Packaged game assets vs externally loaded assets/fbx/materials/txtures and mod support

I’ve been searching the forums for a while and googling what I can, so far my understanding is if I wanted people to mod my game,
(ie, im going to make a space game with 3d ships, similar to Star Point Gemini 2)

Basically it appears I can not do this in the unreal engine?

Also it seems you can turn off packaging? is this allowed?, and would this allow me to move uassets around and umaps after my game has been released and allow
workshop items on steam?

I’ve seen a couple of forum responses saying this will just scratch this feature from their game, as it’s just not possible.

I know Unity 5 can do this (Cities Skylines) and I wanted to have a similar feature that they have. (They used an in-game feature to create the asset, then it can be loaded)
But I believe they wrote a fbx importer or bought one on the unity asset store.

Anyways I’ve just started to learn via the tutorials & videos, but I’m also switching back to Unity 5 and still trying to decide which engine is better suited for the game I’m trying to create.

Those file formats would not be supported without some major coding work. The packaging options will either put all of the uasset files in a single package file, or it will have them separate. But–either way, the files are cooked and can’t be modified after being cooked. You could always add new uasset files but you wouldn’t be able to modify the ones that are already there.

As far as creating mods go, the user would need to download the correct version of UE4 and then get whatever files provided by you that they would need to develop things for the engine.

Also, I would do some research and find out whether it’s worth the effort to try to support mods. Look at some average indie games that support mods and see how much is done there. I’m making a guess but I would bet that unless the game is fairly popular then there won’t be much interest in making mods for it.

Thanks for the response,

Yeah it might be too much work, even with unity 5.