I have done some work on the Vortex extension for Starsector that allows it to read from mod_info.json.
Mods that are installed manually (not from NexusMods) will now display their version and author in Vortex, with this extension update.Only newly installed mods will have the additional info displayed.
It is available from within the Extensions section of Vortex, named "Starsector Support" version 1.1.
Or you can see it here, but it still needs to be installed via Vortex:
https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/179Includes support for mod version and author(s) for mods installed from file, rather than from NexusMods.
This extension will read mod_info.json, stripping out comments that use the '#' sign, and extract the mod version and mod author(s) from the file, allowing Vortex to display this useful information, which is normally limited only to mods that are downloaded from NexusMods.
The displayed mod name will be unchanged (if downloaded from NexusMods) or the name of the mod's archive (if installed manually).
This is due to some mod authors releasing multiple iterations of a mod with
the same version, with the only difference being in the filename.
For example, "ModName-3.0.0-beta-1.zip" and "ModName-3.0.0-beta-2.zip" often both have a version of 3.0.0. Since the beta number is important information, it should not be replaced by the name in the mod_info.json file, which may simply be "Mod Name".
Also:When submitting this to NexusMods, they mentioned that they are iteratively removing baked-in, official Vortex support of less-popular games in favor of user-managed extensions.
What this means is that, most likely, Starsector will not be supported
out of the box by Vortex (nothing changes on the NexusMods site),
but support can be easily added by using the in-app extension browser to find and enable a (the) Starsector extension.
The purpose is for them to spend less dev time verifying support for less-popular games, which also means less turnaround time between updating an extension and the changes going live.
tldr; The Starsector support in Vortex is going to switch to an user mod for Vortex, rather than having the NexusMods team seal of quality.