How to create merged patch for conflicting mods only?

[Mousetick]

3 hours ago, Poncington said:

If not that, then how are you doing it?  Just filtering for conflicts and making dozens of individual patches?

Yes, we're all using the manual method. But it can be one big patch for the whole load order, or several, or many smaller patches for specific mods - it's up to you. What makes you think you necessarily have to make dozens of individual patches?

Once one learns the manual method, with enough practice, there's no need for xEdit Merged Patches, or Wrye Bashed Patches, or Mator Smashed Patches at all... Though they can be useful as "starting points" in the learning process, to use as references/examples.

[GSDFan]

3 hours ago, Poncington said:

I'm curious about the people saying you haven't used bash patches in years.  If not that, then how are you doing it?

I have put in a considerable amount of time into learning and tweaking Smash.all for MatorSmash.

[z929669]

8 hours ago, Poncington said:

I'm curious about the people saying you haven't used bash patches in years.  If not that, then how are you doing it?  Just filtering for conflicts and making dozens of individual patches?

Nope. We do nothing but manual patching, since it's really the only way to control everything as intended. Basically one single patch for the entire sorted plugin list. I think it's less work actually ... unless you completely trust your patching algorithm (WB, Synthesis, or otherwise).

The only reason you would need dozens of individual patches is if your assortment of plugins is always changing. Then it makes sense to have patches with only one or two masters rather than like 20+ masters.

[Poncington]

2 hours ago, z929669 said:

Nope. We do nothing but manual patching, since it's really the only way to control everything as intended. Basically one single patch for the entire sorted plugin list. I think it's less work actually ... unless you completely trust your patching algorithm (WB, Synthesis, or otherwise).

The only reason you would need dozens of individual patches is if your assortment of plugins is always changing. Then it makes sense to have patches with only one or two masters rather than like 20+ masters.

How are you making this one big patch for the whole load order?  That's what I've been doing with the merged patch in xedit until yesterday when it told me I had too many masters to load now which is what led me to post this thread.

[Mousetick]

• Max number of masters per plugin: 253 ALWAYS
• Max number of plugins in load order before Skyrim SE: 253
• Max number of plugins in load order with Skyrim SE and later games: ~2200 (up to 253 "full" plugins + up to ~2000 "light" plugins)

The (obsolete) xEdit merged patch method is a brute force method that pulls in all plugins in the load order and adds them as masters to the merged patch, whether they are actually used by the patch or not, whether they contain conflicts or not. It was ok as long as there were no more than 253 plugins in the load order. With Skyrim SE and later Bethesda games, which support more than 253 plugins in the load order, this method fails - hence why it's obsolete and unsupported.

The manual method adds masters to the resulting patch on as needed basis. Even with large load orders containing more than 255 plugins, it's very unlikely that the patch depends on more than 255 masters. If that limit is reached, the manual method provides the flexibility to split patches into several patch plugins to work around the limit.

Wrye Bash and other automated patchers also add masters as needed.

[z929669]

40 minutes ago, Poncington said:

How are you making this one big patch for the whole load order?  That's what I've been doing with the merged patch in xedit until yesterday when it told me I had too many masters to load now which is what led me to post this thread.

As Mouse states, the manual process patches that which should be patched and nothing else. Typically, most plugins are fairly limited to specific goals/changes and don't require patching unless they touch all kinds of records (land/combat/magic/crafting/economy overhaul mods). Of the 300-ish plugins in Step SSE (with Anniversary Upgrade), only about 50 are masters to our conflict resolution patch, so about one sixth. My guess is that this is fairly typical for an SSE-AU build, and non AU builds probably have more like one-tenth the total as masters. It will vary quite a bit though, depending on your plugins and desired outcome.

With the ability to ESL-ify and merge plugins, the limits mentioned can always be easily avoided, even with a ridiculous plugin count.

[Poncington]

Ok I think I see now.  I should have read the link to "manual method" all the way through.  It looks like you lean heavily on "copy into override" for a couple of mods at a time and then add that individual fix into the mega patch once it's done.  Good info thank you.

[z929669]

1 hour ago, Poncington said:

Ok I think I see now.  I should have read the link to "manual method" all the way through.  It looks like you lean heavily on "copy into override" for a couple of mods at a time and then add that individual fix into the mega patch once it's done.  Good info thank you.

Exactly. Finalize LO, sort, and examine all of the conflicts (xEdit red/orange colored records), "Copy as override into" and "Copy as deep override into" final patch. I usually "Hide no conflicts" to simplify things, and sometimes copy from something like vanilla or USSEP, combining various records from different sources into one.

I feel like when using a patch-making helper tool, you still need to check all of the records anyway, so doing it manually just saves a step for me. It can be a bit of a mind twist at times, but I just keep plugging along, saving as I go.