How Nexus actually works when installing mods.

[shaggy08251993]

I believe there are a lot of people who come here for help because while they may understand a lot about gaming and installing mods, there are some who don't understand the science behind how it works. One of those things being when Nexus Mod Manager doesn't function properly. I've made this guide to help with the troubleshooting process.

This is how NMM actually works. When you "add" a mod to Nexus, and then install it. Nexus makes a FULL copy of that mod in the Nexus folder for said game...that's why some mods take forever to install...because you have to wait for Nexus to make a duplicate of everything. Say you have ModA on your desktop and add it to Nexus, you'll notice ModA is now in the Nexus directory as well as the desktop. The contents of the cloned ModA are exactly the same, or the equivalent of copy & pasting. Sorry for the over-elaboration. I know I said the same thing like 3 different ways.

Note: Nexus directory is C:/Games/Nexus Mod Manager/Fallout 4

That isn't all though. Aside from cloning the mod, then it also extracts the contents of the mod from the CLONED file, and injects it into the game directory...essentially making a 3rd clone. So now, you'd have ModA on your desktop, in the Nexus directory for the game, and now you'd have the extracted/unpacked contents of ModA in the game directory. You do NOT need ModA located on your desktop at this point though. You can feel free to delete that. Nexus will only read the information from the mod located within the Nexus directory.

Example. Say ModA is actually ModA.rar (or .zip or .7z. It is all the same thing, just different compressed files. Nexus can read all of them). Say inside of ModA.rar, the content tree is as follows:

Textures (insert texture files here)

Meshes (insert mesh files here)

Data-->

Sound (insert audio files here)

ModA.esp

Go do your actual Fallout 4 game directory, and you will notice the exact same file structure. When you "active/install" a mod in Nexus, it extracts the contents of the ModA.rar file and sorts it into the proper folders of the actual game directory.

When you "deactive" a mod with Nexus, the mod stays in the Nexus directory, but it removes the unpacked files from the game directory...this way Nexus knows that you still have the mod on the computer, but the files won't be read when the game starts because they are no longer there.

When you "Uninstall" a mod with Nexus, it removes the loose/unpacked files from the game directory AND deletes the file from the Nexus directory...essentially completely removing it from your computer (and I think it throws it in the recycle bin).

Edited May 31, 2017 by shaggy08251993