SSE Unofficial SSE patch as a master? Would you do it?

[cumbrianlad]

Hi.

 

This post is intended to clear my mind and that of others as to why you should/should not add the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch as a master to your esp.

 

I started this thread after testing a mod made without using USSEP as a master. I've never thought about using it as a master in any of my personal mods. Anyway, when testing my armour balance mod on an Elf character I noticed that equipped circlets didn't render when in 3rd person mode, although any enchantments on them were active. The cause? A conflict with a fix in the USSEP.

 

I could get it to work with the patch as a master, or I could use the assets from the patch and make my mod compatible (as far as I wanted to), but with no requirement for the patch as a master. I chose the latter.

 

What do you think?

 

In any case, this experience has made me aware that the changes I'm making in my esp may well affect what the team at the unofficial patch have done.

[SkiaMK]

I started out with it as one of the masters on a large quest mod I am currently working on but decided to scrap the ESP and start over without it as one of the masters since I know there are a fair amount of people that don't use it. I can just create a patch if needed; when all is said and done what's one more patch, i'm already expecting to make at least a dozen for various popular mods anyway.

[cdcooley]

I make my personal mods dependent on the unofficial patch, but not any mod I would release. I don't like forcing dependencies unless there's absolute no way around it. But yes, I always check to see if I'm overriding anything from the patch because if at all possible I want to "forward" their changes into my mod if at all possible.

[doticu]

As a developer I can't speak on the reasons why or why not to use the patch as a master.

 

As a user of many mods that make changes overriding the unofficial patch, I find it frustrating that I have to add another .esp to my load order in order to fix each one. Because of the nature of what's being overridden, often an esl flagged .esp just won't do (correct me if I'm wrong) and so you have to add another plugin to the 255 limit. This makes your mod cost more to the user, simply because they choose to use what the mod maker themself is using. My suggestion is to encourage those who want to play your mod to use the patch, if you think it is a good patch. To me, this means that when your mod overrides the patch, either have two versions of the one .esp so users can pick, or you have the one version of the .esp which has the patch as a master.

[IsharaMeradin]

One option not mentioned is to simply carry over the edits from USSEP into your mod. I don't mean drag and drop in xEdit and thus making it a master. But actually change the value in your plugin so that it matches what is in USSEP. There is no harm in duplicating a fix within your plugin.

[cumbrianlad]

Thanks for the comments, people.

 

I'll keep checking in and reading them all. It's really helpful for me to get the opinions of others on this.

 

As things stand, ive edited all of my own mods now to fall in line with the patch, except for form entries I want to change for the purpose of the mod.

 

Doticu, that's a fair comment you make about other mods. I'm now going to run through all of my downloaded mods and do the same. While I was looking at my issue in SSEedit, I was amazed by how many mods do conflict, some of them on pretty serious issues. That's a big part of the reason I chose to put this poll up.

 

Thanks again, folks.