MODS

By installing RP-1, you should also install all 'Required' and 'Recommended' mods from both RO and RP-1. Some of those mods might be new to you, here is a quick summary of some of them.

• Utility/Gameplay Mods
  • Real Fuels
  • Test Flight
  • Kerbal Construction Time
  • KRASH
  • Remote Tech
  • Thunder Aerospace Corporation Life Support
  • MechJeb
  • Real Chute
  • Deadly Re-Entry
  • Persistent Rotation
  • Principia
• Parts mods
  • Procedural Parts
  • Procedural Fairings / Procedural Fairings For Everything!
  • B9 Procedural wings
  • DMagic Orbital Science
  • ScanSat
  • Taerobee
• Simple yet usefull mods
  • Hangar Extender
  • Kerbal Joint Reinforcement (KJR)

Utility/Gameplay Mods:

Real fuels (RF)

In real life, oxidisers and liquid fuel come in many different types, this is also the case for solid fuels. This mod will add all those different type of fuels to KSP. Each engine have different fuel requirement to function. Right click on your tank to choose its containing fuel(s). You can also 'show UI' for micro management of these fuels. Some fuel need to be kept pressurised to allow the engine to function; by default procedural tanks are not pressurised, be sure to change that when needed. More in depth explanations on RF Here and Here

Test Flight (TF)

Engines sometime fail. And the most you've tested/used an engine, the better your engineer are at building reliable engines. Engines can not burn non-stop without failing. Each engine has specific rated burn duration, and will exponentially have more risk to fail if you pass this limit. Right click on the engine in the VAB list to view its rated burn duration, or middle click your engine already placed on your rocket. Right clicking on placed engines also allow you to upgrade them from the 'engine' menu, if you have unlocked new engine configuration, this is where you can select them. This is also valid for RCS engines!

Kerbal Construction Time (KCT)

In stock KSP, a lot of things are instant: Upgrading a building, Building a vessel, unlocking a node, moving your rocket to the launchpad. All of these take time in real life, and KCT adds this time in KSP. When starting a new game, you will be freely given a few "Build Points" (BP) that you can use to accelerate VAB crafting speed (= speed up the rocket building process) and R&D research speed (= speed up the science node unlocking time). You can also use them in the SPH, but RP-1 is not really targetting planes into its career. During your career, you will have the possibility to build new BP in exchange for 30.000$ each. These will allow you to even more speed up these processes. Each time you will click the launch button in the VAB, instead of placing your rocket on the launchpad immediately, KCT will add it to your VAB build list and your engineers will slowly craft it for you. By default this means you are unable to 'test' your design to see if it works. If you want this ability, you should install KRASH mod.

KRASH

As stated above, you need this mod if you want to test your rocket designs before actually buying them. KRASH will allow you to 'simulate' a launch and will allow you to revert to the VAB afterwards. Simulations are not free, you will pay for each simulation depending on your rocket price and the simulation time. You can even choose to simulate directly in orbit instead of starting in the launchpad, or even in orbit/ground of other planets/moons you have already previously visited.

Remote Tech (RT / RT2)

Communication with probes is not immediate. For example, delay to communicate with the Moon is about 1.2 seconds. And talking to rovers on Mars takes about 6 minutes (depending on Earth/Mars distance). Earth has very powerful antennas (Deep Space Network) to communicate with far away probes. But if no line of sight is available (because your lander is on the dark side of the Moon), no communication is possible. You should thus either find ways to communicate with your vessels when on the visible side of the Moon:

• Have some kind of autopilot (RemoteTech computer, MJ autopilot, KOS or KRPC scripts) to control your craft
• Or have communication satellites to relay the communication between Earth and the probe. For long distance, on or around any other planet, even if you have a working connection, delays will be of several minutes to a few hours! Making it almost impossible to land (or execute nodes precisely) a craft manually and should have some kind of automated procedure (again: RemoteTech computer, MJ autopilot, KOS or KRPC scripts)

Thunder Aerospace Corporation Life Support (TAC-LS)

Kerbals need Food, Water and Oxygen to stay alive, as simply as that. You can place these elements in Service Module tanks. A simple UI will tell you how long those will last for the number of Kerbals you have on your ship. If at least one of these resources is missing, after a few minutes/hours, your Kerbal will die. Note that on the launchpad, no resources are being consumed. In Stock version of TAC-LS, they also need electricity (EC) to survive. This is not the case in RP-1. Though pods themself will require some EC to function.

MechJeb (MJ)

Will provide:

• Various HUD readouts (like Kerbal Engineer Redux does: DeltaV, Apoapsis, Periapsis, Biome, and tons more). All screens are highly customisable, and you probably will need to learn to customise them to your own likings. Default windows are quite useful by default.
• Autopilot: Ascent Guidance (from launchpad to space/orbit), node execution, attitude autopilot,...
• Various tools: node editor, automatic node creation for Interplanetary Transfer porkshop (like Transfer Window Planner does in Stock KSP. Do not use TWP in RSS!), also for Hohman transfers (to the Moon or Rendez-Vous)
• and tons of other useful tools

Real rockets are not controlled by the pilot with a joystick, autopilots take care of that better than any human can. It is not cheating to use an autopilot. But you are of course still 100% allowed to control your craft manually. You can play RSS/RO/RP0 without this mod, but is often useful at the very least to help you see how to correctly ascent to space. Other mods also allow you to code your own autopilots if you so desire: KOS and KRPC. They can be used for even simple task: for example a basic Mars Lander script: jettison heat-shield when speed < 700m/s, open parachute at 2000m altitude, deploy landing legs at 50m, then deploy solar panels/antennae 60s later.

Real Chute

Allows you to precisely configure your parachute. Place them on your vessel, go in the Action Group tab and left-click on your parachute. This will bring a new menu to configure your chutes. Among other option: change the visible size of the part, change chute fabric type (Nylon, Kevlar), change the automatic deployment of the chute at a chosen altitude, choose desired touchdown speed,... Don't forget to APPLY changes before exiting this menu, or your changes will be lost.

Deadly Re-Entry

Quite explicit mod name. Re-Entries should be thought of, if you force your ship to dig into Earth thick atmosphere to fast, your vessel will overheat, burn then explode. Returning from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) usually can be done by targetting a 50/70km high Periapsis. 55-60km Periapsis from Moon orbit is about right. Note that heat-shields rated for LEO re-entry will not be sufficient when returning from the Moon; Moon rated heat-shield can sustain that level of heat. Parts and Kerbals also have a max G-force limit, if G-force are too high, parts will explode and Kerbals will faint then die if they are not lowered.

Persistent Rotation (PR)

We all know the dirty trick/cheat in stock KSP when your vessel is spinning all around: time warp will stop the rotation! PR solves this, even during warp, you vessel will keep its momentum and keep on spinning.

Principia

KSP is built around "patch conics", this means in KSP that only 1 planet/moon is applying force to your ship at a time. Principia introduces the "n-body physics": even in low Earth orbit, the moon will have a pull on you and will slowly have an impact on your current orbit. Actually, all planets/moons will permanently have a pull on you. But it does not only affect how your ships orbit will change, all planets/moons attract each-other and are not of fixed on invisible rails any more. There own orbits will slowly change shape and change plane. If you are new to RSS/RO/RP-1, you might think twice before installing this mod. But do look into it a bit, it is a very nice work done with this mod and is one step closer to turning KSP into a simulation.

Parts mods:

Procedural Parts

KSP has limited parts, mainly because they have fix sizes. This mods adds parts (Tanks, Decoupler, Batteries, Nose Cones) that you can edit to change their size/weight/shape. This is a VERY recommended mod

Procedural Fairings and Procedural Fairings For Everything!

Allows you to create interstage and nose fairings exactly how you want. They can auto-adapt procedurally to your ship or can be manually set to the size/shape you desire. VERY recommended.

B9 Procedural wings

Great mod that allows you to... Make procedural wings that you can edit size and shape as you desire. Especially recommended for anyone wanting to build planes / shuttles.

DMagic Orbital Science

Adds beautiful new science experiments. Required if you want to unlock sufficient science points...

ScanSat

Adds the possibility to scan full planets/moons by placing different scanners on a satellite on low polar orbits. Once finished, you can send the data back home for some science points. Gradually shows those scans an a UI screen as your craft passes over your planet. Takes time to complete as your sat moves above the planet, unlike the stock ore scanning tools that are almost immediate. Adds realism and allows you to get altimetry maps (low & high resolution) a biome map and a slope map. Can also help to find good future landing locations.

Taerobee

Small part pack mainly useful for the early sounding rockets. A lot of other part mods exist and are usable in RSS/RO/RP-1, above mods are the most recommended ones to start with.

Simple yet useful mods:

Hangar extender

Simple button to hide/show the VAB building while you are building crafts. This allows you to build with no height/width limit. Rockets in RSS can get bigger than the VAB.

Kerbal Joint Reinforcement (KJR)

Required. Stock KSP joints between parts are week. This mod will strengthen them so your rockets wont bend like a cooked spaghetti. Struts are normally not needed with this mod installed. No UI or any action is needed for this mod, it fully runs in the background without you noticing it.