Why is Vortex detecting that ALL of my Starfield mods have changed when they haven't?

[TennesseeTuxedo]

This isn't the first time happening and it's scary since Vortex appears to be kindly offering to DELETE all of my mods for me.  Why am I getting this? 

I had gamed earlier, stopped.  Came back to my computer to game again, not having done ANY Vortex operations and Vortex has a litany of issues.  First it decided unilaterally that my SFSE was "alternate launch is invalid" and automatically removed it, thanks!  I attempted re-install of that and then upon trying to deploy, I get the below.  Vortex thinks every single one of my mods has changed.  But not a single one has.  Worse it seems to think the "new" state might be one where all the files should be deleted (I chose revert all changes).

Then there is a Deprecated FOMOD it is also suddenly detecting, but it doesn't tell you what mod it is!  Even if you click More.  I'll put that issue on another post.

Why does this come up?  Without any changes why would Vortex detect changes on all of my mods?  Is it time to burn Vortex and re-install it/mods?  Any tips on that?  I know there might be some stickies.

[Pickysaurus]

This might be a cross-modtype conflict. Try reinstalling the mods that are affected. 

[TennesseeTuxedo]

What is a cross-modtype conflict?  Is that two mods modifying/replacing the same files that Vortex is supposed to handle normally, the situation it asks you rules for?  Can you explain the chain of event of how a cross-modtype conflict would cause Vortex to think ALL of my mods changed? 

If you look at the bottom scroll bar, it's a lot of mods.  When you say reinstall the mods that are affected, its well over 200 of them that it thinks changed, so what you are suggesting is re-installing ALL of my mods.  You can just say that and that's fine, as mentioned I concede I may have to do that.  But I would like details if I can get them on why this occurs, to prevent it from happening again and causing me a large amount of time to re-install all of my mods.

[Pickysaurus]

We changed all FOMOD-related mods as part of an update to the Starfield support. For 99% of users, this was a seamless transition but for a fraction of users - for reasons we are yet to understand - it goes wrong and gets confused. Reinstall FOMOD-related mods is the best way to correct this. 

[TennesseeTuxedo]

It would be super-helpful if the orange FOMOD message that pops up told you what mod it is!  It doesn't say and if you click "FIX" it goes right to a progress bar, with no opportunity to cancel, that scarily says PURGING.  What is it purging?  Mine got stuck at the beginning, after 15 minutes the PURGE still had not progressed so I killed Vortex and decided to never click "FIX" again.  Didn't seem to break anything to kill it and restart.

I know I can probably figure the Vortex FOMOD violator from the vortex logs, but again, super helpful if the orange FOMOD popup message said what mod it is.  I might not even care about the mod and simply delete it, problem solved, but can't do that if I don't know what it is. 

Also, having it flow from clicking "FIX" to then immediately launching a PURGING bar with no chance to cancel, and not preparing users for that and stating exactly what will be purged, can be a shocking user experience.  It makes you afraid something is going wrong and that you might lose all your mods.  I would suggest improving the experience with a dialog that explains what will happen, and give the user an opportunity to cancel.

[TennesseeTuxedo]

Also what is a "FOMOD" mod?   I have a couple .esps still (they were never converted to .esms) that I know might cause problems and they have not been updated since September.  Is that a FOMOD, an older .esp type mod?

[TennesseeTuxedo]

One more post on this.  If we click 'More', it still doesn't tell us WHAT mod it is detecting and worse, we get no option now to quit this dialog.  At this point we can only click 'Fix' which launches the scary blue PURGING bar OR kill Vortex in task manager and remember to never click 'More' nor 'Fix' on that message again.

 

[TennesseeTuxedo]

It appears that not even in the logs does it tell what mod your FOMOD problem is.  I did some research and it appears a FOMOD is a mod with some kind of xml based installer.  I have over two hundred mods, is there any easy way to find which is a FOMOD?

This is all you get in the log.  It does not have any other entries such as to tell you what mod was detected, I suggest in a future release to put in some additional information.

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 08:31:52 GMT - warn: warning notification message=Deprecated FOMODs detected (1)