Archive Management

[Bobe]

I'm just after clarification regarding the archive management in MO. I couldn't really find any tutorials that cover this option in any detail. I understand what it does in terms of MO, but I don't really know how it affects the game and resource loading.

 

Until recently, I had just left this option enabled as it is by default and not given it a second thought, figuring it's best to trust the default settings if I'm not sure what they do. However, after reading what it does, I decided to disable it so that the load order of archives is determined by the plugin priority, meaning I could just let LOOT handle the correct order. I assumed this would work fine since I noticed LOOT orders the plugins and masters exactly as required for USKP, which I was going to manually rearrange.

 

Is this ok? Should I instead be letting MO manage archives and manually fix the load order in the left pane? What are the benefits of either option?

 

It doesn't really seem to be severely affecting my game either way, although I still do get the occasional CTD so any little improvement helps.

[GrantSP]

MO wiki on archive management.

 

The choice is yours, you can eliminate plugins whose sole purpose is to load a bsa. You also can gain priority of the bsa contents over loose files that you couldn't beforehand.

[Bobe]

  On 2/5/2015 at 5:08 AM, GrantSP said:

MO wiki on archive management.

 

The choice is yours, you can eliminate plugins whose sole purpose is to load a bsa. You also can gain priority of the bsa contents over loose files that you couldn't beforehand.

I read that and like I said I understand what the direct result is, but I don't really understand the implications of eliminating plugins or aligning BSAs with loose files. Are there performance or stability impacts?

 

For example, does having to enable the dummy plugins for the Hi Res Texture Pack DLC and UHRP affect anything? Are they just four more plugins that need to be loaded but have negligible impact on load times?

[GrantSP]

All games have a limit of how many plugins you can load, hexadecimal limitations impose that as 255. Removing those four mean when you get close to the limit you are four less.

For a basic game that has few mods, no, it makes no difference. Well it might add milli-seconds to the game engine loading records into memory, but to the user, no discernible difference.

 

The biggest user noticeable change is the avoiding the 'loose files always wins' scenario.