Suggestion - a recurring problem that I am surprised hasn't been addressed

[MarkusTay]

So I just switched to Vortex, having done a COMPLETE reinstall of EVERYTHING (all programs involved in running FO4 including Steam itself). After much hair-pulling, I finally got everything working correctly (fingers crossed). I just hope in the end it was worth switching (I see the potential there).

 

I have a lot of mods that depend on other mods, and in some cases, when mod authors decided to update their mods (usually a good thing), they change the name of the .esp file. Now, aside from returning form a late-night of drunken revelry before uploading new stuff, I can see no logical reason for any of them to ever do that. ESPECIALLY when they know other mods link to theirs. I have several that have done this.

 

Now I suppose the simplest solution for all the 'gurus' around here is to just go in and edit the name of the .esp file (and at least one mod author has suggested that.. rather than fix the name...). I am hoping to be able to do that myself today (so much YOUTube video watching the rest of the day), but in the meantime Vortex gives me the 'Missing Masters' message. The master ISN'T missing - its just named something different now.

 

In a perfect world, Vortex would be a like a magical genie and be able to change these files 'on the fly' (perhaps with some sort of virtual file setup and 'use as <*>' or some-such), but I realize that's really outside of what a MO is supposed to do, and would probably cause more problems of its own. Ideally, everyone should learn how to mod themselves so they can fix these things themselves (which is my plan). But in the interim, would it be possible to have some sort of way of letting Vortex know there is no problem - the master IS there, its just got the wrong name. My game ran fine for two months with that problem when I had MO2.

 

It could work like how you have the conflicts setup - just show me the file and allow me to point to a different file and say 'use as'. Now, I am not talking about full functionality (although if that were possible that would be grand), I am simply talking about getting rid of that annoying message that pops-up CONSTANTLY. I do not need to be reminded every 10 seconds that master is missing. And if this were a unique situation I would not even be bothering you, but I have several where this 'renaming' thing has become a problem.

 

Or maybe mod-authors could just stop renaming their esp's that are used by other mods...

[TheGreatFalro]

Generally, at least in my experience, when a mod author changes their .esp name, it is specifically to prevent mods that depend on it from working with that version, because they haven't been updated for the newest version, and likely something significant changed in the mod that would cause issues if the dependency tried to interact with it.

[MarkusTay]

I see, Thank you for the reply - that hadn't occurred to me.

 

That then forces dependent mods to update their own stuff to make it compatible with the new version - that makes perfect sense, actually.

 

Unfortunately it also has the side-effect of slowly making older mods more and more obsolete until people can't use them anymore... which is a damn shame, because there are some old ones that are really good, and haven't been updated in like two years.

 

I got it working though - I just renamed the file in my windows folder. Then Vortex was showing me both versions, and gave me a warning that the renamed one wasn't a 'real plugin'. At least it isn't telling me I have missing masters anymore.