Potential Mod Order Problem

[GallantBlade475]

I've almost fully installed STEP Core following the guide. The only things left are the Bashed patch and Better Shaped Weapons. I ran LOOT before creating the patch like I'm supposed to, and Mod Organizer gives me this warning:

 

Potential Mod order problem

The conflict resolution order for some mods containing scripts differs from that of the corresponding esp.
This may lead to subtle, hard to locate bugs. You should re-order the affected mods (left list!).
There is no way to reliably know if each of these changes is absolutely necessary but its definitively safer.
If someone suggested you ignore this message, please give them a proper slapping from me. Do not ignore this warning
The following changes should prevent these kinds of errors:

• Move Non-Essential Children [sTEP] after Traps Make Noise - More Dangerous Traps [sTEP]
• Move The Paarthurnax Dilemma [sTEP] after Non-Essential Children [sTEP]
• Move When Vampires Attack [sTEP] after The Paarthurnax Dilemma [sTEP]

The STEP guide says to install the mods in the order presented, which I assume means I shouldn't re-order the left list, but I'd just like to make sure I'm doing what I'm supposed to.

[EssArrBee]

Just ignore it. It is telling you that there is a potential problem, but we already looked it over and nothing is wrong.

[Redferne]

You can also reorder it as suggested if the message is bugging you.

[hishutup]

But it really doesn't matter...

Unless you extract the BSA which is disabled by default.

[Cookie_Dynamics]

Is there a way to "teach" the program that certain mod order is in fact correct?

 

It's really bugging me with the "potential mod order problem" message...

 

I have 

 

SOS-Dungeons

SOS-Civilization

SOS-Wilds 

 

and the recently released  SOS-MCM (which adds MCM for the SOS mods)

 

The SOS-MCM should overwrite certain scripts from the previous ones, because it's supposed to stop the pop-up messages from the start of the game.   But for some reason, Mod Organizer thinks that SOS-MCM should have a lower priority than the other ones. 

 

 

How can I tell the program that it's supposition is wrong?

[hishutup]

likely because the MCM esp is in an earlier position that the SoS mods

 

SOS is schlongs of Skyrim

[Cookie_Dynamics]

likely because the MCM esp is in an earlier position that the SoS mods

 

SOS is schlongs of Skyrim

Hahah oh lol, sorry... my mistake, I was using SOS as an acronym for Sounds of Skyrim. 

 

My problem is that I always had:

 

Sounds of Skyrim - Wilds

Sounds of Skyrim - Civilization

Sounds of Skyrim - Dungeons 

 

 

and now I have the new "Sounds of Skyrim - MCM"  that gets rid of the annoying pop up messages sounds of Skyrim usually has.

 

Mod Organizer is trying to put the MCM files in a lower priority than the other Sounds of Skyrim files. But the MCM files should overwrite the others. (I'm referring to the "MODs files priority" not the "plugin priority")

 

I would appreciate any kind of help,

 

Thanks in advance

Edited October 31, 2014 by Cookie_Dynamics

[TechAngel85]

It's like the message says, it's in Beta and I haven't seen Tannin improve upon it any within the last several releases. It's a good feature to tell you to investigate potential issues; however, that's about the extent of it for right now until it's improved upon. We've personally checked the possible issues it claims with a STEP and found them to be non-issues. I suspect that will be the case in many situations and in some situations, like yours, it might even be more harmful. The feature also doesn't take into account that some mods are placed in a specific location for resource conflict resolution. For us to get rid of the messages in STEP it would take reordering twice the amount of mods it is claiming in conflict or more because we have to also keep the resource conflicts in the proper order. This feature is only looking at scripts and nothing else as far as I'm aware.

 

My advice is to not reorder your mods but rather simply investigate the issues and see if there are actually issues with the order or not.

[Tannin]

The "Fix" button is marked as beta because I was worried it could cause more changes to the mod order than it's supposed to, but so far I've had no reports that that's the case.

 

The PMOP reporting itself is imperfect and there's little that can be done about it as it's an automated system. We'd need something comparable to loot's masterlist&userlist system to define per-mod overwrites of the pmop suggestions and that's far, far beyond the scope of what I can do for a single feature.

Especially because this would probably be even more complicated than loot considering mods are named by the user whereas loot can rely on plugins having a certain name.

There is a bug remaining that will hopefully be fixed in the next release and maybe I will add a way to have it ignore specific mod-pairings but beyond that this feature is "done". Not because I'm happy with it but because it serves its purpose (alerting user of potential problems) and perfecting it is impractical.

[Cookie_Dynamics]

Understood. 

 

Thank you for explaining the situation and thank you all for Mod Organizer!

[Fereval]

But it really doesn't matter...

Unless you extract the BSA which is disabled by default.

I'm slightly confused now, I have the habit of always extracting BSAs (I prefer to see every conflicts and to keep only 1 ressources order list to manage) and I don't understand how that could be problematic with those script files.

Don't they overwrite themselves even when they are still packaged into BSAs (as per MO's "Archive" tab load order) ?

Edited October 31, 2014 by Fereval

[hishutup]

okay this is going to get difficult to understand

 

 

two esps 

ModA.esp and ModB.esp

they have matching

ModA.bsa and ModB.bsa

 

 

The order which you have them installed is 

ModA then ModB

 

the load order for ModA and ModB are

01 ModB.esp

02 ModA.esp

 

 

If you extract the .bsa from both and they have the same script but with different edits this can be problematic. Before ModB script will overwrite ModA scripts

even though ModA.esp comes after ModB.esp...

 

This can cause issues and would be represented by MO as a potential Mod order problem...

If the .bsa was NOT extracted this wouldn't be a problem because the script from ModA.bsa would overwrite the script of ModB.bsa

This is because the decision of what files overwrite for a given .bsa what is the order of .esp

 

This is difficult to understand but I think it explains it pretty well...

[Fereval]

Thanks for the explanation. It clarifies a lot.

 

 

One last thought :

 

This is because the decision of what files overwrite for a given .bsa what is the order of .esp

 

Is this still true though when you organize your BSAs in the "Archive" tab of MO ? eg: Can the load order of "Archive" be different from the plugin load order (when there is still a plugin of course) ?

If this is true then this would basically mean that the potential problem can also occur even without extracting BSAs right ?

 

Sorry to be kind of nitpicking but I'd like to be sure to fully understand those sort of thing now '-'.

Edited October 31, 2014 by Fereval

[GrantSP]

This is because the decision of what files overwrite for a given .bsa what is the order of .esp

 

hmm...

 

I'm not sure that is exactly correct. Unless of course I am completely misunderstanding what you are saying.

 

Let's take a real life example: 'Wet and Cold' & 'Wet and Cold - Ashes'.

These mods are an esp and a bsa each. In the bsa for both is a script, '_wetcoldbreathfastarg.pex'

 

Ordinarily the order of both the bsa and the esp is 'Wet and Cold - Ashes' comes AFTER 'Wet and Cold' meaning that script will show as conflicting and the 'Ashes' version gets used.

 

In my setup it is:

Wet and Cold 31

Wet and Cold - Ashes 32

in the left-hand pane.

Wet and Cold 56

Wet and Cold - Ashes 107

in the right-hand pane.

 

Now if we leave the esp files alone and reorder the bsas, the 'Ashes' version of that script gets overwritten in the conflict, despite the 'Ashes' esp still having the greater priority.

This would be true if the bsas were extracted or not. If the left-hand pane mod, which contains either a bsa or loose files, has the higher priority then those assets will be used.

[hishutup]

Thanks for the explanation. It clarifies a lot.

 

 

One last thought :

Is this still true though when you organize your BSAs in the "Archive" tab of MO ? eg: Can the load order of "Archive" be different from the plugin load order (when there is still a plugin of course) ?

If this is true then this would basically mean that the potential problem can also occur even without extracting BSAs right ?

 

Sorry to be kind of nitpicking but I'd like to be sure to fully understand those sort of thing now '-'.

If I remember correctly...

MO grays the Archives out when there is an esp present in the LO.

This is because the esp decides the LO of the bsa.

For the dummy esps that are not needed. I don't know but I'll look.

 

---

 

Trying to read and understand this is pretty difficult because its pretty complex

 

for that particular case it doesn't matter to began with...

_wetcoldbreathfastarg.pex is the same size for each. I do not have a hashsum generator so I cannot verify this.

 

But for the sake of an example...

The W&C versions does not have the ability to do the ashes but 

the W&C-A has the ability to do both the normal and the ashes.

 

 

If the bsa was not extracted then if the esp order is 

 

Wet and Cold - Ashes.esp

Wet and Cold.esp

 

Then the normal script would be the one that would overwrite the ashes version. If you played the game then you would not have working Ash breaths.

 

 

...It's confusing and I sort confused myself in the process...

 

 

---

 

Tannin may have some credible and reliable input.

[GrantSP]

Yeah the example I chose wasn't probably the best since both those scripts are identical. But...

 

The biggest thing to remember here is IF MO is used to handle bsa files then for all intents and purposes they are to be viewed as simply another folder of loose files.

 

If the mod simply has an esp to load the bsa then yes, it will be greyed out and can be unchecked in the load order. Most mods though don't simply supply an esp to load a bsa and therefore need to have both the esp and the bsa loaded.

 

In other managers that don't treat bsa files as folders the load order of that bsa doesn't really matter since it will be loaded by the esp with the matching name. This is where MO is both better and trickier. You can have SOME files inside a bsa overwritten if it isn't the highest priority even if the esp that goes with it does have the highest priority. No longer is it a case of a mod with a bsa ALWAYS wins if the matching esp is higher.

 

So since the question revolves around bsa files that AREN'T extracted the answer is YES, there can still be potential conflicts if the bsa isn't in the correct order.

 

I guess this is another reason why @fireundubh made such a thing about the conflict resolution in that other post. In situations such as this, my Wet and Cold example, MO flags it as a potential conflict but in reality there is no problem.

 

We need to think in terms of individual files when we decide left-hand order. It makes no difference if the bsa is extracted or handled by MO, those files will stand or fall for themselves regardless of esp position.