OOO rant and Overhaul Mod questions

[SilvasRuin]

I use FCOM, and it has been fun, really... but I am becoming increasingly disillusioned with OOO and am beginning to want to seek out an alternative.

 

OOO does a lot of nice things. It has several other very nice mods built into it, makes some great changes on its own merit, and helps make Cyrodiil more alive. So what's the problem? Well, the first thing I noticed is that the mods OOO incorporates can often be buggy and sometimes even infuriating. The standalone versions work better, don't generally have compatibility issues, and are less buggy and have more consistent behavior. In the OOO installation process, it is actually better to tell it no to all the extra additions and either do without them or go get the standalone versions.

 

More recently I've read up on the special content it adds, and encountered some on my own. Making two quests mutually exclusive without doing a thing to let players new to OOO know they are mutually exclusive is just cruel. So is adding a superboss right next to the normal boss that guards the Sword of the Crusader. I wound up obliterating the Sword of the Crusader boss during the battle thinking it was just another one of those ghost knights. The superboss also makes keeping the accompanying Knight alive virtually impossible without telling him to wait far from the battle. Additionally, while that superboss' rewards and the meteoric weapons are awesome but fill a niche rather than automatically being best, what I've read of the Path of Iron, the Light of Dawn, and the Dread sets and related weapons suggest that is far from the case for them, that they truly are hands down the best. Niche equipment is fine. Ultimate equipment is not... especially if a set of holy gear made by man trumps holy gear made by gods, even if both sets are blessed by them.

 

Yes, I'm going on hearsay. This is because I don't want to play all the way through to the end game just to test this only to find that it is indeed horribly broken in power and make me want to start all over again with something that isn't eventually horribly broken. That and I'm not nearly familiar enough with coding to look into the OOO code itself to look this stuff up.

 

tl;dr:

OOO isn't nearly as great as I thought it was, and I can't find anything it does (other than the added content, which is a complaint for me and not a boon) that Fransesco's, MMM, and/or all the standalone mods and balance mods do just as well if not better. It isn't the first "great" mod I've removed for balance reasons (I've been unpleasantly surprised by some of the more popular ones... Elixirs of Exploration and Summon Rufio's Ghost in "normal" shops in Bravil? Hell no!), but it's honestly the last one I expected I'd eventually remove. I've come to the realization that OOO isn't what I've been enjoying from FCOM. It's MMM. That said, I think balance and difficulty are fairly broken in vanilla Oblivion and really would like a balance mod.

 

I've started glancing around at TIE. I suppose it's at least worth trying, and I think I've finally figured out how to use Wrye Bash to run different sets of mods for different saves, so I can try it without making myself unable to go back and continue my existing file if I don't like it.

 

So, my questions...

1. Does TIE balance the armor in such a way as to make sure there is no clear best between max power Glass and Daedric?

 

2. Same question for Amber and Madness, and do they scale despite the rest of TIE not scaling?

 

3. Does TIE make appropriate balance and scaling changes to the Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine so that there isn't a jarring difference between them and the rest of Cyrodiil?

 

4. Does TIE alter how leveling works, or would I need to use a leveling mod to fix that?

 

5. Does TIE scale the quest rewards at all or are they all static? Would using the Quest Award Leveler screw with it?

 

6. Does TIE make any balance changes to race and birthsign selection?

 

7. Is there a way to add MMM content to TIE? In my personal opinion, MMM should be what is added onto other mods, not what other mods are added on to. In other words, I'm wondering if MMM content can be added to TIE while leaving TIE fully intact.

 

8. Is there a way to get Armamentarium working with it to have the extra color variants of equipment but share the same stats/balance as the TIE items? (I like collecting stuff.)

 

9. Is there another overhaul mod that does tame or remove the scaling of both Cyrodiil AND the DLC; keeps Amber and Madness the best* (even if it has to be made harder to find); makes the decision of Heavy or Light armor a tough choice even at max skill for both of them; balances races and birthsigns and is compatible with the Race Balancing Project, Cobl races, or Supreme Magicka's race and birthsign tweaks; removes the "need" to save quests for later to get the best rewards or is compatible with the Quest Award Leveler; and tames the mighty Chameleon enchantment or is compatible with Supreme Magicka? I realize that's asking a lot, but better I ask and learn there isn't than for there to be one and I never know about it.

 

* I wouldn't want them completely trumping the Crusader set though.

 

I also realize that many of these questions can be answered with personal testing, but I would prefer knowing the answers before making significant progress once again, and if someone already knows the answer to any of them and doesn't mind sharing their knowledge, that could save me a lot of time. The TIE FAQ and readme are fairly lacking in the sorts of things I want answered.