Bat files (40 or 50) with dependency on load order.

[Njala]

This is mostly an FYI kind of post, but I welcome comments in case I am overlooking something pretty obvious- which given my cursory study of vortex would not be surprising. I put Vortex on a different machine to see how it would do with my typical setups. I'm cautiously optimistic I will grudgingly upgrade my main machine sometime in the next few months even though I may have to do a bit more work to make adjustments.

Like practically every enthusiast, I heavily mod Fallout4, and I do it in a somewhat atypical way which is not that unusual either. My deal is that I heavily prefer build/ clothe type activities and have to rely on bat files at advanced stages (level 200+) to reduce the tedium. With thousands of settlers in 90 odd settlements, I have grown dependent on batch scripts to equip settlers. The attire and weapons are from a large number of mods, and it is a pain in the neck to update the bat files every time the load order of one of these mods changes. In NMM, I managed to keep my mod order stable by placing mods that don't care where they get placed early in the load list prior to the mods I need to keep at a stable load number. I simply subtract one from these "buffer mods" from the top of the list whenever some newly installed mod gets all hot and bothered about being loaded early. So ok works good enough on NMM, and after playing with Vortex in earnest for a little while, I saw how I could lock the load location for particular modules, but I also saw I could do my buffer mods strategy by putting them in what Vortex calls group put it at the top of the list to achieve the same functionality. OTOH, perhaps it will be the least hackish if I put together a grep script that would update by utility bat files. The order can be determined from Plugins.txt as far as I can see, and then grep script would just remangle all of the bats with the updated locations. Pain in the rear but what the heck. The settlers want to be looking their best in their Ellie originals, and then perhaps I wouldn't have to be so paranoid-protective about trying out new mods.

 

It blows my mind how many extremely elaborate mods the creation engine can handle and not blow up. The wealth and variety of mods being created pose major coordination challenges and I salute the Vortex developer(s) for addressing some major ones. I think every enthusiast appreciates how bad things can get. when things go south with some new or rearranged sets of mods. It is not fun blowing away a day trying to figure out mod incompatibilities, or reloading from scratch. If you guys save even a dozen folks from that kind of nightmare, it is heroic. Best regards.

[HadToRegister]

Can you post an example bat file in spoiler tags, I'm curious as to why you have to edit the file whenever the load order changes?

[Njala]

Sure- this is one of about 20 that equips a settler. Used in late game when I have 100K+caps, so there is no barrier to creating this stuff- just the tedium of creating it at the benches, and manually equipping thousands of settlers with an outfit and corresponding armor/ weapons. I use diverse and better settlers, but these don't access the variety of items available in the sort of mods I listed in comments.

<><><> begin bat equipC, executed after selecting the settler <><><><><>

equipitem 5C0028A6 ;Lazman Wasteland Common

; Purpose: Fallout4 script clothes and arms settler with a particular outfit style and weapons/ armor combination
; Assumes: MOD prefixes- (mod actual load number is -1, so armorsmith would be load order $14)
; 15) Armorsmith extended
; 1E: Eli Armor compendium
; 22: Tera Rogue mod
; 23: Eli Alecus Rogue mod
; 24: Eli terra Rogue mashup must be loaded here.
; 2a: clothingOverhaul
; 3F: AA Fusion City
; 4D: Sister of Battle
; 52: Crismsonrider's accessories
; 57: Weaponsmith Extended (M14, PTRS-41 Desert )
; 5C) Mods Outcasts and Remnants,
; 5D) Project Valkyrie
; 5E) America Rising
; 5F) Project Phoenix
;
; search for items with console "help outfit 4 armo"
; Modify body for variety with bodyslide
;
CGF "Debug.Notification" "C. Add Lazman Wasteland Common outfit/ arms for this Settler."


;accessories
equipitem 52000917 ;necklace
equipitem 536C5 ;wraparound glasses

;Armor
equipitem 18796c ; synth armor
equipitem 18796e ;
equipitem 187970
equipitem 187972
equipitem 187974 ; end synth armor

;Slung weapons
equipitem 15000ef2 1 ; sniper rifle- butt high on right (prob hunting rifle-)
equipitem 15000e7e 1 ; pistol with slung sniper
;equipitem 15000f07 1 ;legiron sawed off shotgun- incompatible with underoutfits lazman*,


;Weapons
;equipitem 75fe4 2 ; 2 fusion cores for gatling
;equipitem e27bc ; gatling

equipitem 5708831c ; WH-77

 

[rmm200]

Very interesting. I never considered bat files which incorporate mod indexes... I just do base game stuff like factions, which are always index 0.

There is no bat equivalent to papyrus looking up a mod by name and substitute that value in?

[HadToRegister]

Sure- this is one of about 20 that equips a settler. Used in late game when I have 100K+caps, so there is no barrier to creating this stuff- just the tedium of creating it at the benches, and manually equipping thousands of settlers with an outfit and corresponding armor/ weapons. I use diverse and better settlers, but these don't access the variety of items available in the sort of mods I listed in comments.

 

<><><> begin bat equipC, executed after selecting the settler <><><><><>

 

equipitem 5C0028A6 ;Lazman Wasteland Common

 

; Purpose: Fallout4 script clothes and arms settler with a particular outfit style and weapons/ armor combination

; Assumes: MOD prefixes- (mod actual load number is -1, so armorsmith would be load order $14)

; 15) Armorsmith extended

; 1E: Eli Armor compendium

; 22: Tera Rogue mod

; 23: Eli Alecus Rogue mod

; 24: Eli terra Rogue mashup must be loaded here.

; 2a: clothingOverhaul

; 3F: AA Fusion City

; 4D: Sister of Battle

; 52: Crismsonrider's accessories

; 57: Weaponsmith Extended (M14, PTRS-41 Desert )

; 5C) Mods Outcasts and Remnants,

; 5D) Project Valkyrie

; 5E) America Rising

; 5F) Project Phoenix

;

; search for items with console "help outfit 4 armo"

; Modify body for variety with bodyslide

;

CGF "Debug.Notification" "C. Add Lazman Wasteland Common outfit/ arms for this Settler."

 

 

;accessories

equipitem 52000917 ;necklace

equipitem 536C5 ;wraparound glasses

 

;Armor

equipitem 18796c ; synth armor

equipitem 18796e ;

equipitem 187970

equipitem 187972

equipitem 187974 ; end synth armor

 

;Slung weapons

equipitem 15000ef2 1 ; sniper rifle- butt high on right (prob hunting rifle-)

equipitem 15000e7e 1 ; pistol with slung sniper

;equipitem 15000f07 1 ;legiron sawed off shotgun- incompatible with underoutfits lazman*,

 

 

;Weapons

;equipitem 75fe4 2 ; 2 fusion cores for gatling

;equipitem e27bc ; gatling

 

equipitem 5708831c ; WH-77

 

 

 

Wow, very nice.

I understand now, why you'd have to edit the bat files each time the load order changes, I didn't realize you were using the actual RefIDs for each item.

I don't suppose there's a way to 'wildcard' the first two characters in the refIDs?

Well, probably wouldn't work with the gamebryo engine anyway

 

??796c

??796e

 

 

[Njala]

RMM- If there were, I am not sure how far a person could get. As far as I know, bat scripts don't even have support for variables, never mind conditionals or branching/ looping.

 

The right way to do this would be to code something everyone could benefit from- say upgrade Better Settlers to have a dynamic list of attire to pick from- so for example if OAR and fusion city mods were loaded, there would be a ton of extra outfits to randomly assign. For my part, I am content to do the equivalent of a batch grep on my bat files to convert them when the mod management software decides to rearrange my load order. (HadToReg- like what you intend with wildcard except the grep would replace [ModToken] with [ModLoadHex]). If my strategy for keeping Vortex from doing musical chairs on me works, then I won't need to and can stick with static bats.