trying to understand how the profiles work with Vortex

[Forestwolf17]

Scenario: I have two versions of the same mod (slightly different) which both are managed by Vortex. Next step: I create  a cloned profile. Now my question is if I remove (utilizing 'remove related') one of these versions completely in the cloned profile will this particular version still be available for the old/original profile?

N.b.: I#m not talking about disabling a mod but removing/deleting all the the related files.

Thank you for your feedback! :)

[7531Leonidas]

AFAIK, if you completely remove the mod, it will be unavailable for ALL profiles, at least that is how it worked early in my experience w/Vortex.  You simply disable any mods that you do not want to take effect in that particular profile.

[ChemBoy1]

Vortex uses shared downloads (archives) and mod staging folders (installed mods) for all profiles for a game, currently. This means that when you change a mod version in one profile, that change would be reflected in other profiles as well.

 

@Forestwolf17 To answer your question - Removing a mod would remove it from both profiles, not just the active one. 

It would be a great update to Vortex if they could add a feature to make a separate staging folder so that if a profile uses a different version of a mod, it would install that version to a staging folder only for the selected profile, rather than all profiles. 

 

For example, if you were managing Fallout 4 and wanted to have a profile for old-gen and one for Next-gen, this would not really be possible with the current functioning because the staging folders are not separated. That use case is not practical anyway, but illustrates the point. 

[Forestwolf17]

@753Leonidas1 & ChemBoy1: Thank you very much for your responses! That clarifies the situation. (Also, I agree that would be a great added feature for vortex to have separate staging folders for the individual profiles)

[Tannin42]

"Staging" is a pool of mods you have installed and configured, that is shared as has been explained. A profile is really just a list of those mods to activate together.

Vortex does support installing the same mod multiple times as "variants" which you can then toggle with the version field (it turns into a drop-down if you have multiple versions or variants of the same mod) so if you have two profiles, say one for making pretty screenshots or videos with all the highest texture resolutions and one for playing at high framerate, you can install each mod in a "high quality" and a "low quality" variant and assign to profiles accordingly.

Having multiple staging folders was something we considered during development but it would be challenging to do nicely in the UI: you'd still want the choice to install mods as "shared" (let's say something like skse or bugfix mods) so you'd always have to make an additional choice any time you install a mod. Then you'd need an option to move mods between staging folders (e.g. if you want to redo a profile but not reinstall everything) or you make a copy of a profile and want to share mods between _those_.
So maybe what you'd really want is an arbitrary set of staging folders and each profile could then "subscribe" to any number of staging folders such that the mod list only shows mods from those. That way you can be as granualar as you want. But that still leaves the added complexity of having to choose which staging folder to install a new mod to.