using Vortex to manage mods now. Updated to 3.4.5a It's dead, Jim!

skull
Luckily, disable/re-enable fixed it.
Damn near shat a brick though.

I'm beginning to find my groove with Vortex.

Some of its messages are scary as hell though.

WetRats said:

I'm beginning to find my groove with Vortex.

Some of its messages are scary as hell though.

Click to expand...

I’ve been using vortex for several months now.

It took a while for me to really appreciate it, but now that I have gotten used to it I am a huge fan.

There are a couple of things that I do miss / find inconvenient / glitches here and there but the benefits far outweigh them. In-fact there are a few very powerful features that I find indispensable now that I am using them.

I will say the gopher vortex videos are essential for a vortex transition..

I have found that vortex has helped me run a far more stable game as I am a giant Ham-Bone sometimes and need all the help I can get.

You ain’t the only giant hambone. I like the profiles in Vortex, though you need to close and re-open.

With messages like that, I’ve often had to do a close-and-reopen also.

RayBo said:

I’ve been using vortex for several months now.

It took a while for me to really appreciate it, but now that I have gotten used to it I am a huge fan.

There are a couple of things that I do miss / find inconvenient / glitches here and there but the benefits far outweigh them. In-fact there are a few very powerful features that I find indispensable now that I am using them.

I will say the gopher vortex videos are essential for a vortex transition..

I have found that vortex has helped me run a far more stable game as I am a giant Ham-Bone sometimes and need all the help I can get.

Click to expand...

Can I ask about if there's any manual re-ordering in it? I heard concerns on discord about it only allowing ordering via LOOT or something which scared me off a bit. I think the last time I had to full restart my game install was because of LOOT making it all alphabetical for whatever reason.

VersusXV said:

Can I ask about if there's any manual re-ordering in it? I heard concerns on discord about it only allowing ordering via LOOT or something which scared me off a bit. I think the last time I had to full restart my game install was because of LOOT making it all alphabetical for whatever reason.

Click to expand...

I really like that question. A Lot.

It is a bit of a chore but vortex makes you / warns you to fix everything with rules, establishing dependencies, or the manipulation of groups. Still, once you get it all figured out it is very intuitive. From my perspective, it forces you to do "Manual" re-ordering! And it forces you "with extreme prejudice" not to be sloppy when you do it.

So right now I have 347 active mods:


I have had to make a shit-ton of rules "basically like the metadata in loot" for the Plugs. This screenshot does not do it justice. This list is very - very long.

Then there is the dependency for Mods, far right check-marks are now green:

Groups can also help you sort them.

What I like about the groups and dependencies is it is not arbitrary. Vortex uses loot so like you said 347 mods would be a shxtshow if I let loot do everything what Vortex does a very good job of is making sure you tell it what you want overwritten "dependencies".

Then setting rules for plugs is like the metadata in loot.

Groups and Categories also help stratify everything and groups push things up and down.

In a way vortex makes you do your homework. I can see how some folks would call that inconvenient but for me it is a really good thing

Once you take the time to get it all set-up you really start to get just how intelligently the tool was designed. In a way, vortex can't manage user behavior but It does do a better job of asking you "hey, asshat are you sure?" I like that and sometimes hats too :mosking

I've been meaning to get switched over to vortex but it's intimidating as hell when you first open it and when I tried to import my mods and load order I borked something up and got everything wrong. In short I got scared back to NMM again. XD

NikitaDarkstar said:

I've been meaning to get switched over to vortex but it's intimidating as hell when you first open it and when I tried to import my mods and load order I borked something up and got everything wrong. In short I got scared back to NMM again. XD

Click to expand...

so did I until I modded my game into complete oblivion, and had nothing to lose by switching over...or so I thought at the time

I’m glad that I made the switch when I had only 40-50 mods to swap over.

Whisper said:

I’m glad that I made the switch when I had only 40-50 mods to swap over.

Click to expand...

Yhea I currently have about 230'ish plugins (not counting .esl's) and about 150 or so texture and model packs. Soo.... I need to clean up my mess a bit cause I'm very sure not all of the texture packs are in use anymore...

Someone save me.

....ok now its dead. Just gotta figure out how to get past the ol' eternal loading screen

Ausplat said:

....ok now its dead. Just gotta figure out how to get past the ol' eternal loading screen

Click to expand...

I know you weren't asking but maybe the below can help if you are starting a new game. I hope no one reads this thread and says hey I'm 300hrs in, time to switch my MO. That would be bad.

If you are starting a new game and that is where it hangs try disabling all the mods except for the ones you need for the looks menu / presets / hair / face..etc..

After you get done with the mirror then start layering them. Some call it baking your save.

Cheers RayBo, but all i did was update SS and ROTC via Vortex, and try and continue a save.
I'll get there eventually... maybe.
Perhaps even start again all over.

RayBo said:

After you get done with the mirror then start layering them. Some call it baking your save.

Click to expand...

Is this like, enabling only a few mods at a time when starting new save?

VersusXV said:

Is this like, enabling only a few mods at a time when starting new save?

Click to expand...

Yes! That is all it really is.

What I do would be considered "way overdoing it" for most folks but I'll say it anyway. Maybe it will help someone, or someone will have an even better process or suggestion to share?

The layering is no different than if you were not using a MO. So, F4SE, esm and esl go first then your essential - core - esps and then everything else..

I get everything installed and ordered the way they should be positioned to overwrite. Then, set-up all the (mod-overwrites), (plug_in-rules), categories and groups so the "auto-sort/loot moves nothing", all 350 +/- everything - nothing moves! Even if auto-sort is enabled everything is where I want it and nothing moves. I try to be smart about the rules, newer mods are more likely to be updated so try to not use them if I can as the target for the rule. I record the # position of them all so when I update if I forgot to check it so I know to replace the rule. If they move it justs means I broke the rule link or the new update changed category or group that I assigned it too. Still, kind of important in-game when your beloved clean settlement overhaul drops from the bottom to top of your Order and 30hrs later you get there and shit is splattered all over the place. This is what I mean by Targeting The rule. With vortex the plug-in rule hopefully will just be a fine-tune. Pushing a plug higher or lower based on a mod that you will update often can bork things up real-good that one blurry-eyed night you forget. Use the category and groups to at least get it in the right hemisphere of the load order first.

Prep: Troubleshooting saves. Not necessary, but it has saved me a lot of pain. I do a full vanilla play "no-mods" "they are all there but disabled" from the new save to outside the vault 111 exit. I copy all those saves as they are "rock solid gold to me and move them to a safe place."

Then I bake:

Basically 4 layers: no hard and fast rules here, as each load order can be different but generally this is how I do it:
Activate essential - all the hair face textures looksmenu..UOFO4P..FO4SE..textures - etc & start a new game.

Group 1 ( after 1st save after, mirror).
most of the other essential esm / esp and esl
SimSettlements and any mod that adds stuff to the vault:
Coots has added notes and tapes
Absolutely Head Wear adds a visor

Group 2 (right before entering or exiting cryo pod):
Workshop, locations etc.. "High-Load Order"
The big - Ones:
Outcasts
SOTS
etc....

Group 3: (right before the door going into the room with the vault exit):
All the rest "Middle and low")
Weapons / Armor
Companion
pipboy / patches /etc.

Group 4: (immediately after exiting the vault and all the scripts finish) so after all the CC club and other mods that want to run then add quests finish. Make a Save: This is the last plug-in activation and "all the mods that add stuff to player inventory like hoplotypes get added here." Then I check that everything has been added correctly.
examples:
CWSS
AFT
S&B
Whirly Station / Radar
NPC TVL
There is a bunch of them

Really not baking or layering but 2 more steps......
Hahahaha, (I also have a step # 5 which is to disable steam auto-update) Right NOW - Before going to Sanctuary and getting into things. Yes, I have forgotten in the past
& a stealth step (Step#6, I have 5 mods in my load order that I know will save me grief if they are installed but NOT enabled until after specific Quests or until I am ready in-game.

I break the most games by level 20 if I am going to at all. seems after level 20 game is much more smooth. If anything messes up I can go back to one of the layers and change it and figure it out, or just restart.

If I am really bad; I have that pile of vanilla saves to go back to.

Anyway, just a bunch of babbling... Baking a cake would be much easier and take a lot less time.

In the end all baking really means is: MODS INSTALLED BETWEEN THE MIRROR and EXIT are the ingredients of your save file. You might add icing to the cake like a weapon or cool threads, but for the next few hundred hours you really shouldn't remove these, move them or add larger overhauls or mods that affect them in a way needing adjustments to your higher-level mod order. Other (smaller mods) you add you can go back a few hours if you don't like them, but not the ones here.

I figure the issue is something along those lines RayBo. For now i've gotten it working by rolling back to The Boring Update.

I’ve done some pretty ignorant modding practices in the past, the big no-no probably being the swap from NMM to Vortex. With that swap, a couple of things that used to work didn’t.

I finally decided that it was due to the load orders. Spent some time yesterday experimenting, disabling, and re-setting various mod load order rules. Finally found a problematic mod and excised it from my game. Got things back to working properly/as I remember them.

I can only do this ^^^ because I’m a madman who is happy to go back to an earlier save if there are problems. Not recommended for others LOL!

(I also had to add a few keywords to a mod to make it really do what I wanted, though that’s an aside. Might decide to live dangerously and merge a few older/simpler mods into my personal tweaks mod, will see. )

Given how Vortex holds its files in a separate install location, I find I am curious if I would have 2 SSDs if game loading can become even more efficient by using Vortex/MO2 & having mod files for their virtual install located on the 2nd SSD. Could that leverage the read speed of both SSDs simultaneously? Fallout 4 does appear to max out read speeds on a Samsung EVO 850 500GB, so I wonder if it were able to have files on another SSD if I buy for instance an EVO 860 & have Vortex use that for Fallout 4/SSE. This also means 2 SSD caches to take advantage of, which I think is part of why RAID configurations can be faster than single SSD. The system would be like this:
SSD#1 - EVO 850: Windows, Fallout 4 base game files, all of the "Fallout4 - " / "DLC0X -" BA2s, F4SE mods and any CC freebie mods. I did BRB Modlist repack so my base game + DLC BA2 are about 30GB IIRC.
SSD#2 - EVO 860: I have like 85GB of BA2s from mods. It's a huge amount but they're generally not all constantly in use. If it ended up being a bottleneck, like if I observe SSD 2's read speed is maxed while SSD 1's read speed is generally low can I do some manually?

I have heard that if your game is on SSD but you placed Vortex's stuff on HDD that you'll get snail's pace loading like an HDD install of the game will give you. I wonder if the opposite sort of scenario is also true, Game on SSD#1 + Vortex on SSD#2?

Whisper said:

I can only do this ^^^ because I’m a madman who is happy to go back to an earlier save if there are problems

Click to expand...

Same, though I also don't terribly mind to just start new game if needed.

@VersusXV I cannot remember the name of the mod - by cdante I think. >_< I’ve not used it myself as yet.

IIRC it caches all the ini-files in memory instead of constantly opening/loading and re- and re-re- and re-re-re- (*loop, endless - see endless loop*) every time it wants a setting.

This might help substantially.

Whisper said:

@VersusXV I cannot remember the name of the mod - by cdante I think. >_< I’ve not used it myself as yet.

IIRC it caches all the ini-files in memory instead of constantly opening/loading and re- and re-re- and re-re-re- (*loop, endless - see endless loop*) every time it wants a setting.

This might help substantially.

Click to expand...

Is it possibly either of these the one you are referring to?

PrivateProfileRedirector F4 - Faster game start (INI file cacher)
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/33947
xSE PluginPreloader F4
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/33946

I have these 2 already but yes they are very important utilities alongside the faster . What I am moreso talking about are accessing of model/texture/materials in BA2 added by mods. I am curious if Vortex's system can be exploited to have 2 SSDs separately access Base game vs Mod's files, since I think Vortex's virtualization can mean having mod files on a different storage drive.

I do not yet own a second SSD but if I could do something like this then that may become the next thing for me to save up for. I plan to buy a 1TB SSD, probably 860 EVO but didn't have any timeframe in mind. If I can dramatically improve load times further then it would become much more of a priority.