NMM MO MO2 or Vortex

[cailic]

I've been using NMM.  I have read that alot of my problems with Skyim could be caused this.  So, I decided to switch to MO.  I noticed that there is a MO2, so I installed that.  I was happy to see that it has a tutorial.  Too bad most of the words can not be read.  It looks like a bad photocopy done with the lid open.  I was going to look for a tutorial on it since I've been having nothing but issues since I began using it.  The mods aren't working, they are installed, but they don't do anything, like Devious Followers.  I also get a bar that is exactly like the struggle bar in Defeat, but uninstalling Defeat does not get rid of it.  And it is there all the time.  Game crashes 30 percent of the time when I hit esc. 

 

Anyway, what I would like to know, before wasting any more time, should I have installed MO for Skyrim LE?  Should I research more into MO2?  Or should I just use NMM until Vortex is stabilized?  It took two days to update and install my mods.  I'm still missing a few.  And at least another day trying to figure out what I was doing wrong in MO2.  I actually got FNIS to work..... once.  Then it said there were files missing and now MO2 locks for a few seconds with no noticeable actions.

 

Thanks

[Grey Cloud]

3 minutes ago, cailic said:

I've been using NMM. 

If it's not broke then don't fix it. I've used it for over three years and it does not cause me any problems.

From what problems do you suffer?

 

4 minutes ago, cailic said:

I have read that alot of my problems with Skyim could be caused this. 

I have read that Elvis works in Walmart.

[tuxagent7]

NMM user also here

 

Never had any problem with it

 

With big mods like devious cursed loot sometimes i install it manually after having it installed with nmm to make sure i have all the files properly installed

 

 

[bandygirl1]

NMM gets the job done. You DO have to be careful about install orders and uninstalling a lot of mods at once wily-nily, but there's nothing wrong with using NMM.

 

MO has much more of a learning curve, but if you are willing to put in the time it will give you far more control and ability to customize your game. This makes it the superior option in my honest opinion (<-key point here) and that of many others.

 

Since I play LE and have never had issues since swapping to and learning how to use MO, I've never seen any reason to switch to MO2.

 

As above; I've seen no reason to swap to Vortex. And TBH, I haven't really been impressed by anything anyone has had to say about it.

[tuxagent7]

32 minutes ago, bandygirl1 said:

As above; I've seen no reason to swap to Vortex. And TBH, I haven't really been impressed by anything anyone has had to say about it.

Yup,  i agree with bandygirl, in my honest opinion : Vortex didnt impress me enough to swap manager from what i heard

 

Nexus mod manager is at version 0.65.11 at github

[x0101x]

Choosing a mod manager is mostly a matter of taste.

 

Mod Organizer 1/2 and NMM are good mangers.

 

Myself I'm in MO club, but I know that it has a high learning curve but also it's unique features and give you more control.

 

Both MO 1/2 and NMM are good.

 

But for love of gods, don't use Vortex. It's still a public alpha. That means that isn't fully feature complete and also buggy.

[Grey Cloud]

15 minutes ago, x0101x said:

Choosing a mod manager is mostly a matter of taste.

 

Mod Organizer 1/2 and NMM are good mangers.

 

Myself I'm in MO club, but I know that it has a high learning curve but also it's unique features and give you more control.

 

Both MO 1/2 and NMM are good.

 

But for love of gods, don't use Vortex. It's still a public alpha. That means that isn't fully feature complete and also buggy.

Well summarised, especially the last line. The thought of committing my mod list to a prog at public alpha stage is the stuff of nightmares.

[GenioMaestro]

2 hours ago, cailic said:

The mods aren't working, they are installed, but they don't do anything, like Devious Followers.  I also get a bar that is exactly like the struggle bar in Defeat, but uninstalling Defeat does not get rid of it.

Not try make a lot of things at the same time. You MUST know yours mods and you MUST know what make each mod and WHAT mod show that bar. Is the FIRST thing that you MUST learn. You can not know how solve a problem if you not know WHAT mod can give the problem. In that situation you are completelly lost.

 

I recomend you remove yours mods and install it in small groups. In that way you can learn WHAT make each mod and WHAT mod show that bar. You can know from WHAT mod come that dialog and WHAT mod have that functionality. And when increase the numbers of mod you start experimenting the problems of the collisions, the overlaping and all the consecuent problems of have a big mod list.

 

You can use the manager that you want. But in the same way is another program that you MUST learn to use.

 

NMM is slow but is easy. The only BIG problem in NMM is the installation order. You MUST install the mods in a specific order for get the correct replacement in the files.

 

MO is very powerfull but is a bit complex. The power have the problem of the complexity and you need learn more things for use MO in the correct way.

 

Vortex is in developement and need some obligatory improvement, imo, of course. Is a manager for expert users and i can not recomend use Vortex for now.

[Nagib]

Just go with MO1.

I used to use NMM since Fallout times, but MO1 with its (not touching the game folder) philosophy was closer to me.

With NMM you can rule your esp load order, but MO1 allows you to rule both your esp load order and file load order.

 

It is just easier to maintain your game with it, because you have more control over and easier maintenance.

 

The only reason to use MO2 is if you want want to start x64 exe files, be it SSE or Bodyslide x64 (available for Oldrim).

MO2 also lacks a feature that MO1 has, you can click on .bsa files in the archives tab and load them without esp file.

Though I would call it an advanced feature for niche use, when you understand what you are doing.

[cailic]

This is interesting.  For a couple of years I've heard people saying how great MO is and how lousy NMM is.  What made me finally decide to try MO2 was some documentation with a mod.  Or it may have been instructions on installation of several mods.  The author was saying that he was going to stop answering questions for users of NMM. 

 

I just haven't been in the mood to learn anything new for awhile.  For the past few years, it's been one thing after the other knocking me on my butt.  I think my brain has atrophied.  But it sounds like I'll learn to use MO2 since I do run the X64 bodyslide and haven't had to extract any BSAs for awhile.  I've always used the BSA extractor tool that says the file format isn't right, but it does the job anyway.  Since I made a backup of my NMM skyrim, I may go back to it for awhile as I read up more on MO2.

 

Thanks for all of your input.  Irritation was starting to make me a little squirrely. 

[foreveraloneguy]

NMM is ok, but it's not officially supported any more, and even with all the community patches, most of the old problems still remain. More than anything, it's very slow if you have a lot of mods since it has to parse through a giant xml flat file to figure out what files are already installed and see if there are any conflicts with the mod you're installing. And switching profiles is just a joke with more than a handful of mods.

 

I made the cut to vortex a couple of months ago when I started a complete rebuild after NMM left me with a non-functional game. So far, I'm very happy with it. I can modify files in data and vortex picks it up and asks what I want to do (keep, revert, etc.). It's easy as hell to use, near zero learning curve, and works well with nexus as well as LL mods, fomod or not. I also like the very intuitive rule builder to resolve conflicts when more than one mod installs a texture or mesh. Seems like it has the best features from both NMM and MO, which makes sense since the MO author is the lead dev on vortex. Best of all, it uses native windows system calls for virtualization instead of a virtual file system shim, so it's really fast even when switching profiles.

 

MO is, as the author admitted, a solution in search of a problem. It's sort of the linux of mod managers. Sure, it'll do whatever you want and you can customize loading far beyond anything else, but you'll often spend hours, and possibly days or weeks figuring out how to get it to do even simple things that just work out of the box everywhere else. I started to make the cut to it once, realized I'd spent a week reading tutorials just to get basic functionality working instead of playing, deleted it and never looked back.

 

So my take is...

 

NNM if you have a complex build, the game is stable, and you don't want the pain of migrating to a new mod manager and you don't install/upgrade mods very often.

Vortex if you're starting a new build or your build is fairly simple and you want all the best parts of NMM and MO with none of the wonkiness of MO or instability of NMM.

MO if you just want to learn to administer MO. 

[foreveraloneguy]

10 hours ago, x0101x said:

But for love of gods, don't use Vortex. It's still a public alpha. That means that isn't fully feature complete and also buggy.

It moved to beta quite some time ago. IJS...

[cailic]

13 hours ago, foreveraloneguy said:

Vortex if you're starting a new build or your build is fairly simple and you want all the best parts of NMM and MO with

What do you mean by "fairly simple"?  To me, that sounds like a situation where you could just install all the mods manually and have no issues.  Oh, wait a minute.  You said "or".  My bad.  I am starting a new build so, what the hell, I'll give Vortex a try.  In any event, I won't be able to play the game for a while.  I only got 51 mods installed yesterday with NMM  before I got sick of looking at them.  I'm pretty sure I already installed some out of order.

 

Thanks.

[cailic]

I've run into an issue.  Guess I'll try asking here instead of starting another thread.  I haven't found an answer via google, only others with the same question.  What file do you use with Vortex to install Optimized Vanilla Textures?  Part one wants you select either MO or NMM, the second part has two possibly viable options.  One poster reported not being able to get either to work. 

[Vuulgar]

A deciding factor for me would be the number of new games you make and the number of mods you try. If you play one game and one character up to level 150 and beyond then NMM is fast and easy. The problem I ran in to was maintenance of my game as I added and took mods away in new character builds my game folder became corrupted, MO2 fits me much better in that I can make a default mod list then copy it to a new profile for a stable base to add whatever few flavor mods on top, no corruption to the game folder as I add nothing directly. MO2 certainly takes time to figure out and some mods take special care to play nice with the virtual system. 

[Varithina]

Also note, well for me anyway, the more current versions of mo2 do not like being installed in the game directory, older versions and mo however had no problem with it, took me ages to figure out what the problem was with some of the tools for skyrim and fallout 4 under mo2 when it changed.

[cailic]

So far, Vortex is working great, at least seemingly so far.  Not sure if the Optimized Vanilla Textures took or not.  At least I haven't seen any missing textures yet.  It takes a bit longer to install your mods but the control you have on what mod supersedes what is nice.  The fact that FNIS is automatically run as well as loot is also a welcome feature.  The "struggle bar" that I mentioned earlier appeared after installation of several Sexlab mods.  I am close to pin-pointing what mod is causing that.  It much easier troubleshooting when you don't have to worry about the installation order.

 

Ok, just noticed that FNIS doesn't always run.  I just had to run it manually.    Could be Vortex isn't catching the change when I uninstall animations.  But is does seem to run automatically when installing animations.