Explanation of FO3Edit's Master Update?

[SkullKnight]

Not sure if this should be under general or technical support, but I was wondering why people keep suggesting to use the master update feature of FO3Edit to resolve all sorts of glitches. All it seems to do is set the esm flag on all esp files, thus making all plugins into masters. My prior knowledge with oblivion tells me that esps should not be flagged as esm files while running the game, unless you want problems. The only difference Ive noticed so far with the master update is that I now get a CTD whenever I enter the cell that stores all of my spare equipment, so Im kind of a skeptic right now.

 

Can someone explain what exactly the master update does and how its supposed to affect the game? All Ive gathered is that its something related to an engine bug in patch 1.5 and above. Also...Anyone know why a mod would CTD due to the esm flag being set (or else I gotta remove the flag from that one mod, thus bumping it to the end of the load order automatically)? Some more information would be helpful.

[pkleiss]

You're right in that all FO3masterUpdate does is turn esps into esms. It just so happens that there are a lot of bugs that manifest in esps that do not manifest in esms. That is the only reason to use FO3MasterUpdate mode. As to why your game CTDs with a mod being an esm versus an esp, I don't really know specifically. My best guess is that before you turn all your mods into esms, your load order id rearranged slightly according to the rules that esms must load before and esps. Once you turn everything into esms, there would be no need for FOMM to pre-rearrange your load order according to that rule as all mods would them be equal.

[SkullKnight]

Heh, there seem to be problems that manifest only in esms too lol, based on that mod. I can use wrye bash to remove the esm flag from that one mod, forcing it to be 2nd last to load (bashed patch has the mod as a master, so it is forced to load after it). I dont really see issues with keeping my mods as esps, so Id prefer not to mess with it.

[SkullKnight]

/bump

 

Update! It appears that the master update generates bad ONAM data for the mod. Whenever its converted to an esm, it gets over a thousand ONAM entries that all are "Unable to be resolved". I have no idea why this occurs, but its obviously causing some problems.