It’s quicker to add one mod at a time and test that everything seems to be OK before adding the next than it is to add dozens of mods and have to guess at what broke or what’s incompatible. This can be very tedious, but it’s worth it. The latter updates with Steam (and I can always jump in and play up-to-date vanilla, if I feel like it), and the former stays constant save for my own tinkering. So I have two installations of KSP: /_Kerbal Space Program_working “_Kerbal Space Program_working” (prepending the underscore ensures it appears at the top of the folder view). I just copy the default KSP directory to a second folder at the same level e.g. The last thing you want is to tweak and perfect your mod setup to have Steam auto-update your KSP installation so that a smattering of mods are no longer compatible. I almost exclusively use the KSP forum, though. Just make sure you have a good comb of the last dozen or so pages before asking for help – your efforts will be appreciated! The modders are generally happy to respond to sensible bug requests or help work out incompatibilities. The modders are overwhelmingly helpful and they’ll give information about any special installation procedures, known incompatibilities, recommended mods to go with theirs etc. Mods generally have a dedicated thread on the Kerbal Space Program forum. If you’re installing manually, you need to go and look for the file(s) yourself. You don’t need to think about where to get them. If you’re used to using CKAN, all the mods are ready and waiting in a neat list.
If you install through Steam onto your C-drive on Windows (arguably the most common setup), your full path would be: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\GameData\ModName Where to find mods to install manually KSP then does the hard work in actually making sense of what’s in that folder. So you’ll have something like this: \GameData\ModName
zip file into your GameData folder found at the top-level of your KSP installation directory. When you download them from the links on this page (and elsewhere on the Internet), they generally come in.
I would probably recommend this method to a beginner, but if you get the modding bug, you’ll soon bump up against its limitations (some of which I allude to below). You then select the ones you want to install (it’ll give you some information about relationships, contents, versioning etc.) and install them – CKAN takes care of pulling down and installing any necessary mods alongside the ones you’ve selected, as well as recommending frequently-paired mods.īy many measures it’s a useful tool and it gets you using mods quickly. It presents you with a list of many mods (not all mods, and not necessarily the most up-to-date mods, but many of them).
To my knowledge, the most common alternative to manual installation (see the section below) is CKAN (The Comprehensive Kerbal Archive Network).
Subscribe to the blog and follow me on Twitter to get news of any incompatibilities I encounter when using KSP mods (and hopefully solutions!). These are the basics along with some of my own recommendations on the process. There are already many great modding guides available scattered about the Internet, so I’m not going to try to make an attempt at a comprehensive guide.