Best mods to download for kerbal space program 2019

And the first thing most of us are going to want to do is share our progress with friends. It simply allows you to create blueprint-like diagrams of your ship, which can easily be shared with anyone. The task of building a ship that actually works in Kerbal Space Program can get be quite daunting with its technicality, science jargon, and depth.

This can easily become a turn-off for newer players as not everyone wants to figure out how rocket science works, very much like the saying goes. Lucky for us, there are tons of quality of life mods that improve current game mechanics. And sometimes they even introduce new ones, to make certain things easier to get done. First off we have Transfer Window Planner, a plugin that gives you visual representations of planetary transfer efficiencies before even attempting a launch.

That in itself can be quite difficult to understand. So to put it plainly: Transfer Window Planner allows you to input a desired destination, and it will automatically calculate relevant information to help you plan your mission. Kerbal Alarm Clock helps you do that, by giving you notifications for when a maneuver must be initiated for any particular ship. Selecting parts for your ship is the first piece of the puzzle, and KER gives you the important information needed to make better decisions.

Delta-v readings are made available per build stage, along with the ideal thrust-to-weight ratio depending on your selected destination.

This is where Trajectories comes in, allowing you to better plan where on the planet your ship will land. This will produce high-definition maps so you can pinpoint safe landing zones and interesting areas that may be studied. You know, for science. The Docking Port Alignment Indicator makes it much easier, giving you a simple UI that tells you whether your ship is aligned or not. It completely takes away the task of actually piloting your ship, so if you enjoy planning and building but not so much the actual flying part, this is the mod for you.

As you can guess, Hangar Extender Extended basically allows you to build outside of the allotted Vehicle Assembly Building. There are still limits when it comes to ship size. But this is pretty much the equivalent of free build for KSP. Modular Rocket Systems is another great pack to have for builders, as it provides additional parts in your inventory that allow you to fill in those smaller gaps. For those unfamiliar, fairings are found towards the upper tip of your ship.

They protect it from pressure and heating. Not only that, once a part is resized, it tells you how much fuel is contained within that part of the ship. On top of that is one of the most important pieces of the mod — how it affects engines in particular.

There are also tons of mods out there that expand on the current parts inventory offered by the base game, giving you loads of new choices when it comes to building. Fuel Tanks Plus adds multiple choices for tanks that are 1. The tanks are also available in different styles, so you have aesthetic options to choose from as well. KRE, or the Kerbal Reusability Expansion mod takes an interesting approach to address this by providing SpaceX-style parts that let you build reusable rockets.

It was actually originally supposed to be included in KAS, but was made separate because of all the new features it adds. KIS introduces a new gameplay mechanic where you can actually take parts from your inventory and send them off into space. Whether you forgot to bring an important part of the space station with you, or would like to create a rover on Duna from scratch, KIS can help you do that! As you explore the further reaches of space, improving research and unlocking new technologies becomes increasingly important.

It can be costly and time-consuming to complete science contracts. Instead of having to build costly ships to run science missions, you can instead send balloons specifically designed for scientific data gathering.

Kerbal Planetary Base Systems is a parts pack that adds tons of items for building habitats, greenhouses, laboratories, and more on different planets. The vanilla game includes a lot of options for building space stations. Another great feature is that parts included are stock-alike, which means they will be compatible with most stock parts in the game.

A large chunk of the Kerbal Space Program community has found interesting ways to have fun with the building aspect of the game. Given the options in the base game along with a few mods than add a variety of parts as well as expand on the building capabilities, users have come up with some of the most exciting content out there.

Starting off with Airplane Plus, a mod that actually adds airplane parts to your build inventory. If building planes and choppers is something that interests you, this mod is a good place to start. The mod adds a new fuselage that is also based on parts made by Porkjet, who is probably the most popular name when it comes to KSP modding. The Maritime Pack adds parts that let you build anything from large ships to submarines and everything inbetween.

You can build yachts for your Kerbals to cruise around in, or even aircraft carriers to house your airplanes. It seems that by now withal these crazy mods, we can get pretty far off from Kerbal Space Program was intended to be. BDArmory actually allows you to add weapon parts to your vehicles, making it possible to recreate military vehicles like tanks and battleships.

The Steam Workshop for KSP has become the go-to hub for these, housing mostly original creations and replicas of popular ships and vehicles. That brings us to our next mod here: a completely working replica of the Millennium Falcon from the Star Wars series. What you do with it is up to you really, I just thought it was a pretty cool concept having a tank in KSP.

Well how about we give your Kerbals a shiny new sports car for them to race around the tarmac in? There are currently three styles with varying sizes, all based on German half-timbered designs.

The houses use solar power and battery banks to run, and will be completely self-sufficient on Kerbin. Free IVA is an interesting mod that might actually make the game even more immersive than improved graphics and sounds. It allows you to get up from your seat during IVA and actually explore the ship in first-person perspective. Realism is a part of it. Depending on what contracts you take, you might be sending routine flights up and down around the same parts of space for a while. This mod adds a ton of new experiments for your vehicles, including a soil moisture sensor and an x-ray diffraction analyzer.

Get back to work! These days, all the exciting space stuff is happening at SpaceY, the privately held Kerbal space agency that bears no resemblance to privately managed space agencies here on Earth. All of your favorite SpaceY heavy lifter parts are ready to download and head to space. Get it: GitHub. Unlike most one-off mods, the rocket scientists behind Umbra Space Industries have established a cottage industry of mod packs. Keep farming those science points!

The Near Future series of parts packs takes a more patient approach by bringing near-future sci-fi to KSP. KSP asks you to be a lot of things at once: administrator, engineer, pilot, scientist, micromanager.

These mods automate some of these tasks, freeing you up to focus on other things. I once built an entire Mun base using modular pieces designed to fit a mini-rover with a docking port. The mini-rover could drive under the modules, lift them off their struts, and drive them over to their final destination.

It was a horrific pain in the ass. Drag a wire from a solar panel array over to your habitat to produce power, or pull a fuel line from your storage tanks to your rover to refuel. It gives you a ton of extra flight data so you can see all the information you need to fly perfect missions by hand.

Allowing a computer autopilot to take over your piloting tasks is ideal for anyone with a solid flight plan and great engineering skills, but without the rock-steady hands it takes to carefully touch 80 tons of steel onto alien soil.

MechJeb can do it all, from extra-planetary insertion burns to docking maneuvers. Good luck. In those dark days, Kerbal Alarm Clock was born. Even though KSP has made it easier to hit your windows, the alarm clock is still essential. Set alarms for certain parts of your orbit, for other crafts passing nearby, for crossing orbits, and others.

Its biggest failure, to my mind, is docking guidance. Trying to line up a three-dimensional maneuver with a one-dimensional target?

Docking Port Alignment adds a pop-up window with four crosshairs. Point at the target, rotate into alignment, face perpendicular to the target, and get moving gently toward it, all with the same window. I went from docking in a couple of minutes to under thirty seconds when I started using this mod. Of all the mods on this list, this one feels the most like cheating. For Science! Simply taking a thermometer into the ocean will automatically record that reading and store it in the command module.

Arming a plane with a few experiments and flying it across Kerbin will bring in a steady stream of new science points.

For others, the only thing better than docking is docking with a friend. Vanilla KSP was supposed to one day support multiplayer , and the idea took off with the community. There are a few solid options available. Install Houston , a UI upgrade that plugs into Telemachus to make it a little prettier.

Telemachus is complicated and I am but a simple moron, but the basic gist is this: Telemachus pulls flight data out of KSP and puts it into a web browser. Using magic, presumably. Why is that cool? Well, you can use it for a bunch of things. You can gather up tablets and old laptops and assemble yourself a mission control. You can send that browser link to a friend and share real-time data as you fly.

One player plays as the pilot in cockpit view, and mission control works to tell her when to burn, how long, and where. Get it: Dark Multiplayer site. By combining a lot of server options with more-stable-than-not netcode, Dark Multiplayer allows you to hook up with a friend, rendezvous in orbit, and start constructing that orbital science station.