Simple question:

Are there any detrimental consequences to renaming an esp or esm?

e.g. Frans has 8 variations of "Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items Mod.esm". Would renaming each esm distinctively, then repackaging the archive "break" Frans?

- (not that I intend to do so, but hypothetically speaking)

similarly, Oblivifall - Losing my Religion has 2 versions of "Oblivifall - Losing My Religion BC Bruma.esp". One is for AWLS users, the other is for those without AWLS. Would renaming in order to simplify the archive structure cause unintended consequences?

After wracking my brains, I have not seen any problems with doing so, however, I have been known to overlook potential problems. Hopefully, there are far wiser individuals who can enlighten me.

Depends, really. For starters, any savegame in which those mods were active will behave from the renaming as if a clean save from that mod had been made. You can avoid this by using Wrye bash to update the savegame's master list.

Going into more specific issues, any other mods which have those files as a master will also require having their master list updated, lest the game crash on load when trying to use them. The easiest tool to check and correct that is again Wrye Bash.

Finally, and this is very particular, some OBSE scripts may reference stuff from other plugins indirectly through GetFormFromMod. For this to work the filename of the plugin has to be supplied to the command, so if it has changed those parts of the script will no longer work. I doubt any such mods reference the plugins you want to rename though, so that's likely a non issue.

For your hypothetical case, renaming the Fran's esm files is a very bad idea because that file has a lot of dependent plugins and your game will crash on load unless you also update them. Which defeats the purpose of renaming them.

If you want to repackage it for custom installations, use a BAIN setup instead. I think there are tutorials somewhere, but basically, put each of the different esms in different folders with the same install priority, a 00 prefix. Wrye Bash's installers is designed to work with that setup, and is kind of unbeatable for managing installations.

Thank you, migck.

I had not considered any possible OBSE issues.

I already repackage (almost) every archive, and write my own wizard script for each (which is a great way to ensure that I RTFM. ). In doing so, I have often considered the implications of renaming, without any obvious answer (aside from the need to change any master dependencies). Perhaps it is time to learn a deeper level of scripting.

Renaming ESMs is a very bad idea, I suggest you never do this. Every ESP which depends upon that ESM (and with Fran's, every single ESP will depend on the ESM) requires the filename to be as it was when you downloaded it. You would need to redirect each individual ESP to the newly named master, which could get messy.

For ESPs it's not such a big deal, but as warned by migck some mods may contain OBSE script-checks (Better Cities does) for particular ESP names which if not found could result in certain compatibility functions not being triggered which should be. Similarly, some mods which have OBMM or BAIN install scripts (Better Cities does) may check for particular ESP names which if not found results in certain compatibility or integration ESPs not being installed which should be.