waldov, you do know your suggesting what we have done for the last past few releases? This is hardly anything new...
waldov wrote:PR 1.0 Coop maps
PR 1.0 mini mods
I'm sorry but it doesn't work like that....
For starters the coop files are part of the same MP maps you normally play on (for the ones that have AI support), which can't be removed from the .zips without removing the AI support, and are only around 15mbs (uncompressed) top each in size for a 4km map, so even if we did remove them, you would only be saving ~400mbs, and that's before the files are compressed into .zips and then compressed again into an installer...
As for minimods, while yes in their current state they are just new maps, with any additional weapons, vehicles etc being part of the map, that isn't going to be the case in the future for most of them as they are being integrated into the main files which overall, saves more space than the old method which was only done since we where releasing them after and before we had an updater etc. For example the M20 and many other weapon files are cloned three times thought the minimods since all of them use them, but none of them share each other files, with even different versions being used between each of the minimods since the M20 was re-exported for PR:F and received new animations and coding, but didn't for PR:V and PR:N, which also cases problems since if you play a PR:V or PR:N map before/after PR:F, the M20 is screwed up as a result. Also making them optional makes servers not run them due to fear of not grabbing so many players to their servers since some don't have them. This is like saying we should make all the German, French etc factions optional, at the end of the day, it would only hurt the mod.
That being said, PR:V is the only "minimod" that is being included into the first PR v1.0 release with the others coming later, possibly as optional downloads but more likley being included into the mod later via the updater.
We are aiming to make the download process as easy and small as possible but at the end of the day, we have a lot of stuff which everyone needs and stripping items out as optional files simply wont work.
At the end of the day if your worried about download one big file at once, download the torrent which has full resume support, so you can download it over multiple days/sessions which you also should have the opportunity since we normally release a passworded download in advance of releasing the mod fully so servers etc have the chance of getting themselves sorted for the new release etc.