Loading time with mods

[M00nStalker]

As anyone who has played modded Rimworld knows the load time when using many different mods can be quite brutal (I've heard of load times of close to 30 minutes and have had load times of over 10 minutes). To be clear I'm talking about the load time from when you start the game until you get to the menu, not load time of a save. But I've never really grasped exactly what causes this and how, so I have a few questions:

1. Which mod types are the "lightest" vs the "heaviest" when it comes to this loading time? Are utility mods like Better Pawn Control or sidearms lighter than item/faction mods? Is it the other way around? No difference?
2. How does Steam workshop mods compare to non-steam mods in this situation? Identical? Slower? Faster (I highly doubt that)?
3. Are these super long load times the cause of mod incompatibility/errors or is it just a causal effect of the game having to load up (patch?) all the changes?
4. Any ways to improve the load times?
5. Bonus question: what's your load time and how many mods are you running (approx.)?

This is more of a theoretical discussion and an attempt to understand the workings rather than an attempt to solve a problem, I don't mind a "long" load time in a game where I usually spend several hours when I actually have the time to play.

[Asero]

Just going to quote something I came across on the steam forums a while ago. I can't vouch for the accuracy, but it does seem to make sense.

Certain mods have a much larger impact on load times, especially those that apply small edits to a very large number of objects, or those that procedurally create a large number of new objects. What's happening during loading is patching. The game is loading multiple sets of data, checking them for errors, comparing them, and merging them into a new instance of the game loaded in memory.

As for the bonus question: I'm running about 80 mods on my Laptop and it takes around 5 minutes to get to the loading screen. I could be quicker, but one of the mods throws out an error, which I haven't been able to track down yet.

[Canute]

At the options you got Verbose logging. It is Off by default.
Enable it, then restart Rimworld.
At the logfile you will see the time how long Rimworld will work on a mod like

Code Select Expand

- - 13ms Loading Core content
- - 91ms Loading ModManager content
- - 50ms Loading HugsLib content
- - 213ms Loading JecsTools-1.1.0.11 content
- - 108ms Loading AllowTool content
- - 7ms Loading SmartMedicine - Release content
- - 8ms Loading RimworldSearchAgency content
- - 2ms Loading SimpleSidearms content
- - 6ms Loading DeepRim content
- - 6ms Loading GlitterWorldPrime [R1] content
- - 6ms Loading Miscellaneous_Core content
- - 2ms Loading Miscellaneous_Robots content
- - 2ms Loading Miscellaneous_MAI content
- - 1ms Loading [1.0] RPG Style Inventory [V2.2] content
- - 352ms Loading Core
- - 0ms Loading ModManager
- - 1ms Loading HugsLib
- - 8ms Loading JecsTools-1.1.0.11
- - 149ms Loading AllowTool
- - 1ms Loading SmartMedicine - Release
- - 0ms Loading RimworldSearchAgency
- - 2ms Loading SimpleSidearms
- - 3ms Loading DeepRim
- - 1ms Loading GlitterWorldPrime [R1]
- - 4ms Loading Miscellaneous_Core
- - 10ms Loading Miscellaneous_Robots
- - 14ms Loading Miscellaneous_MAI
- - 0ms Loading [1.0] RPG Style Inventory [V2.2]
- - 0ms Loading all patches
- - 0ms Loading all patches
- - 0ms Loading all patches
- - 0ms Loading all patches
- - 0ms Loading all patches
- - 6ms Loading all patches
- - 0ms Loading all patches
- - 0ms Loading all patches
- - 0ms Loading all patches
- - 0ms Loading all patches
- - 0ms Loading all patches
- - 5ms Loading all patches
- - 0ms Loading all patches
- - 2ms Loading all patches