Full-on workshop support is the key, tbh. Releasing a mod here and on the nexus might get you a thousand downloads, but the workshop allows you to reach an audience massively larger. I know several of the early full XML modders from a few months back have pretty much switched to just doing downloadable ships or races, because the distribution channels for real mods are presently so poor.
Consider - Gauntlet's mod (the most popular actual mod on the Nexus, as opposed to a collection of graphical assets) has less than 2000 unique downloads since June. Meanwhile, the most popular item on the workshop is at nearly 10k subscribers, and was released nearly a month later. Only 4 mods on Nexus have over 500 downloads in total, and those may not even be unique downloads. With these kind of download numbers, it's hard to see much point in releasing TC mods. Over on Paradox's forum, a decent mod at this stage in the game's life cycle can expect 5-digit download figures per release; here, you're doing well if you break 100 downloads before the next base game patch breaks your mod.
I'll keep writing my own mod as long as people keep playing it, but tbh I agree that SD's strategy has strangled any serious modding community in the crib through limiting the workshop to ship sets and races made using the in-game editor. It's bizarre, really, since the game is so very moddable; the xml is easy to learn and the in-built mod folder is perfectly good for the task (it wouldn't even take much effort to build a mod launcher for it). I also doubt that we'll see any resurgence; most of the people who would've formed the core of such a community have largely drifted away now, and the few who remain have mostly halted activity to wait for the 1.4 changes (there's little point trying serious alterations when 1.4 is changing the way the economy works).
