I'm new to all of this stuff. I'm 30 years old, been PC gaming since I was 13. I have become cozy with the concept of the Steam Workshop. So I have to ask, why are all of these mods not automated at this point?
I figured with programming and technology we have available today, any type of modding system would have automated mod installation and addon installation. Just tell it where the game is installed(Even this appears to be able to be automated) and let it check for duplicate or latest versions and add the appropriate files each time you install an addon. This way everything is handled correctly the first time and all files are up to date(Because each file should have some kind of self check and auto updater when you launch the game).
Is there a technical reason as to why we don't have this kind of ease of access? I am excitedly curious because I spent a little over 3 hours yesterday getting all of the basic essential LSPDFR mod addons on top of LSPDFR installed into my game, only to have errors pop up. I attempted to fix those errors with a rather creative auto troubleshooter but even that couldn't fix some of them due to permissions errors.
So end of the day, why isn't an automated package installation system the standard with all this nifty stuff?
Edit: An additional example of a modder's own automation could be say the Albo mods. You see quite a few of them on the website here. What if all you had to do was download one Albo installer. That installer self updated in the background and when you launch it, it lets you choose which of Albo's mods to add to your project, it then downloads them to your computer and installs them to the appropriate locations all the while checking for duplicate or out of date versions of files.
This way you download one installer instead of 8 mods separately.
EDIT Edit: OR LSPDFR team could take it one step further and all modders would simply submit their mods through a standardized format to them. They would provide one launcher that handles the installation of all mod developers' mods who are in this community. One launcher, select a modder, select which of their mods to install. Not sure if that's asking TOO much, but another idea.