The never-ending hassle with Cities: Skylines mod management

[Kaschperl 92]

Hey folks!

I'm wondering if anyone is having thoughts on this topic as well. If one of you has any tips or tricks that might help me I'd be glad to hear them!

Mod management in CSL has gradually become one of the biggest drawbacks of the game to me as time has progressed. There are so many great things on the workshop that I want to use, and I don't mind waiting a few (or many) minutes for a city to load because I have tons of mods installed. The issue is solely of organizational nature. I have reached a point where I have more than 500 folders in my CSL workshop folder, and that's after a major cleanup where I got rid of almost all custom buildings... (to be honest, I didn't notice how I accumulated all that stuff over time, but that's a different story ) Many of those mods are essential to me, I could of course unsubscribe them, but now that I've gotten used them, many mods are just impossible to get rid of.

And that's where the trouble starts, even unsubscribing items (with many of them being mere props) one by one is such a torture that I don't even want to install any of the cool new stuff that pops up in the workshop browser. Once I've subscribed to a mod or asset, it's determined to remain on my PC whether I still use it or not. I have of course installed mods that are supposed to improve the UI of the Content Manager, but with so much stuff installed I don't even want to open it up. Even those extra tools can't help much.

The fact that downloaded workshop items are stored in numbered folders doesn't make things easier. I could of course move all the mod and asset folders to my local CSL appdata folder and handle them like SC4 plugins, but then items wouldn't be updated automatically, it would require me to separate assets from actual mods, and, to make managing items a humane task, rename all the folders with names that make sense.

Then there's the thing with building themes. With the building themes mod it's not a problem to create cities in different styles of course. However, having about 100 growable assets installed for a total visual overhaul, and possibly service buildings, vehicles and such on top of that, it's almost impossible to have multiple themes installed simultaneously to switch between. The usergamestate file solution might work, but, frankly, handling that amount of items from an in-game menu doesn't make sense even if I can enable and disable batches of mods using that trick.

I the last few weeks I'm also experiencing issues with mods and assets that just don't appear in-game while they are correctly displayed and enabled in the Content Manager, subscribed in the workshop, the folder exists and everything seems fine. Re-subscribing doesn't help.

A general cleanout might solve the latter, but it wouldn't improve things once I go back to using all the stuff I want to use. I'd like to add so many things to the city I'm currently working on. Building-wise, that city currently consists of just seven custom assets made by myself and three downloaded service buildings, all other buildings are vanilla. Still, the rest of the stuff is enough to create an unbearable mess in my workshop folder.

Well, sorry for the novel that you just had to read. So, does anyone have these problems as well? Or is there anyone out there who found out the ultimate way to organize their mods? I'd be happy to hear some opinions on this!

[Lee Towers 179]

I agree, but it's mostly Steam's fault. The workshop system is a mess. There is no way to sort your own subscribed items by type (mod, prop, vehicle etc.), for example. There is no "select multiple" or "unsubscribe all" button. The folder names are also based on the workshop id's, by the way.

That being said, the default in-game asset manager is a mess as well. With hundreds or even thousands of mods it is impossible to navigate. It's also incredibly slow, thankfully the "Don't Crash" mod helped tremendously with that. The recent trend of bundling building packs into one workshop item is very positive, imo. For example the Copenhagen buildings or Better plane packs.

The way I recently started organising my stuff is by creating my own collections on steam. It's a tedious process when you have 800+ items like me (though I used to have 2000+) but in the end it's much easier to keep track of and mass (un)subscribe all your favourite items. 

[OwiHH 240]

unsubscipe all button is ingame / contentmanager / steamworkshop / unsubscripe all button - allready there ;-)

good mod for modsorting and having diffent sets of mods is modlisting that let you save mod and asset-set you can save and load up for different purpose. 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=588691634&searchtext=list

 

Improved Assets Panel - has eneable diseable all buttons for different types of assets if selected - click icons on top.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=449020940&searchtext=asset

Improved Mods Panel - also helpfull

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=448687553&searchtext=asset

 

 

 

[Tim The Terrible 586]

2 hours ago, Lee Towers said:

There is no way to sort your own subscribed items by type (mod, prop, vehicle etc.), for example.

It used to be there, but they removed it about a year ago.. I was furious  

[boformer 3,169]

It is possible to create a content manager overhaul mod with all the requested features.

But who will make it?

[Avanya 2,605]

1 hour ago, Tim The Terrible said:

It used to be there, but they removed it about a year ago.. I was furious  

Yes, that was just such a stupid change! Why in the world would something think it's a good idea to remove tools to sort subscriptions?!  Not impressed with Steam at all, but I guess we'll have to live with it. Hopefully a modder/some modders or CO will come to the rescue and make the content manager useful, so we can kinda ignore the workshop mess.   

[Judazzz 1,936]

One thing to make browsing your subscriptions on the web-version of Steam a little easier is to add url parameters when viewing your subscription list. Thankfully that list uses the same parameter as the normal asset lists, so although a bit tedious, this method allows you to check your subscriptions per category in your browser.

One example:
If you want to have a list of all your subscribed Unique Buildings, do the following:

1. Open the asset list in category view: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=255710&requiredtags[]=Unique+Building;
2. Copy the last bit of that url from your browser's address bar: &requiredtags[]=Unique+Building;
3. Navigate to your subscription list, and append the copied bit to the url. It'll look like this: http://steamcommunity.com/id/{your_steam_username}/myworkshopfiles/?appid=255710&browsefilter=mysubscriptions&requiredtags[]=Unique+Building;
4. Add the additional parameter &numperpage=30 to immedeately show 30 items per page (more doesn't work, unfortunately), instead of having to click on the desired number of items per page first (for some reason Steam doesn't remember those choices - understandably, as we're talking about 90's technology here...);
5. Enjoy a filtered list of your subscriptions.

Admittedly, it's not ideal, but since Steam simply doesn't give a **** about that appalling train-wreck called Workshop (it's all about teh moniez, screw the user), and is not likely to change anything, I reckon it's better than nothing...  

[Lost Gecko 481]

I don't have any solution appart from the mods already mentioned here but I would also really appreciate to be able to manage different sets of assets/mods. 'Mods and assets list' is great but my laptop cannot handle the subscription to multiple sets and the switch between them in the menu... So I'm more or less stuck with my current european low density/rural configuration. I don't have the courage as well to sort it all out in a local folder... So I might actually create collections, that might be a good solution!

[Himloia 0]

Actually,  qwop unblocked I have no idea about  your problem

[wasmic 111]

Sooo... the problem is that it's hard to keep track of what mods are installed? Yeah, I also always run into the cap for number of assets that my RAM has space for, but sadly there's nothing to do about that other than getting some more RAM.

I personally think it's pretty easy, although it would be nice to be able to create folders in the Steam Workshop favorites and subscriptions. Nobody here can do anything about that, though (unless a Valve employee is reading this). At least it's much more convenient than modding Kerbal Space Program or Minecraft without modpacks.