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Can Vortex Parse BSA/BA2 Archives to Detect/Resolve Conflicts?


Vyxenne

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Is Vortex capable of detecting mod-BSA-packed files that may conflict with loose files and/or other mod-BSA-packed files? As far as I can tell, the answer is "no" because I never get a conflict alert (or resolution pane) on loose files that I know are in conflict with BSA-packed files.

 

Since loose files always override archive-packed files by default, it would be nice to have Vortex parse mod archives so that we could say "No, use the mod Archive's file ('Load After the loose file')" in this case," same as we can when loose files override other loose files. Of course, since the very purpose of most mods is to override vanilla game assets, I would not think that Official Game BSAs would need to be included by default, although a toggled ability to include them would be great for certain troubleshooting efforts.

 

I believe that MO2 includes this functionality, but that belief is based solely on reading about MO2- other than two tests ending in a decision that it wasn't worth the trouble born of its complexity, I have never actually managed a load order with it.

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Guest deleted34304850

may want to send that in as an enhancement request to the mod developers, they may be able to accomodate it as it seems more than reasonable.

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  • 3 weeks later...
This feature is very sorely needed. The one thing that makes Vortex the superior mod manager (despite it's frustratingly laggy interface) is it's conflict management rules that not only alert you to conflicts but also make it simple to decide the winners of conflicts. But that whole system ultimately becomes moot if over half the mod files are hidden within .bsa's. The only solution i can find is extracting all .bsa files but that introduces it's own problems. Namely that that process has to be repeated after every update. MO2 apparently has this feature from what I've read so it isn't impossible.
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I'm pretty sure the parts are already there inside Vortex to make an extension to read the BSA/BA2 archives. We just need someone to take the time to put it together. Luckily Vortex is open source, so if it were essential I'd like to think some talented community developers would step up and give it a shot.
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Vortex does include functionality to parse BSA/BA2 archives.

The problem with this feature isn't parsing the files for conflicts (though that would have a performance impact) but resolving these conflicts.

The game loads bsas in the order of their corresponding esps so if you actually wanted to decide conflicts between bsas, you'd have to change the order of their plugins which could then lead to other, more sever load order issues like crashes, broken quests, ...

The interdependency between bsa and esp makes this quite complex because you have no clean cut anymore between asset order and plugin order like you do with loose files but also: some mod authors rely on the bsa to be ordered together with the esp and the fact you can (indirectly) control bsa order via the loot masterlist, thus unpacking bsas (or any other mechanism of decoupling bsa from esp) might introduce new issues.

There is just no way for a user to predict whether the esp ordering (as suggested by the author or LOOT) doesn't specifically aim to also apply to the BSA as well.

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It would only be useful for seeing if a loose file was overwriting a file from a BSA. And then you would only be able to fix it if a "do not use this file at all" rule was added to the "load before/load after" rules.

 

That's really what it was used for in MO2 in my experience, because in MO2 you can just delete the offending file from the source mod.

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It would be EXTREMELY useful info just to know if there is a conflict between a loose file and a bsa. Or even between files within two bsas from different mods. Right now there's no way to know if any of those files are in conflict, unless a mod author specifically states an incompatibility on their mod page. I think it's biggest benefit would be in script file conflicts. Unlike texture file conflicts, script conflicts are hard to detect in-game until deep within a playthrough when it's too late to change.
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