VulcanTourist

So now do I, given that I know it's not intended behavior and might be a symptom of other related problems, like the physics problem you didn't specify (I have some minor ones too). I'm not so motivated that I'm going to tear down my entire 432-strong mod list to bare metal to answer the question, but maybe I'd reinstall a few targeted ones if I had a better idea who the suspects are.

3BBB Amazing is what you should be using. If you don't like the default shape, use BodySlide to make it look more UNP-like (or whatever). Then make sure you have the requirements for that body, including CBPC and also SMP (if your system can handle it). You could use SMP for breasts only, as the movement is a bit more lifelike, and use CBP© for everything else as a compromise if performance is an issue.

You might not want to continue using MergePlgins at this point, since even its author has moved one and developed a better followup tool: zEdit. He's also the author of Mator Smash. That said, if your goal in merging plugins is to free up plugin slots, you're doing it wrong! The new "light" ESP-FE plugin flag allows many plugins to use an alternative space that allows FOUR THOUSAND NINETY-SIX additional plugins in addition to the original 254. Using Vortex as a mod manager gives you a leg up in this process, since it can identify and Light-flag many original plugins with a single click of the mouse. Not all are so easily flagged as Light, some require work to convert them, but there are many that don't.

What follower related mods do you have installed? I have the same behavior, but I am suspicious that it's not a bug but rather a feature to prevent followers from getting in the way. You might have noticed that it only affects followers? I cannot finger a specific mod at the moment.

There is a mod published this year which allows NPCs to acquire spells, perks, shouts and more that would otherwise be restricted primarily to the player. I don't think that mod's feature set extends to standing stones or their buffs, but I doubt it would be difficult to extend it to include them.

Yes, actually it does. It shouldn't, but yet it does. History books are rife with examples of "shared experience" perverted by human emotion into tribalism. Tribalism is selfishness and self-interest externalized to a group whose "shared experience" individuals allow to define their very identity, and anyone who doesn't share that same identity becomes an enemy. Being human isn't shared experience enough. The particular irony here is that both some mod authors and mod users have traits from the Autistic Spectrum, and those people when identified continue to be considered inferior by a dangerous proportion of the population, including our sitting President. How is it that "shared experience" doesn't draw them together here? I was not the person who started this thread. "Where it came from" was your demonstration of tribalistic behavior, in this instance your "Us" is mod authors and "Them" is anyone who merely uses them. It's the "useless eater" mindset perpetuated.

It's not textures painted on models that cause framerate issues: it's the detail of the models themselves, the "meshes", that can and does affect framerate. Painting textures is normally not an especially intensive operation for recent generations of graphics cards, but 3D model meshes still are past a certain point. Some Skyrim mods threaten or blow right past that point, and used in combination, especially with high-resolution displays, they can have an obvious detrimental effect on framerate. That isn't to imply that meshes are the only threat to framerate; far from it. Papyrus scripting, SKSE plugin DLLs, and especially broad application of physics can affect it as much or more.

No, I wasn't aware. Not a gamer (per say), and aside from this game, I have no connection to Steam. But that steam allows it provides some precedence...I suppose. Valve even goes so far as to officially recommend to developers that they not engage with players through their own Steam forums....

I know precisely what they hope to achieve, slim though the chance may be: a re-education of those in control of forums to be more reluctant to revise history for their own convenience. I know of another comparable example, and so likely do you: Steam's game forums. Valve gives game developers free reign to manage their own games' forums however they see fit, with virtually no oversight or recourse. Valve does so for the same self-interest that NexusMods does it. Both consider it a necessary evil; I don't.

Why, no.</sarcasm> Why do you ask?

Pride and ego are a significant motivator for more than just a few modders, whether that fact is convenient for your argument or not. Flatly denying its significance is denying the obvious. I've seen an author so driven by ego that he stickied more than half a dozen merely complimentary comments that otherwise lacked substance or information. I too have seen authors delete comments because they were... inconvenient to their desired narrative. That is fortunately not descriptive of all authors, but there are enough of the ego-driven ones to leave a noticeable stain. Mod authors like to privately share stories about the stupid/horrid things that "users" have done - much like people in tech support roles have been doing for decades - as if they are in every facet superior, but the truth is that they are not emotionally superior at all. Sometimes they react poorly to those emotions by deleting forum comments or in other ways abusing whatever authoritarian tools are available to them.

There aren't many, but pendulum and blade traps exist in some dungeons that lack any means to explicitly disable them once past them; they operate entirely on proximity alone from both directions. Was this carelessness? It makes it virtually impossible to bring followers through them unharmed. A perfect example: Raven Rock Mine in Solstheim, which has a long gauntlet of multiple sets of three pendulum blades which only operate on proximity, and that proximity includes NPCs and not just the player. Why even allow followers into such dungeons, given that their AI packages lack the finesse to allow the followers to avoid being shredded? I am surprised that no one ever produced a mod to correct these traps and replace or augment the proximity activation with levers or pullchains.

So when will Skyrim players be able to download your NPC fully voiced? "You should ..." is always much more effective when it follows "I have ...". Nothing in your reply rebuts or negates @goddoward's statements. You seem spiteful and bitter for some reason for which he was not the cause.

No, it's not "obvious": textures don't normally affect framerate. Textures require VRAM (on the graphics card), and if you don't have enough of it for the texture requirements of your modded game, you'll have worse to worry about than a reduced framerate. The only time textures could affect framerate is when the bandwidth of the VRAM is too anemic, but the Skyrim engine AFAIK doesn't perform any dynamic texture loading (like Empyrion and No Man's Sky, for instance), instead loading textures required for a cell during the "loading screen" at entry when framerate is not an issue. Once textures are loaded into VRAM, they do not affect framerate.

Batch Build is your BodySlide friend. I finally created my own custom body derived from 3BBB and rebuilt all the vanilla/replacer outfits (and some standalone) to fit it, and the result is (mostly) glorious! If even I can find my way around BodySlide and the filesystem to do it without any comprehensive hand-holding tutorial, I'd wager anyone can. I'm otherwise a complete idiot where 3D modelling is concerned.

Merging mods for the primary goal of saving plugin slots is Olde School. It's simply not necessary now when Light plugins are virtually limitless (4096) and can take their place. The same is true of the old kitchen-sink mods that bundle dozens of unrelated or loosely related features under one plugin roof in the name of slot-saving. Vortex makes trivial the flagging of compatible plugins as Light that are not already Light out of the box. It's an entirely new modding world now because of Light plugins.

I don't see any evidence of a mod that modifies a coffin(s) to create a "double" his-and-hers coffin suitable for vampiric couples. Ideally one might use such a coffin with a modified mod (forget the name of it) to allow spooning in the coffin as well. Have I missed finding such a mod that does exist?

It's FAR better to design your own custom derivative body in BodySlide, save it as a preset, Build that body to overwrite the body replacer from which it was derived (CBBE, TBD, UNPB, 3BBB, etc.), also batch Build it for all the vanilla or replacer and standalone armor to make that fit the body (better if you have an "outfit" version of the body for that)... and then FINALLY grab the generated body, hands, and feet NIF and TRI files from your custom body - the ones that overwrote your original body - and copy those into the appropriate directories for the bodies of "standalone" NPCs so that they get to use it, too. The latter only applies to "standalone" followers that have separately defined bodies as well as faces; there are some followers designed without a custom body that will use whatever body replacer you are using. Those will happily make use of your custom body when you overwite the replacer body from which it was derived. I would highly recommend the 3BBB Amazing body as a derivative source, if you attempt it.

Vortex and that "Could Be Light" filter won't show you the mods that ARE already flagged as Light, it shows you the ones whose ESP could be edited to be made Light; there is a separate "Light" filter that will display the plugins that are Light now. Opening the right detail sidebar for a selected plugin filtered by "Could Be Light" exposes a "Mark As Light" button which, if clicked, actually accomplishes the same thing as you opening the plugin in SSEEdit and using the script to flag the plugin as ESL. This action is reversible, by clicking the same button again later (its descriptive text will change). It's actually altering the file record in the ESP, so it's modifying the file. Following doing this, don't be surprised the next time you Deploy when Vortex wants you to decide what to do about "externally" changed files that will include the ones you told Vortex itself to flag as Light! I know, it's kinda dumb, but take it up with @tannin42. You can either choose to "Use" or "Save" the changed file: Using it means that the modified file is merely left in your \Data directory to replace the original Vortex hardlink, but Saving it causes Vortex to leave the Vortex hardlink to the original file (in the Vortex staging directory) AND OVERWRITE THE ORIGINAL FILE there, thus preserving your "Lightening" of it more permanently. (You will still have the original in the archive package in Vortex's downloads directory unless you explicitly delete it; that can be used to Reinstall the mod and restore the original non-Light plugin.) When you use apply that "Could Be Light" filter, Vortex will ONLY show plugins that can easily be made light simply by setting the flag in the plugin; there may be other that also could be made Light but that require the extra preliminary work of renumbering FormIDs to make them appropriate for Light plugins. That is not always possible to do, given external dependencies, so Vortex plays it safe. Now, as for the original question: the total number of MODS you can have is limitless if those mods happen to contain no plugins! Of course many will, and for those with plugins there is a less infinite limit: 254/255 + 4096 = 4350/4351. The old limit of 254/255 still applies for non-Light plugins, but Light plugins reside in their own separate form space which allows for 4096 of them. That is still pretty infinite....

I went ahead and did it, after making a backup of the SSE directory. (I also got pissed at Microsoft and kicked TrustedInstaller to the curb and took Admin ownership of the entire Program Files (x86) tree, but that's another story.) It worked, and Vortex is clueless about the redirection and continues to work as if it never happened. I do think it might now be noticeably slowing down game loading, though, which worried me before I began. In most instances the use of a junction or symlink would be imperceptible to performance, but in this instance there are thousands of files that must be accessed in very short order through that redirection, and it seems to have made a difference. It's a subjective conclusion, though, as I haven't done any before-and-after load timing.

Yes, that's a given, owing to the nature of hardlinks. What brought this up was considering a plan to use a same-volume junction to relocate SSE out of the Program Files (x86) directory and the UAC Hell that goes along with it. Yes, I know Steam allows relocating the entire Library, but that is monolithic and how would doing so affect Vortex and everything else that I've done that relies on that default Steam pathing? No, if it's feasible I'd rather just relocate the one game that seems to need it with a junction. (I have an SKSE plugin that is apparently crying foul because of the inherited file access restrictions in Program Files (x86).)

My intuition whispers that it should work, but I haven't yet tried it. It would offer extra choices if it does, and I like choices.

If a particular (Steam) game is moved from its original install directory and replaced with an NTFS junction or symbolic link, can Vortex still successfully place NTFS hardlinks in the new location targeted by the reparse point, or does the reparse point thwart/confuse it? (I realize that I could test this theory, but I'm just hoping someone on the dev team has already considered this condition and knows the answer. It's not an entirely uncommon tactic, since Steamtool uses reparse points to perform its magic.)

(Sorry, late to the party, and duplicated something @HadToRegister had already said.)

I can't make sense of your goal here nor how it relates to Vortex.