What is the best way to manage different mods sets for different playthroughs?

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Midnitewolf
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What is the best way to manage different mods sets for different playthroughs?

Post by Midnitewolf » Sat, 3. Apr 21, 21:48

I am trying to figure out the best way to manage my mods. This is not specific to a mod just a shout out to the general community on how they manage what mods they are using at any given time.

What I want or rather need to do is have about 4 different sets of mods for 4 different play throughs.

For Example:

1) I have a current modded Vanilla playthrough I want to keep.
2) I am wanting to start a Terran Cadet playthrough but want to use a different set of mods for this playthrough.
3) I want to start a VRO specific playthrough to try this out.
4) I want to also start a Star Wars Interworlds playthough.

I manually download some mods but use Steam subscriptions for a lot of them.

All 4 will be using at least some mods that are different than the others and wanted to get some ideas for how I could "manage" these in a fashion where I wasn't having to manually go though 20+ mods manually clicking them on and off each time I wanted to play with a different mod set. My first idea was to set up 4 different folders and just rename the one I wanted to use back to "extensions" when I wanted to use that set of mods. However, I know Steam automatically downloads mods so I if I am subscribed to the mod, it just seems like Steam would download any "missing" mods to the extension folder despite me not wanting to use that particular mod. I guess I could just create a check list for each mod set and manually check or uncheck things but would like to avoid that if possible.

If anyone knows how this all works with Steam or has any better ideas how to manage different mod sets let me know.

Midnitewolf
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Re: What is the best way to manage different mods sets for different playthroughs?

Post by Midnitewolf » Sat, 3. Apr 21, 23:03

No suggestions huh? Guess I will just have to use a check list and click on and off mods as I use them.

Alan Phipps
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Re: What is the best way to manage different mods sets for different playthroughs?

Post by Alan Phipps » Sun, 4. Apr 21, 13:36

My main suggestion would be to ask this in the S&M forum, so over we go.
A dog has a master; a cat has domestic staff.

Scoob
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Re: What is the best way to manage different mods sets for different playthroughs?

Post by Scoob » Sun, 4. Apr 21, 13:52

As I have the GoG version of the game, I simply create instances for whatever I want. I.e. I have the default instance that I never get, this is just always the most up to date version of the game. I'll then copy this and add mods to create my modded instance(s). During the 4.0 Beta I created a new instance every update. As for saves, I just moved them in and out of the Save Folder as I switched instances - just took a couple of seconds.

I have plenty of space an fast M.2 SSD's so the copying of the folder takes just a few seconds, so it's no inconvenience at all.

I'm unaware if Steam allows the same multi-instance approach. I've noticed that it does with some games but not with others, it really depends on what level of DRM is implemented. I've tried it with some games that running the .exe from the new instance actually runs the game from the default one, yet with others the new instance (with any mods / tweaks applied) run just fine.

Scoob.

SirNukes
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Re: What is the best way to manage different mods sets for different playthroughs?

Post by SirNukes » Sun, 4. Apr 21, 18:59

You can use the -personalfolderid arg and different profiles, each with its own set of enabled/disabled mods and saves.

karabAs
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Re: What is the best way to manage different mods sets for different playthroughs?

Post by karabAs » Sun, 4. Apr 21, 19:59

SirNukes wrote:
Sun, 4. Apr 21, 18:59
You can use the -personalfolderid arg and different profiles, each with its own set of enabled/disabled mods and saves.
Heh, very interesting. Never heard about that approach. A little bit more info would be really helpful and appreciated, with a simple example if possible :wink:
TIA.

Midnitewolf
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Re: What is the best way to manage different mods sets for different playthroughs?

Post by Midnitewolf » Sun, 4. Apr 21, 22:22

SirNukes wrote:
Sun, 4. Apr 21, 18:59
You can use the -personalfolderid arg and different profiles, each with its own set of enabled/disabled mods and saves.
Interesting. I will see if I can figure out how to do this.

monish_05m
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Re: What is the best way to manage different mods sets for different playthroughs?

Post by monish_05m » Mon, 5. Apr 21, 00:00

Vortex from nexus, use different profiles, I currently have a vro and vanilla game running that i switch between with a click of a button cant get easier than that.

SirNukes
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Re: What is the best way to manage different mods sets for different playthroughs?

Post by SirNukes » Mon, 5. Apr 21, 04:59

karabAs wrote:
Sun, 4. Apr 21, 19:59
Heh, very interesting. Never heard about that approach. A little bit more info would be really helpful and appreciated, with a simple example if possible :wink:
Add it to the command line args followed by a numeric folder number matching one in the documents/egosoft/x4 folder.

-personalfolderid 1
-personalfolderid 123456789

Note: folder name will be the number value, not the actual text, so this will produce a folder named "1":
-personalfolderid 00000001

If not given, the steam x4 exe automatically fills your steam id as the folder number.

In retrospect, the steam workshop will mess with the content.xml file based on workshop subscriptions for whatever folder you use, if you launch through steam. So if you want to keep using workshop for updates and such, you could try this approach:

a) Subsribe as normal to all mods wanted for every variation, and occasionally launch from steam to get updates.
b) Get the nosteam x4 exe (sorry, I don't think there's any way to make this work cleanly with steam normally).
c) Set up shortcuts for each folder id for each playthrough, and enabled/disable their mods respectively.

Each folder will have its own graphics settings, key bindings, etc, so that may add some hassle to keep them in sync. Also, any time you add new mods, you need to update the enabled/disabled state for each folder individually. This could be prone to accidents if you have an unmodified version using ventures, if you get too accustomed to ignoring the (modified) tag.

A more advanced approach would be to have multiple x4 "installations", each with only its own workshop items in its extensions folder. Making use of lots of symlinks, you can keep the file overhead minimal, and still benefit from steam workshop updates. Basically, symlink nearly everything (cat/dat files and subfolders except extensions) to the steam x4 install, and selectively symlink the wanted extension subfolders.

karabAs
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Re: What is the best way to manage different mods sets for different playthroughs?

Post by karabAs » Tue, 6. Apr 21, 00:56

@monish_05m: My mods library 99% from the steam, so I'm not using Vortex. Thanks for the tip anyway.

@SirNukes: Big thanks for the great explanation. Now I just need to figure this out with my limited knowledge about all that. 👍

boogieman335
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Re: What is the best way to manage different mods sets for different playthroughs?

Post by boogieman335 » Tue, 6. Apr 21, 04:41

The way I do it is to maintain a seperate copy of the game that I start using the Non Steam executable that you can get in the downloads section. It writes the saves to the main folder not the number folder in the X4 folder in My Documents\Egosoft\. But this is using a Steam version of the game, not likely to work for any other version. I should add that you'll need to copy any controller settings to this folder as well from your numbered folder. Then just make a shortcut for the non steam X4.exe and start it from there, you don't even need Steam running to lauunch the game but you will have to manually copy any mods from the Extensions folder in the original game that update thru the Steam workshop.

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