LOOT giving totally different load order for same mod setup

[Shabdez]

For some reason MO2 had a complete amnesia after a couple of weeks I didn't play Skyrim SE. The installed mods were still in place but MO2 showed all of them as not activated and priority records followed the alphabetical order of mod names.

After I reactivated the mods and put them in the correct INSTALL order, I ran loot to also sort the plugins. I was kind of surprised to see a very different result when comparing it to the plugin list that is baked into my last savegame - at least as it is shown in ReSaver.

I know that it is not recommended to change load order on a running game, so what shall I do now? Take the recent LOOT order or rearrange it according to the ReSaver reading?

[Zanderat]

LOOT analyzes dependencies and sorts accordingly. So, unless you wish override the meta-data to suit your preferences, probably what you are seeing is no big deal.

[cdcooley]

LOOT only moves mods when it needs to in order to solve particular dependency problems. So the order the mods are in before the sort will affect the final result. You say you put the mods in install order but apparently that wasn't the same as the order you had in the last save game. If you had added mods and sorted repeatedly over time then it's very likely you would get a different result than sorting them all together at once. Personally I would put them in the order from the save game file then run LOOT again. There's a reasonable chance that if they are already in the same order as the save game then LOOT will leave them in that order (and if it doesn't you probably do need to use the changes LOOT makes).

[Shabdez]

"You say you put the mods in install order but apparently that wasn't the same as the order you had in the last save game."

 

That is correct, I can´t recall the exact install order so I tried my best to make it as close as possible. One third of the mods are texture replacers, I guess they won't make any problem at all. For the rest I will follow your advice, cdcooley, and sort them by the order of the pugins in the save game file. Then see what LOOT suggests.

Thanks for your help.