Possible to switch off between major mods?

[fooflinger]

So I've downloaded XRM, Litcube's Universe and the Star Wars mod and I don't know which one I want to try out first.

Are there any mod managers or any programs that are capable of switching out between major mods such as these at will? Or would my best bet just be to make a backup of the vanilla AP folder and manually install/uninstall each mod when I want to play them?

[X2-Illuminatus]

The latter. Whereby you could also copy the complete X3 Terran Conflict directory (including the X3AP "addon" folder) somewhere else and use the X3AP-NoSteam.exe to start the game then. That way you can create multiple installations, which are totally independent from each other and from Steam.

[fooflinger]

The latter. Whereby you could also copy the complete X3 Terran Conflict directory (including the X3AP "addon" folder) somewhere else and use the X3AP-NoSteam.exe to start the game then. That way you can create multiple installations, which are totally independent from each other and from Steam.

I actually kind of like having the game being dependent on Steam, I'm one of those weird people who likes tracking game hours.

But thanks for the response, that's kind of what I figured. I'll probably just backup my x3/addon folder somewhere when I get sick of my XRM playtrough.

[Joubarbe]

Both XRM and LU make heavy modifications of the entire X3 folder, not only \addon. So keep that in mind. Your best shot is really to keep X3 vanilla in Steam and copy past it in another folder for each mod.

[SirNukes]

You can use symbolic links to manage your copies of AP. Basically, copy out 3 instances of the game (or 4 if you want to add a pure vanilla backup), putting them all outside the normal steam folder location. Then, create a symbolic link between where the steam looks for the game and the version of the game you want to run.

For example:
mklink /J "D:\Steam\SteamApps\common\x3 terran conflict" "C:\Games\x3 terran conflict xrm"

To swap mods, just delete the old symbolic link and make a new one to the appropriate copy of X3 (packing commands into batch files if you are going to swap very often). This also makes it easy to put your favorite mod onto an SSD while the others get left on a disc drive, since simlinks don't care about crossing drives.