Are mod conflicts necessarily bad?

[stars2heaven]

I understand that some conflicts, like scripting effects, ID changes, and geography changes can be pretty bad if you have two mods that conflict. But what about somewhat more innane conflicts.

 

Say you have one mod that alters the base stat of a sword and also applies new meshes and textures.

 

Maybe another mod alters the same swords base stats and looks but also includes a really cool quest or some other feature unrelated to that weapon.

 

The two mods would be conflicting as far as the alterations to the stats of the sword go, and the latest one in the load order would be the one that wins.

 

Im wondering if this sort of thing is bad in the end if you have alot of mods that do this. Are these kind of conflicts unimportant or can they lead to performance issues and crashing?

[Vagrant0]

The potential for conflicts to cause significant problems depends almost entirely on what is being changed between mods, their load orders, and what version of those changes you wanted to be present in your game.

 

As far as equipment conflicts go, I believe there is a bit more allowance for conflicts, such as allowing stat changes in one mod, and mesh changes in another mod. But, in this situation it's almost always a better idea to just alter the mod with the stat changes to use the same meshes as the mesh mod. If the item isn't scripted, there shouldn't be any problem either way, but all conflicts can cause some potential stability issues. If the item is scripted, then it is usually a good idea to try and merge or alter one of the mods to use similar settings with the other.

 

Most mods which add weapons usually add weapons with a unique editor and form ID, so this sort of thing really only happens if you happen to have two mods which make changes to a standard item. If the mods add an item with the same editor id, but different form IDs then you have a different issue, form bashing, which is quite a bit more serious than just a conflict, and can cause one or both mods to have problems, or just cause crashing. This is why when making mods and defining new forms, you should avoid common names and use a prefix unique to your mods for all things added. Yet another reason why starting editor names with 00 or aa is a VERY bad idea. The general rule of thumb is to take whatever internet handle you use, and convert it into something 3-4 characters long and start every form with those characters... In my case I start everything with either "VG0" for mods I intend to release publicly, "VGX" for mods which are either there for testing or semi-personal use, or "NTS" for mods I don't intend to ever share. This reduces the chance of form bashing, even when working between my own mods, and provides a quick way for me to find my own resources.

 

If you have form bashing issues, the only way to solve would be to manually go through and change the editor id of the conflicting item to something else in one of the mods, and make sure that anywhere it is referenced is also changed.