How to prevent a mod with an .ESL extension from being overwritten in Vortex ?

[1ZanZam2]

Sorry if this is a noobish question with an obvious answer but I don’t understand !

I’m currently modding Fallout 4 and want to see the results of a texture mod called “Military Vehicles Retextured” by Spifferino. The mod installs and enables just fine but has an .esl extension, which means it loads towards the top of my load order. When I go back into the game after installing the mod the military vehicle I’m standing next to looks exactly the same.

Are the textures being overwritten by another texture mod lower down in my load order ? If so, given that Military Vehicles is an .esl and as such, I assume, cannot have its position changed via Plugins > Load Order rules - how am I supposed to prevent its changes from being overwritten (assuming that another mod is overwriting it) ?

As far as I understand it, if two mods try to change the same file, a conflict alert should appear during installation and Vortex should allow me to choose which mod should load before / after the other. No conflict alert pops up in this case, however, but the mod is clearly not having any effect on my game.

Edited July 5 by 1ZanZam2
added word to show exact title of mod

[7531Leonidas]

IF .esl files work as in Skyrim SE, then they are automatically treated as masters, you may need to find a patch for a mod that overwrites it, or build one by using xEdit to force an overwrite.

[1ZanZam2]

Thanks for the reply. Oh dear, I am far from being capable of building my own patches. Nor do I even know which mod might be overwriting Spifferino’s, though I suspect it is FlaconOil’s Complete Retexture Project. Somebody in the comments section did make an .esp version, but the link he provided leads nowhere. Guess I will have to just pass on this mod for now. Thank you once again for the reply.

[7531Leonidas]

@1ZanZam2 Try going to the FO4 game forum, by clicking on Game Communities and scrolling for its forum.  Join it to post, then post this question there.  Someone may have already solved the problem, or at least have more insight.  Do you see any of the 'lightning bolt' conflict flags in Vortex for your vehicles retexture?  If you do, then that will most likely tell you what the problem is.  You might also check the Plugins page to see if there are any LOOT messages or problem flags for your load order.

[showler]

The problem here is that both of the mods mentioned have the textures in BA2 archive files.  Vortex has no idea what's in those files so It can't detect or correct the conflict.  Whichever mod loads last loads it's BA2 file last so that one wins.

The solution would be to extract the textures and install them as loose files, but I'd guess the OP would not be comfortable with that.

[1ZanZam2]

Ah, thank you showler. I didn’t realise that Vortex could not detect such BA2 conflicts. That would seem to explain the problem. Yeah, I am only at an early stage of learning things at the moment so I think I’ll just pass on this mod for now.

@7531Leonidas : thanks for your answer too. I don’t have the mod installed any more, but when I did I never got a conflict warning (lightning bolt) either when installing or afterwards. I’ve had such conflicts before and Vortex has made them easy to resolve.

Thank you both.