MadWizard25

Well in that case I think we see eye to eye I tend to stay away from philosophy unless its of science or of mind, and maybe.... some ethics ::, job necessity. The rest is indeed how you described it.

Are you talking about plugin load order, or installed mods load order? BOSS only sorts plugins, and if BOSS launches it automatically downloads and uses the masterlist. Does a web page appear after you run BOSS?

One point I would like to add to these great recommendations is try to get a gfx card with 2GB VRAM. 1GB is enough, but you can easily hit that ceiling nowadays, especially with nicer textures. Lots of nice cheap cards out there with 2GB VRAM.

1. MO does not handle mods well that do not have files under the Data folder. For example, i think bodyslide usually makes a folder in the Skyrim folder, 1 directory above the Data folder. MO cannot handle anything in the Skyrim directory i think. So it will say the mod has no valid game data. Best bet is to not use these types of mods via MO. 2. CTDs can have a huge number of causes. MO is far more sophisticated than NMM, so chances are you made a mistake somewhere. You really really need to read all the documentation, it may feel similar to NMM, but in a lot of ways its not. Especially check the section about the overwrite folder. It could also be that you updated your mods recently, and that could be an issue, etc etc. CTD troubleshooting with such limited information is very difficult. 3. You need to run FNIS through MO. You need to add FNIS as an application that MO can run. Again refer to the documentation. Do not treat MO as NMM. And finally. You will get a lot more help around here if you use decent sentence structure, and punctuation. This message board is very mature, and this sort of writing can annoy some people. If you want help in the future i recommend you write your posts properly

I dont have the setup at the moment, but i did a few weeks back, before i wiped everything and went for a fresh hardware and OS install. STEP Extended with ugrids 7 with extended visibility (maxed out sliders, not more), was no problem with vurts speed test. Easily could go over 5 minutes. I did occasionally have a CTD, but on average 5 minutes was entirely reachable. I did however stutter pretty badly. I was using all HQ versions of mods, all DDSopted to 2048 max (less for exteriors and exterior normal), and my VRAM usage was hitting 2GB+ in exteriors (gtx 560 Ti 2GB). Even interiors were on average about 1.4GB. I couldnt get the game to load without ENBoost, would crash due to 3.1GB load limit. Sorry i cant supply you with anything more concrete that hearsay, but it was possible for me.

Well, 10 or 20 years ago sure, you would have been correct z92. However, with advances in cognitive neuroscience i think there has been affirmation of certain schools of thought within philosophy; especially in regards to philosophy of the mind, which is now increasingly under the scientific umbrella. What i take away from this scientific discipline is that as an individual you almost certainly do not perceive reality as it is. I would argue that it is now less about philosophy, and more about science than ever before. Science is concluding that perception != reality. Cognitive neuroscience is a fascinating subject, and contains perhaps the best theories at the moment regarding subjective view, consciousness, free will, etc. All which were previously hard questions in philosophy of the mind. Im not basing my opinions on philosophy, but rather on science. The snafu here is that some of the schools of thought within philosophy are being concluded as more accurate than the rest via scientific methodology, so its less assumption now and more conclusion, thankfully. This is why I might sound like i subscribe to philosophy rather than science, but in fact its the other way around. And lets not forgot, philosophy essentially birthed science. And philosophy is still useful for speculation, as you so well put. Which means its actually useful for science as well, since we need direction in some cases where there is no previous research. What I think we see nowadays though, which im very pleased with, is science overcoming philosophy, even subjugating it. What used to be speculation is no more. In a way, the child is eating its progenitor.

The threshold for vurts test is 5 minutes. If you can achieve that regularly, especially with such a fast timescale, you are actually in a good position to play. You may still get ctds when playing but they should be minimal in number. Several hours of gameplay with no ctd is fine imo. Your probably never going to achieve an un-crashable modded skyrim, so at some point it needs to be 'good enough' to play. I would say your getting close, especially if you can achieve 10 minutes. Also, be sure to fly as close to the ground as possible, to force object loading. If you are too high up you load the cells but not full gfx. You want to stress the system. If you can get 5 minutes on average after all groups installed, then thats great. Once you have done that, try some large amounts of NPC spawning, somewhere tough like riverwood exterior, and see how high you can get. Any more than 30 is fine, and you should be able to get higher than that. After that, try a rough playthrough for a couple hours :) If thats all good I would start. Edit: you can also bump up the ugrids to really stress your system, and to see if you may be able to play with it at an increased value.

Did you try reproduce it by deactivating and activating characters and creatures again, after flying around for several minutes? You could also go through each mod in that group and test, or try smaller groups and try test the functionality of each. Try ToggleAI command and showracemenu, those are good for testing char and creatures in general. You could also try spawn NPCs and see how far you get, its another stress test but more for NPCs. You can also test timescale and weather stability by increasing the timescale to 1000 and then 10000 while flying around

A little update on merging plugins. Well, it seems to work rather well. The game launches and i can start a new game. This is without a conflict resolution patch mind you. I have found out that pretty much anything can be merged except cell editing mods (such as new villages, or changes to locations), anything that messes with navmeshes, script mods, interface mods (MCM does not like merging), and masters/ large overhauls. This means I have reduced plugin count from 340 to 240 roughly. One big hurdle I came across is that within the merged patch, there is no way of knowing which mod contributed which record in a lot of case. It stands to reason you should not merge anything that modifies the same record/ sub record. This isnt a big problem with a well built mod setup, and I have found it easier to create 2 or 3 merged patches so you can have one overwrite the other. It takes time though to sort everything out. One example is merging of some of the requiem patches. The merge patch should go after the last merged plugin, but since load order is so important regarding Requiem this can be tricky. In any case, I will head on to testing out mods as best as possible (without conflict patch), see if any more are broken by merging, and then head on to conflict resolution.

Perhaps, but from my point of view, any action taken, even by you and me, is an application of faith. For example, I choose to act upon well constructed epidemiology research that shows increase in some disease and enact policy based upon it. This example would seem as if faith is out of the equation. However, this process is based partially on scientific methodology. You still need 'faith' in this process, faith in philosophy of science. Again it comes down to the assumption that I am subjective, and therefore cannot truly "know" something objectively. Truths may exist in the universe, but they have to processed by my neurology, rendering them less than the absolute truth, due to my brain being limited. It follows that I have take a leap of faith in trusting philosophy of science if i cannot know for sure. Maybe trust is a better word here than faith, with all its religious connotations. Not only that, but I would bet that within the human brain, very similar processes are probably at work when a scientist talks about truth and philosophy of science versus someone who talks about god and its existence. Both people believe in something, even if they do not share the same language. Admittedly, this view only works if one makes certain assumptions about existence and the brain. Absolute truth is tricky.

Ouch, then yeah, I passed over that then, stupid me. This topic can be considered closed

This comes with its own set of problems though. Disapproval is essentially falsification. A good theory must be falsifiable; in the sense that you can have a null hypothesis. Doesnt mean its false, just that there is a possibility of falsification. Problem with god (or theory of theism since it has to be framed as such), is that its not falsifiable. It fails Poppers demarcation test, and is therefore not within the realm of science. So its possible that any proper scientist should not even entertain a stance regarding theism. Being agnostic is a stance within or at least linked to theory of theism. Of course, you cant be too literal with Popper, but thats going too deep into philosophy for me. I prefer the agnostic stance not because of testability of falsification, but rather because my view of the world is subjective. Even though there are probably "truths" and "facts", a person can never truly "know", since we filter everything through our brains. Im agnostic because I can never know if God truly exists, much like i cannot truly know a cell exists, or the observable and unobservable universe. Of course, this is just my opinion. Subjective objective view of the universe is still a un-resolved debate in philosophy. In any case, Im still exercising belief and faith (i use these words because i think essentially the same thing occurs neurologically whether you believe in science or god(s)) in science because it decreases subjectivity, rather than proves or disproves theories, and hence establishes fact/ truth. @EssArrBee Tricky semantics. I would argue that non-religious means you do not practice religion, which is separate from believing/ not believing/ being uncertain in a god or gods or whatnot. Its possible to be non-religious and atheist. But yeah, thats my own interpretation

True, but I have such a large number of plugins and mods that Im aggressively culling everything remotely fishy at the moment, and thats even before testing.

It seems MO does not like auto-ghosting in Wrye Bash. Applying auto-ghosting in Wrye Bash seems to remove the ghosted plugin relation to its installed mod packet. As a consequence you no longer know which package the plugin came from, and unistalling the mod does not remove the plugin. Removing auto-ghosting does not solve this either. Just a issue i thought i would share.

Oh, well, in that case i think ill uninstall it as well Thanks!

No bashed patch? But.. but that's sacrilege! Seriously though, no bashed patch makes me very nervous, especially because loss of merged leveled lists. I guess its fine if you only play with IA and IW but with more mods... :( In any case, why do you suspect that it does not play nice with Requiem?

I feel you man, testing out a large mod setup takes forever. Thankfully MO, Alternative Start, Vurt's Stress Test, and mod groups make the testing much more bearable. Still takes time, but days instead of weeks :) Nice catch with the default inis as well, its a very good point. Good luck and hope you find those CTD issues solvable!

Good questions. What i meant with creating a new mod has nothing to do with the CK, fortunately :P I was talking in context of MO. What i normally do is create a new folder in the mods folder within the MO directory. Once you start MO, at the very bottom of the mod list (left hand pane) will be the new folder, whatever you named it. It will be in italics and grayed out, but thats just because its empty. I then drag files from overwrite into this folder. This folder tricks MO into thinking its an installed mod, which is why i referred to it as creating a new mod. I usually create a few of these folders for the bashed patch, conflict resolution patches, FNIS, etc. I would not drag and drop the files into anywhere in the left hand pane, as you might overwrite something permanently. Its best to create empty mod containers as i described and drag the overwrite files into there. FNIS shouldn't normally CTD your game, even if its done wrongly, i think. You will get some strange NPC behavior though. As long as you drag the generated FNIS folders after running FNIS out of the overwrite folder into somewhere in the left hand panel you should be fine. I usually put the FNIS container/ mod at the bottom of my mod list, just so it overwrites anything else. Ok, im not sure about the SkyUI thing. In my previous post I meant priority in regards to BOSS. A separate tool. The left hand panel is useful for moving mods around so you can override files such as textures. Which is exactly what you did by placing the retexture after Apachii. BOSS only orders plugins, such as .esp and .esm files. Hence BOSS will sort the SkyUI.esp plugin, but none of the other files within the SkyUI mod folder. I would ignore MOs warning about potential mod conflicts, BOSS is much better than this for plugins, and for the other types of files its up to you to manually order them by shifting the installed mods in the left hand panel up and down. As to the drag a "mod without a mod" situation. Yes, a lot of texture mods have no esp or esm files. However, when you install them in MO, a folder is still created. This is the installed mod. Its still a mod, and you can still drag this mod folder around within the list. If you double click on a mod in the left hand folder it will come up with information on what files it conflicts with elsewhere in the list of mods. If it shows conflicts with Apachii files then it should be working, as long as the retexture is below Apachii in the list. As to why you see no difference, i have no idea. Some retextures are subtle, or the mod might not work at all. Regarding the priority column, this should be the default selected column, always. Otherwise overrides will not do as you wish. I have always always kept the list ordered via priority column, and I would hesitate to move away from that since the whole point of the install mod list is for override sorting. And yes, the sorting has to be done manually :P As i said before, BOSS takes care of some of the files, but the rest is up to you. This is also why STEP is so useful, because it already been ordered and you dont need to do a lot of testing yourself. Hope this helps!

@ dreadflopp May i ask why Guard Dialogue Overhaul.esp and WeaponsArmorFixes_GuardDialogueOverhaul_Patch.esp are in a custom position in the load order? The latest BOSS beta places them quite a bit lower for me. And remember not every conflict is a compatibility issue, some overrides for records are safe, other records are automatically merged when skyrim runs, and some records offer such minor incompatibility that its not worth manually overriding them all.

Its a personal choice. Depends on how frequent the CTDs are. If its every few hours then thats fine imo. Octopuss, you could also test out groups of mods in the beginning, and then do vurts stress test to test it these groups. You only need 10 minutes for the test, especially if you use Alternative Start Live another life mod.

@ TechAngel85 Interesting comment. I find this to be one of the cruxes of science and faith. You realize that when I talk about science its actually very familiar to that of faith. In fact, all I can say is that I put faith into, or believe in the philosophy of science. As an individual, I am severely subjective, as is anyone else. Therefore I cannot "know" explicitly that science is "true", insomuch as i can do the same for "god". Which is why I am agnostic and not atheist. Still, past the point of individuality is where things get interesting. Again, science is the only belief system that really tries to be objective, which is what seals the deal for me. Once I go beyond myself, and acknowledge that im subjective, the best course to get a handle on reality is via objectiveness. Again, this only works because I am a Physicalist/ Materialist. The act of belief or faith is just a complex interaction of proteins, genes, neural cells, etc, in the brain. So you say other experiences have told you otherwise. When people say this I think they are still have a physical reaction within the brain, any thought feeling memory or emotion is a physical process. Again though, this is because i believe in Physicalism. This links up to the strength of the philosophy of science belief. While others cannot point and say "look, many of us have seen God (peer review in a sense), and hey, we can make it appear again (reproducibility), and all other competing theories (such as polytheism) can suck it (falsification)". Many have tried, but this doesnt happen. Sure, maybe on an individual level, but on a population level? No, only science seems to have worked to produce tangible facts. For example; "Hey many of us have seen people having divine experiences (Observational). Can we test this? Sure. Okay, hey look all the same region of the brain lights up in fMRI, aint that neat? Is its statistically significant? (Statistical Analysis)Yes it is wohoo! Hmm, ok, lets see if people with lesions in this part of the brain are different. Oh, they are? Hey they cant have religious experiences, wow. Ok, now we know that there is a huge release of dopamine when this happens from previous test.... etc... etc." Here there is concrete testing, validations by other peers, etc. Its not just about your personal experience, its about knowing with as least doubt as possible that others have been able to experience the same thing and externalized and internalized it! You can all believe you share a religious experience with others, but only science can step back and objectively measure it. This allows you to internalize information as close to truth as possible, and not just believe it "on faith" which many more magnitudes away from objective truth. Its why science has been so successful, its the only belief systems that has worked on a population level to explain, or at least attempt, in detail, reality, with actual results, feedback into a physical universe. Results that can be shared and appreciated (like modern medicine) by many people across cultures, religions, nations, etc. So yes science and philosophy of science are also belief systems because we are subjective individuals and therefore cannot "know". However, its like democracy, not great, but better than the other political systems. Science, its not great (well I think its pretty great), but its better than the other belief systems (subjectively ) Objectivity Objectivity Objectivity.....

Interesting comments @ Nicopad: Interesting that you only have so many. I think the majority of my extra plugins comes from STEP Extendended, as well as about 60 other plugins from weapons, armors, and a few gameplay changes. @ Spock: You mean the requiem STEP Extended patch right? Or the normal STEP Extended patch? If referring to the normal one, yes Im aware of which plugins can be disabled, via the STEP wiki page on the patch. I have removed all those plugins. Im actually pretty confident with using Tes5edit for conflict resolution. However, my problem is i cannot do the conflict resolution if i cannot load all plugins in tes5edit, hence the need for the merged patch. I think i need to clarify that in regards to conflict resolution i specifically mean with tes5edit. All other conflicts, such as overrides have been solved. Im also using CoT + Weather Patch + ESS + SS + ELFX + ELE + Relighting + Real Vision ENB for weather and atmospherics, its gorgeous! @CJ2311: I spent quite some time comparing SR:LE and STEP Extended, and its possible for the two to fit together. There are some redundancies and overlaps, but generally its ok. SR:LE covers quite a bit of STEP extended functionality in any case. Tes5edit (in the early days) didnt show too much conflict, and most could be resolved by a patch. And no worries, SR:LE guide makes it clear that its not a STEP pack, so im not treating it as such. Its just my ambition to merge the two with REGS and Requiem. Im fully aware that I may be biting off more than i can chew In any case, I have been busy testing out the tes5edit merge script addon. Its quite nifty, and as long as I stay away from mods that alter cells (mostly anything with navmesh) and script heavy mods, everything else seems to merge fine, and tests well (at least with 1 by 1 testing). It was exhausting however to figure out which plugins contained errors and are better avoided, as well as master issues etc etc. Im now at a list of about 100 plugins i think i can merge safely, which puts me just below 255 limit. Ill soon see if the game even launches, and then on to trying out conflict resolution!

The ENBlocal.ini values are highly dependent on mod setup as well as your computers hardware. All you can really do is experiemnt with the values. The STEP wiki guide on ENB has a good section on explanations for each setting and value.

I have read that it has worked for some people, so there is a decent chance it might work for you. Installing it is very similar to installing the normal ENBoost. When you download the enbseries_skyrim_v0251.zip file, there should be two folders inside, one named WrapperVersion, the other named InjectorVersion. Inside the InjectorVersion folder, you want to copy these files; enbhost.exe, ENBInjector.exe, enbinjector.ini, enblocal.ini, enbseries.dll, enbseries.ini and paste them inside your Skyrim folder. After that, all you need to do is run ENBInjector.exe before you run Skyrim.

IMO I would check conflicts before and after the merged patch. This way you can check if your merged patch forwards the correct records, and then base the conflict resolution patch off of the merged patch and remaining mods. This is what im currently planning on doing at least. Honestly though im only merging because im above the plugin 255 limit and because tes5edit doesnt seem to be able to load more than 255 plugins either, so conflict resolution and overview become impossible. If i was below 255 i would skip merging unless its for armor and weapon mods.