ESM vs ESP Advice?

[TentakelnBitte]

Assuming I have everything else in an ESM, can I safely edit EVERY NPC in one ESP?

Or should I split it by like Race or Hold, etc?

 

Things like Bijin edit a ton, but I haven't really seen any that cover *everybody*.

ESPs have a limit and I'm not sure how easy it is to hit with just Actor edits.

 

Basically, I'm redoing a personal overhaul, because I had a PC failure and have yet to retrieve anything from that hdd.

SO, rather than wait on that, I'm rebuilding it entirely, in a much more organized fashion this time.

 

It got very tedious un-esmifying things if I forgot something, going into the CK, then forgetting to re-esmify beforehand and having to reload 16 dependencies... once the CK feels like opening again! >.<;

[Saraniamic]

I am fairly certain the Bijin mods have a separate ESP for each NPC, they are just merged together in the mod. When you install the mod, it gives you an option to use only separate NPC's but warns you that option will give you a separate ESP for each NPC. Not sure if that's helpful, but you know.

[TentakelnBitte]

On 12/13/2018 at 6:31 AM, Saraniamic said:

I am fairly certain the Bijin mods have a separate ESP for each NPC, they are just merged together in the mod. When you install the mod, it gives you an option to use only separate NPC's but warns you that option will give you a separate ESP for each NPC. Not sure if that's helpful, but you know.

No, that's... not related at all, haha. Bijin was just an example of a mod that edits a large number of NPCs all at once (in this case, the merged version).
I wanted to know what the limits are within a single esp when it comes to touching npcs.

 

Like could I edit EVERY npc in the game, or would it give me an error at some point?

Bijin only has separate esps so people can pick and choose which edits they want, not because of a limiter... otherwise the merged version wouldn't be a thing lol

 

I guess the other reply was over on N*xus, because someone pointed out some DLC-sized mod editing a ridiculous amount and being fine as an esp, so that was reassuring at least. Not 100% how true that might be, but I won't be pushing it quite that far, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[Varithina]

ESP files do have a maximum number of records they can hold, not too sure what it is though.

 

I did a bit of digging this post from reddit seems to answer things quite nicely

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/3knv0e/merging_plugins_whats_the_max_amount_of_records_a/

 

And as it is arthmoor answering I would imagine the info is pretty solid.

[Grey Cloud]

The guy who did Dames of Skyrim used 3 esps because that was the least number it took for the number of NPCs he diddled.

[TentakelnBitte]

On 12/31/2018 at 11:09 AM, Varithina said:

ESP files do have a maximum number of records they can hold, not too sure what it is though.

 

I did a bit of digging this post from reddit seems to answer things quite nicely

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/3knv0e/merging_plugins_whats_the_max_amount_of_records_a/

 

And as it is arthmoor answering I would imagine the info is pretty solid.

THIS is exactly what I was looking for, thanks! ❤️

Sounds like I'd be fine with an esp, but juuust to be safe I'll still esmify a base and do the actual edits separately.

 

On 12/31/2018 at 6:24 PM, Grey Cloud said:

The guy who did Dames of Skyrim used 3 esps because that was the least number it took for the number of NPCs he diddled.

I checked it out and he only did that because his CK was being a pain. It wouldn't let him load all the DLCs at once, so there's an esp for each.

Still a great example though!