What is Color Coded Canisters? Quite simply, it is a texture/model pack that replaces the appearance of the stock LFO fuel tanks, using Module Manager (required). It updates the appearance of the tanks to look a little cleaner, while paying homage to the originals, and also giving each diameter its own color for the tank interior, which makes them easier to identify in the VAB/SPH menus.
By using ModuleManager to apply the changes, the mod is a non-permanent add-on, which means you can uninstall, reinstall, and update at your convenience, and it will not interfere with KSP's own patching process when a new KSP version comes out.
The disadvantage of this method is that KSP still loads the stock models and textures into memory. However, to make the memory footprint as small as possible, these new art assets share texture space and use them as efficiently as they can. So far, each diameter has only one texture that the tanks of that size share.
To put this in perspective, many individual parts may use a 512x512 texture image, each. This pack is using a 512x512 image for each of the smaller diameter sets, and one 1024x1024 for the 3.75m diameter set.
Part of the NecroBones suite of mods, that work nicely together:
- Modular Rocket Systems (stock-alike parts pack, NASA-like alternatives, and filling the gaps)
- SpaceY Heavy Lifters Parts Pack (stock-balanced large rocket parts, 5m parts, large SRBs)
- Color Coded Canisters (replacement models/textures for stock fuel tanks: prettier, cleaner, and diameter color-coding for the tank end-caps)
- Fuel Tanks Plus (collection of large stock-like tanks with Color Coded Canister style)