Overwrite Races in a master file

[Hellscreamy]

This will probably sound like a lot of work and it's very possible (definitely) we take a wrong approach here, but let me explain anyway.

We have a team working on a large mod with a masterfile .esm containing a large worldspace, dungeons and npc's. We use version control to merge smaller .esp's into the master file to make new releases. We have also received permission to use unique races from other mods in our mod. I've created a separate .esp that was created by merging the multiple mods into one .esm and then copying it to an .esp. The races require RaceCompatiblity.esm to work properly without conflicts (the mod uses Dawnguard as master), thus merging it into the masterfile is not an option to the high number or masters to the .esm. The records for these races do not exist in the masterfile thus for now we only have two possibilities to create npc's of these races:

1. Create the npc in the masterfile, give it a placeholder race (NordRace) and change its race in the races.esp. This might cause conflicts with other mods when changing these npc's.
2. Create the npc in the races.esp, which forces changes made to these races to be done in this particular .esp or through yet another .esp.

Preferably we would like to prevent both cases and create a race CustomRace inside the masterfile, overwriting their bodies/textures/scripts for RaceCompatibility inside the additional .esp. The new races are already setup in the .esp and I would prefer not having to redo the setup again.

 

Is there a way to make the race from the .esp overwrite a record in the .esm using some external tool?

Example: Record 040AAAAB (customPlaceHolderrace) is overwritten by Record 060BBBBC (CustomRealRace).

 

If this sounds impossible or bug-hazardous please let me know too, because then I'll try to redo my work after another merge.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Hellscreamy