Ideas how to resolve the manual load order/forced loot/meta rules problem

[sopmac45]

Sorry, I must have missed a piece of discussion about the Load Order, what is actually the problem with the load order on Vortex? (I'm not sarcastic: I don't understand)

 

I mean: Between manage dependancies (that should [iMO] be renamed in "Manage Order Rules") and the double click to open the Priority sub tab I managed to put almost everything where I want to...

 

Did I miss something?

 

 

About the Drag&Drop: Tecnically is doable but is inefficient and also a bit useless:

Or simply you say "no matter what A should stay in position X"? then if the load order isn't enough long you'll have another problem.

If A goes After C and Before D, what if you remove C or D? What if you move one of them? Did you move the whole block? And what if you move D over C (loop).

 

 

Yes, that is exactly what I though in the beginning that my list was long enough for me to drag/drop but .... there is another way : go to the Plugins Tab, click on Manage Dependencies icon ( located in the top left corner ), a window will pop up; you will see three fields, go to the first field from left to right, choose the mod that you want to "load after" ( same principle than drag/drop ), in the center field choose : load after and in the third field choose the mod that you want to be on the top of the mod you entered in the first field ( Ex. first field : Unofficial Skyrim Patch, center field : load after, third field : Lanterns of Skyrim - you are telling Vortex to load Unofficial Skyrim Patch after Lanterns of Skyrim ). Then click on ADD and then CLOSE.

 

Repeat the process for those mods that are too separated from each other so dragging and dropping is not possible. Also, when you drag/drop, as soon as you release your mod, the same window that I mentioned about will pop up, so, this window is very important. Not matter what way you choose to rearrange your mods, you will end up using that window.

 

Regarding dependencies, if A goes here and B goes there, I handled the way I thought and Vortex advised me about errors ( this is nice ) so by tweaking here and there I was able to deal with dependencies. However, Vortex tell you that dependencies are not necessarily a reason for your game to crash and this is true. A red record does not means all the time a bad thing, sometimes we must leave it where it is, so the difference with Vortex is that it does make it easier to deal with dependencies rather than go into the CK or xEdit and move those records. Honestly, doing that via CK or xEdit is simply, a real pain in the butt. I think that Vortex has it right IMHO. Hope this help. :cool:

[Tannin42]

First, you do us all a disservice when you take a comment out of context and then reply to what you wanted the post so say.

I've taken nothing out of context, I just told you that if your goal it to put your plugin at a certain position within the load order the tool of choice is priorities, not rules.

 

Second, there is a severe design flaw somewhere when the rule says put mod X after mod Y and mod Y is the one that winds up being moved to a position BEFORE mod X. Any statement or protestation to the contrary is a self serving delusion.

There is no design flaw, there is a misconception on your part.

Rules are purely a way to resolve a conflict between two plugins. How plugins without rules are arranged is "unpredictable" because, for the

purpose of conflict resolution, it doesn't matter how two plugins that have no conflict are arranged.

 

There is nothing wrong in the order

 

d.esp

mymod.esp

a.esp

b.esp

c.esp

 

If the only rule you have is mymod.esp after d.esp, because that rule is obviously obeyed.

 

My point is: The tool isn't bad just because you have the wrong expectations.

[MarchinBunny]

Ya, it seems like there is this big misconception or something on how load order works.

Mods can be literally in any order in a load order and be correct as long as there isn't any conflicts or dependencies.
So if you have 5 mods, A, B, C, D, and E, and only A and C conflict where A needs to be loaded after C, then any one of these orders is correct.

C

A

D

E

B

 

D
B
C
A
E

B

E

D

C

A

 

As long as A is after C, it's still correct. It will work just as well. It makes literally no difference. If you are manually ordering mods that don't need ordering, you are just wasting a load of time doing it for no reason.
I feel like this is why people think LOOT sorts things extremely poorly because they have an expectation it will sort everything in the same manner as they themselves would sort it, otherwise to them it's not correct. Not to say LOOT is perfect, but that is why you have the tools to manually create your own rules and priorities to override what LOOT doesn't get right.

[LawrenceFB]

 

 

Ya, it seems like there is this big misconception or something on how load order works.

 

Mods can be literally in any order in a load order and be correct as long as there isn't any conflicts or dependencies.

So if you have 5 mods, A, B, C, D, and E, and only A and C conflict where A needs to be loaded after C, then any one of these orders is correct.

 

C

A

D

E

B

 

D

B

C

A

E

 

B

E

D

C

A

 

As long as A is after C, it's still correct. It will work just as well. It makes literally no difference. If you are manually ordering mods that don't need ordering, you are just wasting a load of time doing it for no reason.

I feel like this is why people think LOOT sorts things extremely poorly because they have an expectation it will sort everything in the same manner as they themselves would sort it, otherwise to them it's not correct. Not to say LOOT is perfect, but that is why you have the tools to manually create your own rules and priorities to override what LOOT doesn't get right.

 

 

 

That is true for Plugin load order. The issue, at the moment, is if Mod load order can affect Plugin load order when two plugins that do not conflict have textures and/or meshes etc that do and are in bsa. It seems to me, and I could well be wrong, that in this case a plugin rule is needed for what is a resource conflict not a rules conflict.

 

It would be helpful if people distinguished between the two.

 

Please read carefully as I am agreeing with you, it is 'just not as simple as that'. I wish it was.

[MarchinBunny]

 

 

That is true for Plugin load order. The issue, at the moment, is if Mod load order can affect Plugin load order when two plugins that do not conflict have textures and/or meshes etc that do and are in bsa. It seems to me, and I could well be wrong, that in this case a plugin rule is needed for what is a resource conflict not a rules conflict.

 

It would be helpful if people distinguished between the two.

 

Please read carefully as I am agreeing with you, it is 'just not as simple as that'. I wish it was.

 

 

Truthfully, this is something I have never had to do myself, as everything I have used when it comes to textures and meshes are usually loose files.

[Tannin42]

 

 

That is true for Plugin load order. The issue, at the moment, is if Mod load order can affect Plugin load order when two plugins that do not conflict have textures and/or meshes etc that do and are in bsa. It seems to me, and I could well be wrong, that in this case a plugin rule is needed for what is a resource conflict not a rules conflict.

 

It would be helpful if people distinguished between the two.

 

Please read carefully as I am agreeing with you, it is 'just not as simple as that'. I wish it was.

 

 

If the assets are in bsas then they get loaded in the same order as their corresponding esp so yes, a plugin rule would be required to change the asset load order.

But you have to keep in mind that the plugin order is still relevant for game stability, as is the order in which script assets get loaded, so rules in the LOOT masterlist may already be there to solve asset conflicts on top of plugin-record conflicts.

 

When you have loose assets the install order on the mods page controls their load order and Vortex will show the lightning bolt icon when there is an install order conflict. If there isn't there isn't really a reason to control the install order.

[LawrenceFB]

 

 

 

If the assets are in bsas then they get loaded in the same order as their corresponding esp so yes, a plugin rule would be required to change the asset load order.

But you have to keep in mind that the plugin order is still relevant for game stability, as is the order in which script assets get loaded, so rules in the LOOT masterlist may already be there to solve asset conflicts on top of plugin-record conflicts.

 

When you have loose assets the install order on the mods page controls their load order and Vortex will show the lightning bolt icon when there is an install order conflict. If there isn't there isn't really a reason to control the install order.

 

 

I agree about loose assets. As I understand it at the moment, the asset conflicts are only shown for loose files. If/when bsa are included and LOOT has no reason to reorder the plugins, maybe because it is a dummy plugin, the user is going to have to go to the plugin tab to reorder things in the mods tab.

 

I am not trying to be argumentative or say give me this ro that I am only trying, badly, to point to a possible problem in the future. SkyrimSE seems, to me, to use more bsa , maybe because of CK.

[Tannin42]

 

 

 

 

If the assets are in bsas then they get loaded in the same order as their corresponding esp so yes, a plugin rule would be required to change the asset load order.

But you have to keep in mind that the plugin order is still relevant for game stability, as is the order in which script assets get loaded, so rules in the LOOT masterlist may already be there to solve asset conflicts on top of plugin-record conflicts.

 

When you have loose assets the install order on the mods page controls their load order and Vortex will show the lightning bolt icon when there is an install order conflict. If there isn't there isn't really a reason to control the install order.

 

 

I agree about loose assets. As I understand it at the moment, the asset conflicts are only shown for loose files. If/when bsa are included and LOOT has no reason to reorder the plugins, maybe because it is a dummy plugin, the user is going to have to go to the plugin tab to reorder things in the mods tab.

 

I am not trying to be argumentative or say give me this ro that I am only trying, badly, to point to a possible problem in the future. SkyrimSE seems, to me, to use more bsa , maybe because of CK.

 

 

Yes, in case you have two texture replacers that consist of dummy esp and bsa and you want to manually control the order between them you'd use a plugin load order rule and Vortex currently wouldn't show you that the two mods have asset conflicts.

 

The latter is simply a visualisation problem, Vortex may later get a way to show conflicts between bsas to simplify the process.

But there doesn't seem to be a great way to work around the fact that bsas and loose file mods differ in how you resolve conflicts on them. One approach you may find recommended is to extract BSAs but that's a very bad idea because, again, the bsa may also contain scripts and it may actually be important that the bsas get loaded in the same order as the esps.

Another approach was in MO1 where MO would use the ini file to load bsas and then hide loose files so it could fully control the asset load order from the mod list, but this has essentially the same problems as BSA unpacking.

 

At the end of the day I may just end up showing BSA conflicts in the mod list, like MO did, and when you set a rule between two BSA mods Vortex will offer to set a plugin rule instead. You'd still not be able to set an effective mod rule between a bsa and a loose file mod.

[LawrenceFB]

 

Another approach was in MO1 where MO would use the ini file to load bsas and then hide loose files so it could fully control the asset load order from the mod list, but this has essentially the same problems as BSA unpacking.

 

At the end of the day I may just end up showing BSA conflicts in the mod list, like MO did, and when you set a rule between two BSA mods Vortex will offer to set a plugin rule instead. You'd still not be able to set an effective mod rule between a bsa and a loose file mod.

 

 

I did not know adout the ini magic, I had only heard vague references to it :smile: .

 

Allowing plugin rules to be written from the mods tab, if/when doable, would be great. How you show which mods can and cannot be moved above each over when resolving conflicts I will leave in your capable hands. I hate working on user interfaces :smile: .