QuickFox

I know its not exactly what youre asking for, but there is a mod which kind of does what you want, but in a different way: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=3198 So, yeah, it gives you ALL perks you are eligible for based on skill level, which on the one hand makes your character more powerful because you have way more perks... but as I see it, this is not necessarily a bad thing. You see, at low levels, ie. 20 and below, you have no shortage of perks to go around... you can pretty much put them everywhere you want, when you want; you dont have to plan much or make any tough decisions about which skill gets a perk this level because your next level is not far off. However, the higher your level gets, the longer it takes to gain new levels, especially once your primary skills reach 100. For me, with over 400 hours played, and having several characters that exceed level 50, I found it pretty un-fun to continue playing, knowing that I would seldom (if ever) gain levels, and that I was at all times unable to change the direction of my character development due to being so heavily invested in a particular set of skills. This mod breathed fresh life into the game for me... all skills level at the same rate regardless of your character level, so at any time you can branch out and gain the full benefits for your time invested into levelling a seldom-used skill; not to mention the fact that suddenly I was getting the full benefits of several skills that I would use all the time, but never-ever invest perks into, such as speech and lockpick.

I realise that your motivation for wanting to restrict yourself to a single element is a thematic choice and I guess you'll save a few perks in doing so, but there is a pretty sharp downside; you lose the versatility to deal effectively with every situation. Example; lightning is great for trying to hit fast-moving targets and for dealing with spellcasters but a storm atronach or any other creature that has strong electric resistance / immunity will ruin your day. Every element has a rock-scissors-paper relationship with certain enemies in this game, so its a good idea to have the other elements in your arsenal, even if you favor a certain one for general use.

It seems like the high-rez packs are being loaded after your mod, thats the only thing that should cause them to take precedence over your mod. I think that by default the skyrim launcher loads mods in the order they were last modified; also every time you launch the game via the launcher, it will rearrange the mods like this, if you had previously rearranged them in Nexus Mod Manager. Your mod shouldnt be loading before the high-rez packs unless you DL'd them after you made your mod. If that is the case, just open your mod's esp file and save it again, that should push it down in the load order.

New upload today resulted in a glitch that locked comments, please fix: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=8461

I apologize. It wasn't my intent to show bias, but I felt pessimistic about the SW. I updated the poll options. Well, looking at the poll results thus far, Its good to see that the majority are coming around to the side of optimism.

Thanks for that caliente, info added to OP. I think you should be fine sharing your mod, you'll just need to be 'never-nude' all the way. Perhaps you can create a more flattering (yet still adequately concealing) set of underwear meshes? Honestly I prefer using nevernude, simply because I found it too disturbing when I'd loot armor off dead bandits :P

I think your poll options are too biased to be worth voting on. I believe skyrim's modding community will eclipse oblivion's significantly, and that the CK & SW will only help it to grow.

Okay, Ive figured it out all by myself... finally found BSAopt, got it to work.

I actually like the Steam method better now that I have figured out how to do it ;) The pros : no replacing or overwriting mods, trying to keep track of individual installs... just an .esp and a .bsa file, and best yet, steam lets you manage your mods as subscriptions so they automatically stay updated, and can be easily removed via the skyrim launcher or reorganised in the nexus mod manager. As for the EULA, you have to understand that it is perfectly reasonable and normal. after all, you are creating assets for BETHSEDA's game using BETHSEDA's tools... they are just trying to protect themselves so that you cant sue them if they release features in the future that resemble your mods... they are NOT going to blatantly steal your work; if you are good enough you might get a job offer from them!

I edited the first post with some more info on adapting mods for Steam Workshop; worth a read even if youre not planning on uploading it there; you can still upload to Skyrim Nexus which will benefit users due to maximum compatibility.

It just occurred to me as I was typing this... would it work if I created a dummy armature reference in the .esp that referenced the _0.nif files, to trick the CK into including them in the BSA file, then just editing my .esp file afterwards to remove the dummy references? Also, is it just me or is the CK's .esp editor pretty lacklustre compared to SkyEdit? I really wish the CK had SkyEdit's 'highlight active entries' feature; about the only new feature I appreciate is the ability to edit ground/inventory models.

How do I make a Skyrim-compatible BSA file? Im trying to port a few of my mods into the Steam Workshop, trouble is I cant seem to get all the files I need into a compatible BSA archive. I tried using the CK archive creator, problem is it only packs the _1.nif files and leaves out the _0.nif, presumably because they arent referenced anywhere by the .esp I am using. This means that my armors dont show up in-game, instead they make the body part invisible :/ I also tried creating my own BSA files with FOMM, but it doesnt seem compatible with skyrim at all; its only able to unpack BSAs, any BSA I create results in the armor in question being replaced by a big red triangle with an exclamation point inside of it :( Anyone know of a program or method I can use to create a BSA archive that can be loaded by skyrim, or a way to choose which files get loaded into the CK's BSA packer? currently it only adds files automatically, and while I can remove files from the list by highlighting and pressing delete key, I cant see a way to manually add files.

Bit of an overreaction. After a little further investigation, Ive found that the choice to implement the official HD texture pack as mods actually works just fine with their new creation kit + steam workshop integration. Basically, you can upload a mod to the steam workshop via the CK, and in doing so it packs all the assets referenced by a custom .esp file that you create or load into a BSA, and associates it with the .esp. So, essentially this is not a problem for any mods intended to be used with the steam system, only for old-style texture replacers that worked without an .esp file.

Weird.... I don't have a data\skyrim.ini file. The only one is in my games\skyrim. Windows 7, FWIW. Im running windows 7 and I have one.

Yep, 'load loose files' is definitely not there for me, havent seen it since the 1.4 patch fixed the 'data files' part of the launcher so that it now lists files in a single column, and not scattered all over the place if you had 30+ mods like me.