BOSS or LOOT

[dullchicken]

So I have heard about a new program called LOOT and it is supposed to be like BOSS. Is it any better or what?

[Yargh23]

LOOT is essentially the successor to BOSS. BOSS was the base for LOOT but the large changes in functionality caused it to become a new utility with a different name. I'd recommend using LOOT since it's more up to date than BOSS. However I hear work is still being done on BOSS, just not as actively as LOOT.
I like that LOOT gives you the option to set custom load rules so if there's a mod it keeps sorting wrong, you can just set a rule for it to load after a certain mod and it'll do that every time you sort your plug ins. No more having to drag a misplaced mod across your load order every time you have to sort.

Edited December 22, 2014 by Yargh23

[DoctorKaizeld]

some members of the team that made LOOT and BOSS still update BOSS for older games that LOOT doesnt cover, not Skyrim

[lofgren]

Boss also allows you to set custom load rules. In fact the gui for doing so was better than LOOT's by quite a bit in my opinion.

 

Basically the difference is that LOOT looks at mods it does not recognize and takes a guess as to where they belong, while BOSS just sends mods it doesn't recognize to the bottom and tells you to take care of it yourself. If you're comfortable tweaking your own load order then neither tool is any better than the other. If you don't know what you are doing (or, like me, don't want to have to think about it too much because you would rather use that brainspace for other things) then LOOT is better.

Edited December 22, 2014 by lofgren

[ESfan2011]

LOOT sucks!!! Plain and simple. I've discovered a simple way to tell whether my game is going to run happily or not. If you start a new game and the wagon wheels are out in front of the wagon or worse the whole screen is tumbling then you have an unhappy load order. LOOT can't even get some of the basic mods in the right order. For example, the High Res Texture Pack patch that should be right after the main files, it has put in the middle of the load order. It also can't seem to put mods in the proper order, like dg comes before db. So, I run LOOT and start a new game and my screen is flipping and flopping all over the place. I run BOSS with the exact same mods and started a new game and everything was smooth as silk. If they expect LOOT to replace BOSS then they should probably get a better grip on how the load order works because I haven't seen any real change in over a year that tells me that they have a clue.

[bben46]

@ Esfan - Did you look at date on that post? It's several months old. You seem to have gone out specifically to find a LOOT thread to trash just because you don't like LOOT and dug up a old thread to do it.

 

It seems you are in a minority that doesn't like LOOT. Somehow it seems to work for nearly everyone else. Maybe everyone else is doing it wrong? :rolleyes:

 

By all means if you get better results with BOSS continue using it. But please don't ASSume that everyone else must be having the same problems with LOOT as you - because they aren't.

Neither LOOT nor BOSS is perfect, and the devs know that and tell you in the documentation that it is a starting place for setting your load order and not a cure all for load order problems.

 

Did you know the same team made BOSS? And that LOOTs original working name was BOSS v3? Did you know that Beth changed the way they set load order in Skyrim ( it's not the same as the method used in Oblivion or Fallout) and that is one of the reasons for LOOT working differently than BOSS. Another was that with BOSS, only mods that were already in the database could be sorted at all. And anything not in that database was just dumped at the end for you to deal with. LOOT tries to fix that by actually looking at what a mod changes and placing it accordingly. It actually works very well for most mods. But they do allow you to make any changes - and it will remember those changes based on rules you set. For many mods the load order is not important at all, and for others, just in relation to some other specific mods.

 

There is no one perfect load order that MUST be followed. Many mods can be placed anywhere, and others need to be ahead of just a few certain other mods.

[Brandon007]

Trolls be trolling. A Guy with only 10 posts, He has probably never asked for help in trying to get that problem even solved...

 

Loot probably would work fine for him, its just he probably has a conflicting mod, or FNIS wasnt installed properly.

[JapanStuff]

I'm having a problem downloading the BOSS masterlist with v2.3.0. It would seem the github resource is missing the Masterlist altogether. I can't use Loot because I'm running Windows XP x64. Do any of you have a solution for working with BOSS in my situation. If there is a resource that has the most recent BOSS masterlist, I would appreciate someone sharing it's location.

 

TIA

 

JapanStuff

Edited February 17, 2015 by JapanStuff

[Shaitan051]

LOOT sucks!!! Plain and simple. I've discovered a simple way to tell whether my game is going to run happily or not. If you start a new game and the wagon wheels are out in front of the wagon or worse the whole screen is tumbling then you have an unhappy load order.

I will take that as confirmation that LOOT is superior. When I started a new game after reinstalling and adding new mods it was like I was in a clothes dryer during the initial cart ride. After switching to LOOT from BOSS, which I only found out about today, it switched around about a dozen mods and suddenly all is well.

[ToppDog]

LOOT caused problems for me when I used it too, probably for the same reasons Lofgren described. I had to go back to BOSS to fix the issues I had that were created when using LOOT. On either app I only ran them on default settings, & in that department, BOSS seemed to work better with the mods I have installed.