SKYRIMLE Manage Multiple Skyrim Deployments with Mod Organizer?

[jbvertexx]

Hey everyone - new user on the STEP Forums here.  First - I want to thank everyone involved in creating STEP.  Almost 2 years ago I started getting involved in heavily modded Skyrim, and STEP was really the key guide to get me started in both best practices as well as identifying great combinations of mods that keep me going back to playing Skyrim.

So now I'm new to Mod Organizer, and my main question has to do with trying to use MO to manage multiple Skyrim deployments.  I have 4 PCs in the house that have Skyrim installed (myself and 3 sons ).  We're all running on a mod set that is about a year old, and I want to re-do everything from scratch using the latest Step version plus a collection of our favorites.  Previously, I used NMM on my laptop to manage my downloads to a central location on my home server.  Then I had Wrye Bash installed on each PC with a local mod list that pulled from downloads on the server share.  I was able to get some savings by downloading and updating once, but it was really tough to keep up with versions, load orders, etc with the 4 different installs of Wrye Bash.

Since I'm just now getting my feet wet with Mod Organizer, I'm wondering if there is a better way to do this.  Ideally, I'd like to be able to manage the download and install process from my laptop and deploy onto the various PCs.  Since all of the hardware configurations are slightly different, I have slightly varying mod requirements for each PC.  Plus trying to go around to each PC is a PITA.

Is there a way to use Profiles or any other functionality in MO to accomplish what I am trying?  I was thinking it could be as simple as configuring profiles and then either modifying the Mod directory or just copying the resulting Skyrim Data folder over.  But I wasn't sure how MO works with not actually overwriting main Data files.  I don't care about network copy times.  My main objective is to have one common place to manage lists.

 

Has anyone on the forum done something like this without having MO installed on each PC?  

Any suggestions are much appreciated.  Thanks!

[DoubleYou]

I would suggest to install Mod Organizer on each machine, and simply sync all four pcs to the same mods, downloads, and profiles folders. Or you could install Mod Organizer and set it up on one, and simply sync the entire Mod Organizer folder to all four pcs. It will ask you on startup where Skyrim is located on each pc that way, but everything else should remain intact. You'll have to manage enb/skse/BOSS/Wrye Bash on all four however, as they are installed outside MO.

[phazer11]

What I've done in the past is use the installer to get Mod Organizer on the machine and used a portable hard drive to copy-paste the Mod Organizer folder from PC A to PC B

[EssArrBee]

What I've done in the past is use the installer to get Mod Organizer on the machine and used a portable hard drive to copy-paste the Mod Organizer folder from PC A to PC B

This sounds about right. I have NAS in my home since there are up to seven machines using it and you could do the entire set up on your main PC storage then just move the whole thing to NAS and let everyone else make a copy. This also makes a backup of a working version of skyrim. If you if make a working version first I assume.

[jbvertexx]

Ok. So as I understand how MO works, there is no need to sync the skyrim data folder, just the MO folder.

 

So when I startup MO on the next PC, will it establish the simlinks even though I'm not going through the action of activating the mods? As I understand it from the documentation, the magic happens when you launch skyrim from MO, correct?

[EssArrBee]

Yep, that is beauty of MO, it doesn't muck up your Skyrim directory.

[jbvertexx]

Ok perfect. Pretty freaking ingenious. Before, I got everything done on my gaming PC, then of course had to "test" things out. Then like 3 months later the kids were like "wtf dad, when are you going to install those mods?". It sounds like this will be a lot easier to allow them to go get the files of the server and start playing. Thanks for your help!