Mod content alteration

[Pentegass]

Hi guys

I'm a person who mostly spends time building in settlements, as you would guess, I've loads of workshop mods. But the amount of workshop mods have started to bear heavy on my cpu and computer.

The workshop menu is opening slower every day, or every mod I add. I sometimes add a huge mod and use a little part of it, a wall or a ceiling. And still would have to install atleast 200 300 more content I wont be using at all.

 

My question would be, if it's possible to alter the content of mods that I've downloaded from nexusmods, Like I would keep the walls yet remove the rusted cars and so on, manually somehow.

I really want to easen the load on my cpu because its already overworking at this point.

 

Any help or recommendation would be appreciated

(note: please if you are to help, elaborate the explanation a bit deeper because I'm not a person that would easily understand how mods or mod files work)

 

Thanks in advance.

[skubblebubble]

If you only want one or two items out of each one, you're probably better off making your own mod, but...

 

If you've already used the mod to add items, either making your own mod, doing a merged patch etc, you will LOSE whatever is already in game.

(caps, base mats are fine, new items etc, gone)

 

So you'd be looking at starting a new game.

 

That said, pulling items out of each mod into a mashup of your own would work.

 

If it's just a retexture of an item, then make your own, and use that texture.

If it's a new wall/mesh, same deal, make your own version of it using the same meshes etc.

 

You'll have to extract all the meshes/materials/textures first of course.

 

If anything is using scripts, well... much harder.

If using SKE or the like, um..

 

Obviously, you CANNOT upload your mashup/custom mod without permission from everyone who made the original items, but you can

do the above for your own personal use.

 

Plenty of tutorials on how to make items, merge mods etc.

 

how mod files work:

 

Masters (.esm files) Loaded first always. These get used by other mods as pre-requisites.

 

Mods. (.esp files) Load order can be important. (will come back to this)

 

replacers: texture replacers just drop in replacement textures that override other mods as loose files.

 

The game loads, esm, esp and their archive files (.ba2 files). Archives are just that. textures, materials, meshes etc, archived into a couple of files.

Loose files: in your /data/whatever, these override the archives.

 

Perfect example is using CBBE to batch build meshes for outfits based on some body types etc. This drops replacement meshes throughout your data structure, and can cause problems later in the CK. (as it did for me). Easy to fix though.

 

Coming back to mod files. .esp this is the record file of new items, changed items etc. Tells the game what the thingie is, and what materials, meshes, textures, scripts etc to use. Archives are the actual files to make the records work.

 

Mesh (.nif) the 3d model of the item. Material file (.bgsm) tells the game what textures and attributes to use. Textures (.dds) the actual texture (skin) to put on the model.

 

A rather simple one is the police uniform one I just did. Original mod is loose textures. I made new outfits using those textures, so that loose files would not be required.

 

So, for say, SWAT armor:

 

Make a new armor (ARMO), Armor addon (ARMA), and material swap (MSWP) record.

 

Used the same meshes (mostly in the mod).

 

New swap record tells the game what to swap what with what. Original with the new .bgsm (which uses the new textures, the entire reason for the mod)

eg: SWAT Armor for the record name: then says to swap the original .bgsm with my new one.

 

The ARMA is where we tell the game to actually use that swap file. (edit the mesh used, and you see options for material swaps. Can select the new MSWP we made in here) This tells the game to do that.

 

The ARMO is the actual new armor record, making it a different item than the original. We could have just been changing armor values, etc.

 

Then of course, making a crafting recipe, so we can make the item in game.

 

Thems the basics.

 

Doing the above for other crafting items are the same principles, but different records.

Furniture, activators, containers etc.

 

Save the mod often!!!!!!!

 

What you want is doable, but it's going to be a lot of work. Not hard work, but tedious if you have a lot of items and a lot of mods.

(been there, done that. tis how I learned)

 

:)

[Macrophobic]

I often edit or merge clothing and armor mods, recipes, NPC stats. But you are asking about settlement building mods.

 

Most of popular building mods are frequently updated, so removing some features doesn't make much sense, cause it's pretty obvious your changes will be undone after you install a new version. Other mods (like Snap and Build) are obsolete, no longer supported, so any possible bugs you encounter won't be fixed.

 

Be careful with removing items from the workshop menu, cause you can even make entire categories disappear, especially if the mod was already installed and you use the altered version in existing save.

 

If mods you're using are huge and they seriously slow down loading of the workshop menu tabs, making some minor changes won't make much improvement. I know things like planters, greenhouses or pre-war buildings are included in 3-4 different mods, but maybe, instead of removing these features from these mods, a better idea would be just uninstalling some of mods and using only those you really need? And maybe one of these mods slows down loading time more than others?