Look at "rF2 dedi manager" on the forum, might help a little. Just be aware that the automatic updates will break your rfmods anyway.... so you will have to do the work to recreate those when the mods update whenever they want. If you are happy about that happening then continue using your method. I just provided an alternative way that doesn't break on updates.
I will have to do some digging and see what is possible. There was someone that was able to edit the player.json with a batch so that might do something.
I have three batch files I use, one for S397 GT3's, one for S397 GTE's and one for S397 tracks each looks this at the start; They can be used where you have to login each time or auto login, if auto login desired then comment out lines 321 to 324 and uncomment lines 330 to 331. You would also need to enter your steam username and password in lines 330/331. It's also important to set your SteamCMD folder in line 317. Under each mod there is a line that starts set ModDownload[a number]=true/false, I've set them all to =false so for the ones you want to download change the =false to =true and save before running.
@Woodee . Hey I am sure you find it easy to do it that way but I am not a programer nore am I keen to spend time typing batch files and so on in 2021. I know that there must be plenty of ways to automate things but I just don't see the reason why these things are not part of the program and why do we have to go and write extra stuff to make things work properly. I can see what you sare saying but after having SteamCMD on my server for about 2 years I was also over typing and sorting the fact it wasn't the launcher as when we had the launcher it was easy and a few clicks and your done. It just seems to be getting way to complicated and more convoluted to get stuff to work simply and it still doesn't work properly after all this time. I do apreciate the tips but they are all moving more away from what I think we should have with this software. I think rF2 is a lot better than rF1 but the way we can use it is a lot more difficult and just not sensible IMHO, I am sure a lot of people have thought that from the start with the rfmod files and so on. Sure there a good parts also but it should not be so hard to setup a server and get std stuff to work. Cheers everyone. As I said I will revist the new UI later and I hope its better but it seems the software is going down a road I don't want to take.
I hope it will be sorted soon. It seems like a basic option to set a different folder. I know you can use old modmgr but that's really annoying...
.. wondering if i'm the only one, struggling with packages management and keeping package up to date ... It take more than 5 Minutes for manually install only one single new package. It is not longer possible, to mark more than one package at a time, for multi install, (sequential install only) Sometimes it take serveral hours, to manage all updates :-(there are qite a lot, thanks for that) For some reasons ModMgr.exe is not able to install some new mods or vehicle packages ... Is there work around or a good hint so save time? like a beetle it runs and runs and runs ...