Viable Arousal framework(s) for SE in 2025?

[someperson1423]

I'm sort of confused what is considered the current standard. I really liked how OSLAroused did their formula instead of TimeRate/Exposure. Unfortunately, after about 10 hours into a fresh build list and playthrough it was apparent that it was completely nonfunctional for some reason. I tried to keep the playthrough alive by switching to it's Timerate/Exposure setting which sort of worked in a vacuum but quickly became apparent that it wasn't communicating properly with my other mods as SLEN and SL Fertility Mode Arousal didn't have any effect on my exposure. Reading through the thread, a lot of other people were having similar (but not identical) problems so I figured it isn't worth the trouble.

 

So I started a new playthrough and have tried SLAR and SLAX-ASA3 so far in it. SLAR isn't working right, it doesn't seem to be updating exposure at all, although timerate appears to be working. I'm sort of confused why this would be the case because it appears far simpler than SLAX and is recommended by the SE Compatibility Tracker thread so I guess I did something wrong?

 

SLAX looks to be working with TR and exposure, but there are random spikes and then drops (much quicker than the days-to-reduce-1/3rd setting should allow) in exposure which make me worried I'll run into issues later in the playthrough. The MCM also seems incomplete with lots of setting info being placeholder text and exposure rate is, for some reason I can't understand, not something the user can edit (reading through the thread I realize it is related to keeping it consistent with the polling rate but IMO locking the user out of exposure rate entirely is far worse than just having to adjust it manually if you change polling rate). I'm no modder so I appreciate the effort put into it, but it just seems overly-patched and feature-bloated at this point which makes me question its stability for my build.

 

So I guess, did I miss something? At this point I'm considering just running SLAR even if exposure doesn't work for me. I'm worried that SLAX will cause me worse issues down the road and brick yet another playthrough. I'd just like something simple and reliable.