Best, most must-try mod?

Distant Stars--for all the categories you specified.  Curse their scheming evil genius!  But there are other mods that are as good if you accept trade-offs in stability.

Where the heck did you get this idea from? While some good mods are still in beta and warn you on the page about stability issues, most of the real popular ones don't have performance issues.

It really depends on what you want in a mod (new races, balance changes, planets etc), but here are some good ones.

Requiem (Entrenchment/Diplomacy)

Maelstrom (Original/Entrenchment/Diplomacy)

Distant Stars (Entrenchment/Diplomacy)

mods are like women... what is good for me can be ugly/wrong/bad for you... so, for mods, , like with women, try until you found the right one for you... and once you have find the right one, make everything who is possible to support it ( become a playtester, promote it, offer your service if you have any talent like 2D, 3D, coding, voices, translation, etc )...

Gee...I'm not saying all other mods are bugged.  I'm saying when you ask for tons of stuff, stability and performance I see DS as pretty ahead.

There are aspects of several mods I like better than others but I have had a lot of issues with minidumps, bugged items/constructions/abilities, etc.

All the good mods have things in them you wish others had--just no way to cram it all in.  It also depends if its just Sins or Entrenchment or Diplomacy.

I haven't played Reqiuem so apologies there.  Maelstrom I love.  I also like Stars and several others as well.

I haven't played the themed mods that derive from movies, etc.--like B5 and StarWars.  Just a preference though--they look great.

And I misspoke on "stability"--by that I mean not just that they "work" but that they aren't so loaded with stuff and the like that the game is slowed, etc.

My three favorite by far are:

SOA 2 - Trek

SOGE- Star Wars

Requiem- Star Wars w/ the 3 vanilla races still in.

Installed Distant Stars, I like a lot of it, but the added levels of linear improvements are a bit much, especially in the early stages. Still, it makes unlucky starts with few planets/labs militarily more viable, even though it doesn't help with colonization, which is what it should be doing.

After you play each mod you think, "I like this part but..." and then the next one and the same and so it goes.  Eventually you think, "I must create my own!"...and then the insanity begins.

Or worse. You end up joining the mod team. Like me. :p

Insanity I tell you--and it's all your fault.

I'm not insane yet!

Course I'm just a contributor, for now.....

lol you mean like Dawn of victory or The last stand. Sins 2 will be out before they are done and then end up gathering dust, unreleased. Or getting updated to Sins 2.

I dont understand how they can win 'mod of the year' without being released. Its like saying Iceage 4 wins best picture award but its not even started production yet.

Obviously you haven't seen my movie that I haven't made yet or you would know better.

Ours: 7 Deadly Sins, one of the oldest, one of the best.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/306277

Check vids for 7DS

I heard Sins of the Prophets was a pretty sick mod from a friend.

Who?

CanadaMan778?

REQUIEM is what i`d say is the best mod out there.

It`s the most furnished and updated of the mods i`ve seen.

Tell us  (briefly) why you like the mods--might help. 

I love the custom-designed intricacies of things Distant Stars has worked out.  Beware their pirate raids!

7Deady Sins is a hoot and breaks all the limits but really loaded to the gills so its not always smooth.  Has some of the most monstrously heavy ships ever made for a mod.

Maelstrom is awesome.  I love the continual production of plus-sized capitals and when those custom capitals are destroyed they do things like stall and fall down in  a dive before detonating--very cool. Well balanced and a whole different feel.

Nova's mod Novus Universum is really intersecting as well and worth going through but its tough in cpu usage too.  It features moons.

Zombie Rus and MyFist0 are working on  mods primarily with improved planet graphics and loading and will be great to see.

Celestial Bodies is a great way to see new planets and stars but still play the core game.

Multiple Stars Graphic Mod (MSMG) is essential if you are making large maps (or playing them) and need to zoom out a lot to view widely separated planets in a large galaxy.   It removes the galaxy clouds around zoomed out stars.

Stars looks to be a very interesting mod but I have had an issue getting it to run since 1.2 came out.  I keep getting "Distant Stars" instead of Stars whenever I try to load it.

 I'd like to hear what specifically makes a particular mod fun if you've played it.

I get the feeling you haven't tried my released mod

I'd be curious too.

You should try out SoGE if you like monstrously heavy ships, we got ourselves Executors and superlasers.

Just a note, if I am correct, this is primarily due to the Huge, Titan, and Super planets, along with the clouds and storms. wbino noted NU's higher resource usage versus Sins Plus, so I put up something which will test my theory. If it is true and I'm correct, then I have a very easy "fix" for this already done. I'll refine this later on of course if it works; and post it here for those who'd wish to use it.

Lol--I can't play all of them at once.

I'm learning abilities right now so I started with the ones with weird stuff.  I'm getting to yours.  Which one is actually finished? (me confused).

That would be really cool Lavo.

Sins of the Fallen with the Nephilim and Plague races is the released mod. Though I'm trying to learn and continually making improvements to it.

same here lol