How do I fix "mod order" problems in Vortex?

[Y2Ryoko]

I'm having trouble with Starlight is Bright Again where the original Starlight Drive is spawning inside of the mod's, rendering it unusable. Previously, there was a simple fix for this: manually moving the Starlight mod to the bottom of the load order. In Vortex, there doesn't seem to be a way to do this. Supposedly I can use the "rules" system to be able to force where and when a mod loads, but none of that works in this case. Telling Starlight to load after a mod near the bottom of my order just forces that mod to move above it in the list. There're also too many mods in my order to individual make rules for all of them, and using the rules to force a load position jeopardizes those other mods.

 

Every solution posed in the mod's thread and elsewhere is "Move it down in the load order" and I can't seem to do that in Vortex. Is there a method I'm just missing?

[Grestorn]

Putting a mod at the bottom of the list is just the easy way out. It can't be the solution to all problems, there is just one bottom of the list... ð

 

The correct solution would be to figure out which other plugin causes the conflict. The guys of Starlight should be able to help with that. Alternatively you can try to find the conflict in xEdit.

 

As a workaround you can use the feature to assign a group to the plugin. The group controls the general area of the list where a plugin is sorted to.

 

The group names are dependent on the game you're talking about, so I'm not 100% sure about them, but the correct one should be named 'Dynamic Patches' or 'Late order patches' something like that.

[sopmac45]

Of course there is a way to do this. If the mod generates a plugin, then go to the PLUGIN section, find the plugin related to the mod, double-click on it and a right pane will opens up and in the field where you see the word DEFAULT, drop the arrows down and choose Dynamic Patches Group so this plugin will be moved automatically to the bottom of your plugins load order. Do not forget to Enable the Auto-sort function in the PLUGIN tab.

 

The other way is via Drag and Drop but the easier way is the one shown above. Both are effective and Vortex will respect what you do, but I do prefer to use the first method ( placing the plugin in the last group - above paragraph - ).

 

For the mod part ( MOD section ), the only thing you can do is to resolve any conflict this mod has against others. Just click on the red bolt of your mod Starlight is Bright Again and a small window will pop up and will show you all the list of all the mods conflicting with yours. Choose LOAD AFTER in all the windows beside those mods list and your mod will overwrite all of them. Again, in this section, you can only fix conflicts between mods via resolving rules in the way that I explained to you. By doing so, again, your mod will overwrite any other mod that is conflicting with.

 

Again, in the PLUGIN section, you fix which plugin load last in your load order by placing that plugin in the last group. You can check in this section, how your groups are organized automatically by Vortex by clicking in the GROUP tab located on the top of the PLUGIN section. There, you can even create your own group and place it anywhere that you want BUT I won't recommend doing this till you read everything about it and IMHO, is not necessary to do so but to do what I explained to you in the first paragraph.

 

DISCLAIMER : It has been advised by several experienced users in this forum that you should not pay attention to what mod authors suggest about placing their mods in the bottom of the load order. This is not a MUST-TO-DO-THING. Remember this : LOOT is integrated into Vortex. Once you turn ON the Auto-Sort function in the PLUGIN section, you are practically adding LOOT automatically to Vortex, so anytime a plugin is added by a mod, it will be sorted automatically as if was LOOT doing the same thing and believe me, you should trust it blindly. Why ? Because LOOT is being fed constantly by mod authors, so they are adding their mod metadata to LOOT so when you sort, their mod will be placed automatically where it is supposed to be according to what they decided to add to LOOT. You cannot beat that but you can tweak it if you want to ... at your OWN RISK !

 

However, if you decide that your mod in question should be at the bottom of the list, then by all means, do so by doing what I explained to you in the first paragraph. It is your game and you decide what to do with it. Personally, I do not pay attention anymore to mod authors about placing their plugin on the bottom of the load order, I just let Vortex to decide it for me and so far, so good.

[sopmac45]

Sorry that I posted twice. For some reason when I clicked on the post, it did not do it immediately as it is supposed to happen.

[Y2Ryoko]

Thanks for all the suggestions. Setting the mod's group to Dynamic Patches ultimately fixed my problem and now it works perfectly. A few notes about the suggestions that didn't pan out though:

 

Trying to find whatever mod conflicted with the Starlight one was...well, impossible. I have over 275 mods installed and 209 plugins. The only other mod that I have that (most obviously) interacts with Starlight Drive is Videos of the Wasteland, but it wasn't the cause of this issue. There most certainly was another mod interfering with Starlight, but I couldn't track it down. Neither could xEdit for that matter.

 

Similarly, the mod never registered a conflict with any other, so the option to resolve them (the red lightning bolt) didn't appear.

 

So while I agree that moving a mod to the bottom of the load order is probably never the "true" solution to a problem, it was the only one that actually worked in this situation. It's not registering conflicts, manually testing Starlight vs 209 other mods is impractical, and looking for support specifically related to the mod itself just brought me back around to this.

[Grestorn]

@Y2Ryoko:

 

Glad that it worked out for you. And you can live with that solution for now.

 

But I wanted to add something, nevertheless:

 

What you're experiencing is a conflict in the plugin, not in the mod's loose files. The conflict detection in Vortex, which also causes the green or red flash to appear, can only detect loose file conflicts, not a conflict within plugins. That's why you don't see any conflict in Vortex.

 

To detect conflicts in plugins, you need to use special tools, like xEdit. LOOT tries to do its best to create a proper sort load order - unfortunately there is not THE ONE correct load order.

 

If you're really interested diving deeper into this issue, you could try to get familiar with xEdit. You could load all your mods into xEdit. With it's color coded list of records, it's not difficult to find all mods which are partly overwritten by your "Starlight" mod (I'd help you with that, if you're interested). And then you could control whether you want Starlight to be loaded before or after those mods. You could even create a "merged" or compatibility patch, because the conflict will always have a side effect. "Starlight" might work properly now, but the mod(s) you've overwritten will be affected somehow, even though it may not be detectable, right away.

 

But this is all really in the area of advanced modding already. If you're happy with your current solution, just stick to it.

[Y2Ryoko]

Thanks again for the suggestion. I decided to go back into xEdit to see if I can find any specific plugin conflicts and well... I did indeed find some. Unfortunately, it's pretty much "All of the things", many of which I would have had no reason to suspect. It hasn't caused any major issues with the mods involved, so I think I'm fine for now. The biggest conflict seems to stem from the Welcome to Goodneighbor and Northern Springs DLC mods, but I haven't noticed any problems there either. If anything, I've narrowed down what mods I consider essential and what mods can be removed, so if I do come across any severe problems from this, I can just clean out some mods and fix it that way.