Understanding Mod Conflict Reports

A Community message bought to you by the Caring Modders Guild (CMG)

by Martigen

Introduction

Inevitably, with the sheer volume and variety of mods from the talented and creative modding community, mods will and do conflict.

Or at least, that's how it appears.

Contrary to the bright red coloring of conflicts in Oblivion Mod Manager's (OBMM) conflict reports, not all conflicts are a bad thing. In fact, in many cases, they are very good thing indeed. This is your guide to understanding and interpreting the invaluable Conflict Report so that you can get the very best out of your Oblivion experience.

(Step One) There is no spoon: Conflicts are not conflicts

I know, crazy! No, this isn't reverse pyschology but rather recognising that, even though it's covered in OBMM's readme, the purpose of the conflict reports are still largely misunderstood.

The golden rule is this: OBMM does not report actual conflicts, it reports potential conflicts.

While OBMM looks for and detects two or more mods that alter the same record, what it can't do is determine if this is a conflict of interest or not. In some cases, a conflict actually shows that two mods are working as they should.

A great example is, and to draw on my own work, the Cats & Rats mod. In order to prevent guards attacking cats, a short piece of code is added to the guards. Because mods like OOO, Francescos and others alter guards as well, guards from these mods were imported into Cats & Rats. If you were to run a conflict report, it would be filled with [i]potential[/i] red conflicts over the NPC entries for guards -- but these are not actual conflicts. In fact, if the conflicts didn't exist, Cats & Rats would not work properly and you'd have cities full of poor dead kittens.

Another example is Mighty Magic and, well, just about any mod that alters creatures and spells (OOO, Francescos, MMM etc). Does seeing a long list of red conflicts mean your game will break or you can't use the mods together? Not at all. Why? Because, again, the conflicts are not actual conflicts -- there is no spoon -- they are potential conflicts. That Mighty Magick alters some settings on top of those you might find in OOO or Francescos is entirely the point -- that's why you're loading the mod!

If you decided not to use a mod because you saw red conflicts, you would be missing out on a better Oblivion experience, and all for nothing.

These are just two examples of many many mods out there -- as stated earlier, the sheer volume and creativity of the modding community means mods frequently, regularly, and like clockwork will show up conflicting in the conflict report -- even when they actually don't.

-- DragoonWraith -- "I think the best term to refer to "conflicts" would be "overlaps" as this is by far the best succinct description of what's going on between the mods." Spot on! --

So how do you know if a conflict will prevent two mods working together, or enable them to do so?

(Step Two) Interpreting conflicts: It's up to you!

OBMM is a tool that works in black and white -- it can tell you when two or more mods alter the same record, but it can't tell you what this means. Without intepretation, the conflict report is just a bunch of colored lines.

So how do you work out what the conflicts mean? There's two ways of finding out -- the easy way, and the fun way!

1) The easy way: Ask for help

Not everyone likes to play with the CS, so it's perfectly ok if you just want to be sure everything will work fine without delving into it all. Pop into the official thread and ask about the conflicts you've seen -- and don't paste the entire conflict report.

Other users, and especially the mod author, will be more than willing to clarify what you're seeing and either put your mind to rest, or offer advice on what, if anything, you can do.

2) The fun way: Work it out for yourself!

If you want to learn more about how mods work, or if you're always been curious but haven't had the chance to explore, read on. Working it out can be broken down as follows:

First, if you're not familiar with the mods in question, read their READMEs. You cannot interpret a conflict report without knowing what the mods are supposed to do. If don't like reading READMEs, this path isn't for you.

Once you know what the mods do, look at the report -- you can completely ignore green and yellow conflicts, just focus on the red ones. Take a look at the records being altered and, from what you understand the mod is trying to do, decide wether the conflicting records will cause a problem, or in fact are intentional. You can work out, based on the purpose of the mod, the type of changes its trying to make to the record entries. But what do all those abreviations mean?

 NPC_ - NPC entry
 CONT - Container
 GMST - Global setting
 DIAL - Dialogue
 INGR - Ingredient
 CREA - Creature
 CSTY  - Combat Style
 CELL - Interior cell
 WEAP - Weapon
 ARMO - Armor
 AMMO - Ammo
 CLOT - Clothes
 SCPT - Script
 SGST - Sigil stone
 WRLD - World space
 MISC - Misc items
 SPEL - Spell
 LVLI - Item level list
 LVLC - Creature level list
 BOOK - Please

These are a sample, there are quite a few more, but you get the idea. Now, it won't always be clear the type of change a mod makes unless you open it up in the CS and look at the entry, which of course you can do. But again, you don't have to -- the author of the mod knows better than anyone else the records the mod changes and why, and will be able to answer if a given conflict is actual or not.

(Step Three) Resolving actual conflicts: It's in the load order

When you have two mods that alter the same record, and it's not a case of intentional overlap, then only one mod or the other will have its changes show up in the game. This is not necessarily bad thing, it just means you have to decide what you want in your game. There are two options here:

1) Use one or the other mod: Sometimes, that's just the way it's gotta be. Check with the mod author to be sure the two are mutually incompatible.

2) Adjust the load order: There's about a thousand examples of this, but lets use Mighty Magick again -- Mighty Magick alters the summonable creatures to the authors view of what they should be. It obviously will conflict with most mods that also alter summonable creatures, like OOO.

Is this a game-breaking conflict? Not at all -- loaded after OOO, the creatures Mighty Magick changes take priority over those in OOO, but the creatures Mighty Magick doesn't change show through from OOO before it. This doesn't mean it's a match made in heaven though -- if the differences between the two mods are, say, the strength of the creature then you simply get MM's balance on what this should be. If the differences are what the creature carries in its inventory, then you'll be getting what MM puts in there instead of OOO. However the differences are contained, and nothing stops the rest of the two mods working together beautifully. This is why it helps to understand what a mod does and what conflicts mean -- so you can decide for yourself which ones you want to take priority.

The bottom line is, for the majority of cases, two mods that alter similar properities in the game can and usually do work together, so you can have (most of) your cake and eat it too.

Oh, there is one other option -- mod merging. Rather than overlapping mods you can merge two or more together and, for the most part, the records from both are combined -- in the Mighty Magick example, this might mean getting the inventory of OOO in appearing in MM's creatures, for e.g. Merging, however, is beyond the scope of this piece (though I could easily write a guide here too).

Conclusion

If you love your mods enough to download and install them, love them enough to understand what they do, and you will never have a problem with conflicts. In summary:

OBMM reports possible conflicts, not actual conflicts
Conflicts mean nothing without interpretation
Understand what the mods do, and the nature of the conflict
Ask for help in official threads if you're unsure about a conflict

And, when you ask for help in threads, for the love of the nines don't post the entire damn report, just one example of each type of conflict is more than enough.

Finally, this piece is by and for the community -- additions, updates, fixes, and omissions welcome. Oh yes, and the CMG is just a bit of fun :)