I still want the ability to manually drag plugins in the load order and here's why

[HadToRegister]

um, might be a little late but, on the plugins list all you have to do is hold mouse click then drag, maybe that's not what you're talking about

 

Nope, my problem is beyond that

[HadToRegister]

Well, I'm going to be modding up Fallout New Vegas because I reinstalled it, so I'll use that as an opportunity to get used to using groups, ESPECIALLY because of all the UI mods that have to be installed in a certain order.
It looks like it will advantageous to group them so they can be moved around as a unit if need be.
That's one of the most dreadful parts of modding FONV.

[Tannin42]

When I make patches, I need the patch to sit below the esps I've patched so the patch overrides the previous esps.

It would just be easier to drag it in place and lock it there, than to fiddle around with rules for something that could be dragged and locked in a couple of seconds.

 

click the dependency icon on the patch, edit, then check the plugins you integrated and confirm.

Yes, this is a bit more involved then dragging the plugin directly but not that much.

Otoh you now have "stored" the information about which plugin you patched in the form of dependency rules and even if you leave the game and return half a year later you can still figure out what that patch patches.

Plus it doesn't matter if any tool you're using messes up your plugin list, sorting from vortex now reliably and automatically restores your patch to the correct position.

 

So you're getting a lot of robustness to your plugin management for a little extra effort.

 

Or you could just assign your custom patch to the "dynamic patches" group which should be even quicker than drag&drop, also have the effect of loading your patch after every "normal" plugin (I'm assuming you're not patching the patches) and you have the added bonus of having your patch categorised nicely.

 

I tried using rules last night to do this and ended up with a load order that turned into a complete mess because the sorting part of the program misinterpreted what I wanted to do, so it shifted over half of my load order upside down

 

Ex:

I want MOD A to load after MOD B.

I need MOD B to stay where it is.

 

Instead of moving MOD A down BELOW MOD B, (Where MOD B needs to stay), it moved MOD B ABOVE MOD A, and messed up what I had going with MOD B.

 

You're confusing "rule" with "change instruction". Rules are not applied relative to the existing load order - there is no "stay where it is". LOOT generates a new, deterministic load order independent of how the load order looked before. So you could delete your plugins.txt, shuffle it, doesn't matter: after you auto sort you get a load order that fulfills all the rules you had. Doesn't matter how it looked before, the only thing that matters is rules, groups and some loot magic that orders plugins based on their content/record conflicts.