current modding practices, ESL/ESP and merging and all that

[james1982]

So, I have been cruising around the forums a bit trying t o figure this out, and I am not a total newbie when it comes to modding Bethesda titles, but it has also been a while since I have even played video games. I just now got life caught up so that I can have a place and a new computer and I wanted to get back in to playing Fallout 4....then I saw all the mods.
Couple questions. I think I understand the ESL thing, but not totally. Load order might still be important and patches are everywhere to make mods work together. I understand there is still stability issues when mods lists start growing.

I have a few mods that have loads of patches. I am lucky (?) that one of them has their patches set with ESL and look to load late in my order, which is good. I still rely on LOOT to give me starting order to tweak. I am looking to lessen my load order as well. I was told turning a mod's patch into an ESL could be problematic as the ESL might load before mod, despite the load order. Is it possible to merge an ESP into a the main mod ESP itself and how would I go about that? Here is an example. I have the LAER mod. It has an Armorsmith and Automotron patch. Since LAER is most likely loading after both of these mods, can I move all the patch record in to the main mod file? Is there a way to do this "automagically"? Or, how about taking all the patch mods that are ESP and merge those, into one large ESP and put that at the end of my load order. Going one step further, ESL that as well? Maybe I don't completely understand the concept of ESL???

Any resources you fine peoples have would be greatly appreciated. I am trying to get more stable than I am now. VERY random CTDs happen and it is hard for me to pin down if it is a mod, bad load order or system itself and it is a VERY random event and inconvenient every time. I am also trying to play the game, not play mod the game XD

[shaggy08251993]

So I don't know about merging .esp and .esl files. I don't think it'd work since they're two different types.

 

What I do know, is that in xEdit, when you create a new file, you get to choose if you want it to be an .esl, .esp, .esm, or whatever.

So all you'd have to do is add the records to a new file, and when prompted, select .esl. Save the changes to that .esl. Then right-click it, and select "add masters", and choose the mod that needs to be loaded before it. Save the changes again. Now the .esl will always load after the mod that was made to be its master.

I can explain more if needed, but this is the simplified version.

[VIitS]

Sorry if this is a bit long, please let me know if you have any questions about any part of it.

 

james,

 

1)You only have stability issues with large load orders if you don't perform proper conflict resolution. The problem is, proper conflict resolution requires that you are able to understand just about all different records, and in particular that you are able to deal with conflicting scripts and navmesh issues (two of the more common causes of CtD, and some of the more difficult to resolve conflicts), so the average mod user won't be able to do so. There are people on the xEdit discord who have setups with over 1000 mods that have no stability issues.

 

2) Flagging as ESL (using FO4Edit) will not change load order. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know what they are talking about. The thing that WILL change load order is changing the file extension to .esl. This is because the game treats any plugin with the .esl file extension as if it has the ESL and ESM flags, and the ESM flag is the one forcing it to load with the rest of the ESM plugins. If you have a patch which only contains overrides (no new records), which should be most patches, then you can add the ESL flag to the file header and it won't cause any problems*

 

3) Merging the patch into the main mod: The easiest way to do so is to use the "Copy as override (with Overwrite)** " option. You would need to say yes when it asks if you want the other mods (in your example, Armorsmith and Automatron) as the master for the mod you are merging the patch into. That said, there is no need due to the lack of issues with load order as I mentioned above.

 

4) You could then merge all your patches, and as long as they only contain overrides and don't contain new records, you can ESL flag that merged patch (though again, it isn't needed as the limit for FO4 is 4096 ESL-flagged plugins, and that has been verified to work. If you do merge everything, I would recommend keeping a copy of the individual patches available, especially if you made any patches yourself, in case you decide later to remove a mod (such as for a second/third/42nd playthrough), so you don't have to recreate/redownload everything to remake the mega-patch with the removed mod excluded.

 

5) For the random CtDs: a lot of the time when a CtD seems to be random (doesn't happen consistently in the same place), it is a result of NPCs or scripts. With NPCs, it can be bad meshes/textures/etc..., bad AI package, things like that. For scripts, if something causes a bad script to trigger it could potentially lead to CtDs if the script is bad enough.

If you have a save where, after 30/50/100 hours that save becomes basically unusable and you haven't added any mods/made any changes in a long time, you probably hit the "loaded References" cap (see this reddit thread for more information/ways to try and deal with it.

 

 

*For Fallout 4. If this was for Skyrim Special Edition, there is a bug where a new Cell in a ESL flagged file can have issues with non-Persistant REFRs not geing loaded by the game if a later plugin touches that cell that was created in an ESL. This is obviously not an issue for patches, only for main plugins creating new interior cells, but it is something to keep in mind for SSE if you are trying to ESL-flag regular mods.

 

**The (with Overwrite) version of Copy as Override will overwrite the version of the record in the target plugin with the version from the plugin you are copying from. Normal Copy as Override skips records that already exist in the target plugin. Since the patch would presumably have the version of the records that have the necessary changes for both mods, you want that to win so you would use the (with overwrite) option

 

 

shaggy,

 

The only difference between ESL and non-ESL mods is a single flag in the plugin header. You can merge/copy records between them without issue. Also, it is recommended to NEVER use the .esl file extension. You should always add the ESL flag. Part of this is that the file extension forces the ESM flag when the game launches as I stated above, but the other reason is that changing the file extension on mod A is a problem for any plugin with mod A as a master. If you are making a mod and it gets big enough that you can't fit it in an ESL anymore, if you have the .esl file extension you will break any patches/other mods that expect it to be named ModA.esl, while if you have the flag you can just remove the flag.