BSA Archives & FormID Injection

[D1SoveR]

I've been going over my mod collection, trying to decrease the game's footprint on my system (and itself - the crashes have been getting quite annoying). In such process, I've taken a look at all the asset files and how I could store them in a more manageable way.

 

First look at the BSA archives (and the problems I've encountered in previous Gamebryo games) leads me to following questions:

• Are there any specific limitations on what assets can and cannot be put into BSA in Fallout 3?
  
• What determines the order in which BSA files are loaded and processed?
  
• How do BSA archives handle the conflicts? If, for example, I have the same file (path-wise) in two archives, is the file from the first or the last one going to be used?
  
• How to force Fallout 3 to load BSA archive? One option covered was to create archive with the same name as ESP. Does putting archive name in SArchiveList parameter in Fallout.ini work properly?
  

 

Also, editing the mods in FO3Edit, merging the files and whatnot, I've encountered instances of injected FormIDs. As in, FormIDs that physically resided in a plugin, but were numbered as if their origin was was on that plugin's master files. In an example, I have loaded:

• Fallout3.esm [ Prefix: 00 ]
  
• Anchorage.esm [ Prefix: 01 ]
  
• Xepha's Dynamic Weather.esm [ Prefix: 02 ]
  
• Xepha's Dynamic Weather - Anchorage.esp [ Prefix: 03 ]
  

...and, according to FO3Edit, among new entries in the last one (all numbered with 03xxxxxx FormIDs) there was an entry numbered as 01xxxxxx, FormID suggesting it was from Anchorage.esm. Thus, I'm curious - what are these entries and what purpose do they serve?

 

With best regards,

Mikolaj "D1SoveR" Banasik

[rickerhk]

The BSA questions are something I would like to know too.

 

If you have a esm/esp pair, you can inject a form into the master by changing the first two digits of the form in the esp. Say you have them loaded in FO3Edit. The master is listed as 02 and the esp as 03. Then you pick a form in the esp , changing it's form ID prefix to 02. This will inject it into the master (not actually alter the master file, though). Usually this is done as a preparation in order to merge new items in an esp 'up' into the esm. Once these new forms are injected, the details of the Forms can be copied into the esm, and then the esp discarded.

As far as injecting forms into a main game asset like Anchorage.esm, my question would be - does this in fact give other plugins access to the injected form, as long as they have Anchorage.esm as a master?