What are the best System Shock 2 mods?

[6800f195a5362Greb]

I have recently finished System Shock 2 and I want to start modding it.

[6800f195a54dcOName]

These are the mods I personally use.

[6800f195a56d1voodoo47]

toothbrush hybrid! but seriously, SCP + Fixed Objects + SHTUP would be a good (conservative) start. few others as well, maybe.

and generally, if the number of loaded mods starts to go over 20, then maybe you should consider slowing down for just a bit.

[6800f195a5810OName]

In other games, that's a problem. For SS2, I find that mod sizes are very sensible, even for graphics mods. In other games I mod they usually take several hundred megabytes minimum, usually multiple gigabytes.

[6800f195a6f24sarge945]

In other games, that's a problem. For SS2, I find that mod sizes are very sensible, even for graphics mods. In other games I mod they usually take several hundred megabytes minimum, usually multiple gigabytes.

It's not the file size, it's the fact that they get incompatibilities and eventually you start getting bad things happening.

toothbrush hybrid! but seriously, SCP + Fixed Objects + SHTUP would be a good (conservative) start. few others as well, maybe.

This is a good list, sans Rebirth since it's not exactly authentic.

I generally recommend the following gameplay mods:

If you're looking for a brutally hard experience to test yourself, and a lot of extra feature bloat, a lot of which is good, some of which is very bad, check out Secmod. If you're looking to try the game mostly vanilla, but want to try out a different build or just generally have the same sort of experience as vanilla, but better, then I recommend SCP, as well as RSD (beta 12 hotfix version), the latter especially if you plan on playing an unusual build like Exotic, since most of the niche gameplay elements and builds (like Exotic) are terrible in vanilla, and the mod aims to balance them while (conservatively) adding new features (weapon and armour modifications, etc). Add-on Repairman, Scary Monsters and a few other mods and you're fine at that point.

[6800f195a73f9RocketMan]

Personal opinion but I find the basic recommended list severely lacking (but necessary).  There are a ton of mods that don't transform SS2 into a different game but simply make it better, that very few people use, either because of fear of causing a problem, which is legit, or because they don't know about them or how to deal with all of them.  It would probably be a good idea to create a list of every single mod on this web domain in the correct order so that there's no way anybody could screw it up in the mod manager.

[6800f195a753avoodoo47]

making the mod order not matter is one of the top priorities - right now, as long as you keep SCP at the bottom, followed by Fixed Objects and SHTUP, you should be good no matter what priority is assigned to the rest.

but we perhaps could give more mod recommendations in the main topic.

[6800f195a7692RocketMan]

I wasn't suggesting that the sorting algorithm is in any way flawed.  The issue to me is, say I want the tacticool wrench and not the one I made.  I would have to put Tacticool at a higher priority so it overrides my wrench.  This is relevant for mods with overlapping assets but it happens once in a while.

[6800f195a79a9ZylonBane]

These are the mods I personally use.

He asked what are the best mods, not what are all the mods.

[6800f195a7b2dRocketMan]

He has 43.  I actually beat him at 44. 

There is probably a shorter list of "best mods" but to be fair there are a great deal of good ones.  SS2 being such a complex game, with numerous things to upgrade (graphics, sound, weapons, AI models, gameplay mechanics, interface, etc) having dozens of really good mods at once isn't remote.

[6800f195a7e09OName]

ZylonBane
These are not all of the mods there are. I just personally found basically all of the mods made for SS2 and posted on this website to be very agreeable. Some I definitely do not. Like a mod for a dynamic Earth sky. You have to go out of your way to see a fraction of that sky in one map at the very beginning of the game. That, in my opinion, is just bloat.

[6800f195a804esarge945]

I tend to focus exclusively on gameplay mods. The only opinion I give on graphics mods are DON'T USE REBIRTH. Graphics mods don't really matter that much and aren't likely to screw up your game, and it's much easier to just browse a few threads, look at some screenshots and go "yeah, I like that", download and install it.

Gameplay mods are much more difficult to really understand the implications of. Even if they provide a list of every change they make to the game, often times things will seem bizarre or strange until you actually PLAY it, then you see how the mechanics interact.

I mean, if I had to describe Secmod to someone, I wouldn't be able to. My only answer would be "you'd have to play it yourself".

When recommending gameplay mods, I usually recommend 5-6 good ones, and try to go in-depth on what makes them good or what they fix.

What mods you use after that (whether it's fixes or graphics mods) doesn't really matter much.

[6800f195a8266icemann]

SCP, SHTUP and repairman mods are my favs