Morrowind_ob.esm Limitations

Yes, this does work, to a point. It does not solve the prolbem of only wanting parts of the mod. Yesterday I was working on adding the Vampire Fix. This adds the Vampire Faction and Vampire Spells to Vampires. However, the author, seldalore, had also done what most modders in this project have; they replaced the bad clothing with vanilla Oblivion clothing. In this case I did not want the clothing replaced. If I am forced to replace rather than fix the bad Morrowind clothing, I will do so at the master level, that is, redirect the original objects at new meshes rather than totall replacing the objects with new ones. But, you induced me to try again. I must have done something wrong the first time. So, thank you! Now I can get back to my original plan, rather than copy/past one item at a time!

Only ONE Mod gets to touch an NPC in the end. Merging to Master DOES Work. It also follows that basic law of Oblivion Modding. Instead of joining the original with the new, a Merge Overwrites the old with the new. I had changed the inventories of EVERY NPC that was wearing Legion, Steel, or Iron armor to give them Vvardenfell Imports equivalents. I then merged a mod from Yoshimo containing factions. Factions were indeed updated... but so was inventory, right back to where I started, undoing all the changes I had made. To a great extent, this puts me right back where I started. Copy/Paste. One line at a time...

I was intending on building one means of transport between Cyrodiil and Morrowind very similar but not identical to CNME's Alternate Arrival. This works great... as long as it's an ESP that does the transporting. However, when converted to an ESM, if Morrowind_ob.esm EVEN TOUCHES an exterior cell of Oblivion.esm, that entire cell is totall whacked. Totally. It is hard to describe. But, EVERY non-persistent object in the cell is gone, including land and water. It is the goofiest looking thing you can imagine. So, I have started the first part of the second phase of the Project, Morroblivion.esp which will add content that was not part of the original Morrowind_ob.esm. Or make some upgrades to it. However, this part is not ready for release as I am still tinkering with yet another limitation...

John and I set about doing the same thing, but went about it in two totally different, incompatible, and mutually exclusive ways. John "Replaced" NPC Inventory with new objects. I "Redirected" the objects themselves at meshes contained in Vvardenfell Imports. If John's mod is used together with mine, it overwrites my changes. That is why my armor and upcoming clothing changes are somewhat protected from merging because I don't edit NPC's, I edit the objects themselves.

The problem is much deeper and more fundamental than you are imagining. The idea with TesSnip is good, but the problem is not with the objects, but with the process. Essentially what happens, is the existing NPC record is thrown out and is completely replaced with the new one, not just the parts of it that were edited. Snipping out things doesn't matter, or, is back to copy/paste into the new mod to be merged. Yoshimo was using the pre-cleaned Morrowind_ob.esm when he added the Factions to the NPC's. I had updated about half the Merchants to remove conflicting AI that was preventing Traders from Trading, and had also added the Vampire Faction to Vampires. So, take your pick, Yoshimo's new Factions, or my AI fixes, not both. Yes, I certainly could go in and edit Yoshimo's mod to delete all the conflicting AI, again, before I merged, or I could clean up afterwards by going in and redoing the AI. At this point they are the same. But, I SOOOOOOO agree with you. We HAVE to find a way around this. Keep Thinking! Keep Trying!!!

My issue is not with what I have lost so far. My problem is with the upcoming merge of Morrowind Rebuilt. The Queen of the Ashlands updates HUNDREDS of NPC's with AI Packages. Her mod takes priority over everything else, and I will start over again using her mod first, then clean up everything it whacks. The problem is with anything else that needs to come after it, like Yoshimo's Faction mod, Merchant AI packages, etc. From now on it is walking on eggshells that I do not whack part of the main Oblivion Quest, or one of the hundreds of side quests that The Queen is working on...

Sorry, let me clarify. During the conversion process itself, Legion, Steel, and Iron armor are Switched with Oblivon equivalents. I could have prevented it if I had planned on doing any of this ahead of time.... But, it is what it is, and I started with a Morrowind_ob.esm that had these objects replaced. Plus, Vvardenfell Imports uses a single mesh for Dark Brotherhood armor, and a couple of the Bloodmoon pieces, so I could not "Redirect" them as such. What I had to do with Legion, Steel, Iron, and Dark Brotherhood Armor was first to rebuild the objects that were replaced during the conversion, then essentially the same as John did, replace them one object at a time in NPC inventories. However, for all the rest of the armor I redirected the existing Objects at the Vvardenfell Imports meshes.