BAIN install rules and whose files should win

[Moktah]

When you run boss, it sorts your mod load order and it adds the bash tags

when you rebuild your bashed patch, the tags are read by Wrye Bash and the appropriate items then get check marks as needed

[Tinien]

Leave them ticked. Wrye Bash will only import those things that need to be imported into the bashed patch.

 

So if a mod has a bash tag applied and is in the recommended load order set by BOSS but no other mod in your load order conflicts with that mod in any way it will not have anything imported into the bashed patch.

 

The report that comes up after building a bashed patch outlines exactly what type of records from which mods are imported into the bashed patch. If you really want to dig down and see what all those records in the bashed patch are load it up into TES4Edit and you'll see what the bashed patch contains and where those records come from.

Thanks for clarifying some things. But there are more of them that I still don't catch. How does Import function work? I've read on some other forum the following:

 

"If you have mods that effect the same thing more than once then you need Bashed Patch.

Say you have a NPC and 3 mods effecting that NPC

Mod 1 = gives NPC a new hat

Mod 2= gives NPC a new shirt

Mod 3 = gives NPC new shoes

 

With bashed patch NPC gets hat, shirt and shoes. Without the patch NPC only gets shoes. This is how it works for all things not just NPCs." End of citation.

But this example relates to only one category - apparel (or appearance in a whole), so different mods which change things in this one category should conflict if I understand correctly. However, if there are several mods which change DIFFERENT categories in the SAME object (1st mod - AI Packages, 2nd mod - appearance, 3rd mod - Animations, 4th mod - Spells, 5th mod - DeathItems, etc.) - then what? Will all these different mods' changes be integrated in the game into the same object if loaded correctly? Or only changes from the last of these mods in LO would be applied to this object in the game, and in order to apply changes from all these mods Import function in Wrye Bash will be necessary?

Edited February 1, 2019 by Tinien

[Striker879]

NPCs make a very poor example for comparing using Wrye Bash's bashed patch vs not using a bashed patch. The reason is once you touch an NPC in the Construction Set it is very likely that your mod will affect more than you intended for that NPC.

 

What I mean is that if your intent was to just change the NPC's AI packages there is a good chance you could affect appearance or other aspects, especially if you opened those menus and poked around a little and then hit OK to close the menu (even if you didn't actually change anything). It takes discipline to go in and only open what is absolutely necessary, make your changes and exit. There are tons of examples of mods that include plenty of unintended edits.

 

Last loaded wins in the vanilla game Load Order Wars.

 

Wrye Bash and bash tags can resolve most of the mayhem. Wrye Bash will use load order and, when used, bashed tags to resolve conflicts. Where two or more mods use the same bash tags and change the same record then load order wins between those conflicting mods.

 

If you read your BOSS report you'll see recommendations for cleaning some mods with TES4Edit. Cleaning mods before building your bashed patch makes life simpler for Wrye Bash, but I recommend only cleaning those that BOSS recommends cleaning.

 

If you want to get an idea of how complicated NPC editing can get take a look at Wrye Bash Advanced Readme.html section 5b (found in Oblivion\Mopy\Docs). That section outlines all of the bash tags available ... notice how many apply to NPCs. Your example would require 1st mod - Actors.AIPackages, 2nd mod - NPCFaces, 3rd mod - Acors.Animations, 4th mod - Actors.Spells, 5th mod - Actors.DeathItem ... etc.

 

In a perfect world, with mod authors who are experienced and diligent and who properly clean their mods before release, we could use load order to resolve all but the trickiest situations. Fortunately we have Wrye Bash and bash tags and the good old bash patch in our corner of the world we actually live in.

[Tinien]

I didn't know that even opening menus in other categories, besides that category which is edited intentionally, will affect those other categories as well.

But does it really matter? BOSS makes recommendations about imports based on tags that were manually written by the authors of these mods. And of course authors of these mods won't make tags which don't relate to intended edits in their mods hence BOSS will never know about those stray pokes. Then does it really matter whether there will be these unintended “changes” in other categories caused by a random tap?

 

BTW, about cleaning. This is another problem which I do not know if it's worth worrying about. In my LO only official DLCs are recommended for cleaning (according to BOSS). But opinions differ about cleaning official DLCs. Some people say that they should be cleaned while others don't recommend to do it. I'm more inclined to believe those others because there are also unofficial patches in LO which fix all (or most of all) errors and flaws in DLCs (maybe those ITMs and UDRs as well?). And these unofficial patches (UOMP, to be more brief) rely on standard, uncleaned DLCs, don't they? So if you clean DLCs then wouldn't there be some problems with compliance and compatibility of these patches with DLCs?

About Wrye Bash. I use older version 295 (Standalone), CBash v0.5.3: By default [sI], which (as it seems to me) is more fast and flawless than more recent versions (especially 300 and higher). I've read on one Oblivion imageboard about that and indeed this WB 295 works pretty well. I've also read that these older WB versions work better with Oblivion while 306, 307 (most recent, AFAIK) are better for Skyrim. The same goes for BOSS and LOOT. BOSS is better for Oblivion and LOOT is better for Skyrim.

[Striker879]

Not many mod authors bother to check (never mind clean) their mods with TES4Edit. Generally the only ones that get reported to BOSS as needing cleaning are the ones that have caused users problems (and even then a lot of times they go unreported). TES4Edit will report the ITMs and UDRs that it finds for mods that BOSS doesn't know about ... I personally only go looking if I suspect something is causing problems myself. At least, if you do clean a mod, TES4Edit makes a backup for you.

 

The same goes for bash tags ... seldom are they even investigated by mod authors unless prompted by users reporting problems. If BOSS doesn't add any bash tags to a mod but you find one that seems to fix something report it to mhahn123 so it can be checked out and added to the masterlist. Do note that bash tags should only be used when actually needed.

 

I don't think that cleaning the DLCs will affect how the UOMPs work with them. The UOMPs are designed to fix "intentional" errors for the most part (i.e. errors that Bethesda didn't/wouldn't bother spending time to correct). If you read through the UOP/UOMP change logs you'll see what is fixed at each revision.

 

I'm on Wrye Bash version 3.05 myself and haven't looked into trying out any newer/older versions. Yes it can be slow at times when rebuilding a bashed patch. I find that reducing the number of saves helps ... keep backups of all my saves on a 1TB Data drive (I'm a packrat).

 

Bottom line ... I only go looking for trouble after trouble has already been looking for me. If a mod works right out of the box then I leave well enough alone (but well enough will always involve a bashed patch with whatever options are selected by default ... only changed when something goes amiss).

[Tinien]

Thank you, Striker, that you've spent some of your time answering me. One last (I hope) and very important question. Isn't it late to rebuild Bashed Patch with different settings (if something in the game went wrong) during existing game? Won't I have to start a new game after rebuilding Bashed Patch? Say, if I'll later decide to add/remove some Import options to/from the game.

[Striker879]

No it won't cause problems at all, in fact from what I have read when you rebuild the bashed patch it actually makes a complete new one each time (meaning nothing is left from the previous bashed patch). That means that if you try something (say deselecting some options) and then decide to go back to original it's just a matter of rebuilding the patch.

 

Normally once you have your load order set, sorted with BOSS and you rebuild your bashed patch you don't need to bother with it anymore ... but if you make any changes to your load order (either change the order the mods are in, or remove or add any mods) you will need to reBOSS and rebuild.

 

I use BOSS's User Rules if I decide to change from the suggested BOSS load order, and for my own home-grown mods. If a mod is recognised by BOSS you just need to go through an extra step to get it to use your User Rule instead of it's suggested load order spot for that particular mod (after setting up the User Rule of course).

 

In the case of something going bad with the game, it will really depend on what has caused the problem, and whether or not the problem has borked your latest save. There are a lot of variables and not much way to make a general statement that will hold true in all but a handful of cases.

[Tinien]

I have another question or problem which cannot explain. Sometimes city guards or npcs don't attack monsters which are chasing me when I approach these npcs. One time this bug happened in Anvil to where I came with a wolf behind me - no one cared. I had to kill the wolf myself. Next time I came to Molag Bal's Shrine followed by a black bear - no one gives a f*#@. What does that mean and what is a cause of this indifference?

[Striker879]

Something that comes to mind as a possible cause is too many NPCs currently being processed (so some of those "too many" don't get processed).

 

In the case of the city guards example, I see you have Open Cities in your load order. Not sure whether it adds a bunch on NPCs or not, but when you approach a city gate a good portion of that city's NPC population is in at the very least an adjacent cell and then game will begin processing all but the low process NPCs (which in cities will be none).

 

Not sure of the Molag Bal example ... generally when I drag a beast to one of the shrines a party ensues (and I do play that game fairly often).

[Tinien]

Thank you for such a quick answer, Striker. So you think that this is because of Open Cities in case with Anvil? And I thought that it's OOO's fault, more exactly its advanced battle AI packages'. Or that it is because of importing AI Packages into the Bashed Patch. There were 74 of them imported into Oblivion.esm. But whatever what caused this AI bug is there some way to solve this problem so that all npcs (including guards) always reacted to enemy's approach?