember to add certain parts to your vessel such as solar panels, RCS, parachutes, and other parts before you launch and having to revert or scrub a launch. The RP1 config can check for example, if you have enough payload on your spacecraft for the contract you're aiming to do. The RP1 config is configured to work with RA,RT, and ROKerbalism. Download the mod through CKAN or from the forum page and install the RP1 config from the release or master branch from here.

  Note: Don't install Precise Node and Principia together. Principia completely replaces the function of this mod.

§6: The Blacklist: Mods to Avoid

The following is a list of mods, which, despite being commonly recommended for use with RSS/RO/RP-1 (even by CKAN), you may not want to install after all.

• RSSRunwayFix - A fantastic mod, but no need to install it any more! Now it's baked into RSS.
• SCANsat - The SCANsat "visual mapping" feature added in v20.x consumes an extreme amount of memory when used with RSS (Often in excess of 32 GB). If you are using SCANsat, you should disable visual maps by going to the Gamedata/SCANsat/PluginData/Settings.cfg and setting VisibleMapsActive to false.
• SSTU - Under no circumstances should you consider using SSTU. It simply doesn't work nor will it ever with RP-1. ROTanks provides some of the functionality you're looking for.
• Stage Recovery - Throws off early-game balance, spams your log, adds lag. Don't use it.
• Textures Unlimited Recolor Depot (TURD) - Basically useless in RP-1, as you will use mostly Ven's or SXT parts, which this mod doesn't touch. Completely useless if you are using ReStock. Not a hard blacklisting, but generally not worth the extra load times.
• KRASH - simulations are now handled by RP-1
• Kerbal Engineer Redux - Some bugs with the RCS calculations in KER cause it to occasionally trigger crashes. It also slightly misreports delta-V, due to not properly accounting for some RealFuels features.