OOO or FCOM?

Post » Mon Mar 14, 2011 6:17 pm

I've played OB on the xbox since it came out, been wanting to make the switch for years; now I finally have :)

So without knowing what I'm doing, I decided to load fcom. After about a hour I got wrye bash and ooo running (not sure about wrye bash tbh) and was about to move to the next when I thought... is it worth it? The other three mods seem to do the same, should I bother?

I'm really more interested in unique landscapes, better cities, and some quest mods. But I'm most importantly looking for a stable build.

So my question is: is fcom significantly better than ooo? And which is more stable/compatible?

Thanks in advance for your patience with a newbie question!
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Jack Moves
 
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Post » Mon Mar 14, 2011 10:02 pm

Nowadays I use OOO+MMM. These two mods are, arguably, the back bone of FCOM anyway and I prefer to keep my mod lists as simple as I can.

There are things to be said about FCOM. It is a fantastic achievement and a great many people like it and swear by it. I've run several games with FCOM and probably will again, sometime in the future. But, given what you say in your post, my advise would be to go with Oscuro and Martigen and put the rest of your energy into getting Unique Landscapes, Better Cities and quest mods working together. You can always install FCOM in your next game. ;)
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P PoLlo
 
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Post » Tue Mar 15, 2011 1:53 am

Well it depends on the amount of effort you are willing to invest. Getting a perfectly tuned, high mod install, crash free can take someone a year of pure testing to get perfectly flowing. Every single major mod you install is another 1000 possible issues down the line.(that is actually a huge overstatement that is far more scary than it sounds, 998 of those issues won't crash your game) I currently have a crash free 155 mod install. You can image how many posts I had to read, how many settings I had to tweak, etc etc to get it to a near-crash-free-state. It's not a easy undertaking.

That said, I like my oblivion diverse. Oblivion 2.0. If you will. If you keep your modlist limited to OOO or MMM, that's great. But in my view, that's oblivion 1.01. Not oblivion 2.0. (lol don't worry, I am not taking myself that seriously here).

There are guides on this board for a pretty damn good fcom++ install (check the 50step fcom thread) but even that would likely be hours, and hours, and hours, to get right. If that scares you, and it probably should, maybe start smaller.

If you cannot handle the idea of ticking boxes, and reading how to use programs such as wrye bash, then maybe stick to a cleaner OOO install. It's not that HARD, exactly. It's more... how to put it. Layered. You need to understand how merging works, how wrye bash works, so on.

In terms of wrye bash, in my view - it's the gateway to more than a single overhaul mod. It's THE essential tool for getting oblivion 2.0. (when used with boss installed so it's useable in wrye bash)


Personally, to experience oblivion on a grand grand scale, I think fcom+ many more essential mods is absolutely the way to go. But as said previous to this post, you can increment if you want.

Just to reiterate one more time, if you manage to understand how wrye bash works, if you have your oblivion mods folder setup with the mods you want, so you can use bain. If you merge that bash patch. If you set boss and click on the sort button before you build your patch. Then from thereon out, (and it's not THAT hard getting there) it's smoother rolling. You basically just install (nice to read readme's for most complex mods) run the little boss icon from wrye bash, right click your bashed patch, build patch, set your tweaks and merge options, and build the patch. And every mod you install beyond that is just repeating that same formula. Get that formula down, and you have the eb-and-flow of tweaking your oblivion install.

Also, if you do finally go down this path, and figure out the above, from a proper post explaining how to do so. Then always remember to install a mod, test test test, install a mod, test test test, install a mod, test test test. And every time you feel you have gotten somewhere in terms of stability, make a backup of the oblivion folder, or rar it up. Then if something goes wrong, and you install a few too many mods, and now everything feels broken or dirty. Revert to the older install, start again from there. Until you find the next stability point. It's like slowly climbing a ladder.

This is really essential.

Like I said, it's a process. Eventually you learn to love it. But a lot of hate, cursing, frowning, and giving up, comes before that. Personally, I had to learn it all myself. I never had a fcom++guide, by that point I had already figured it all out myself. The hard way. But that's way I learn. I truly hope you can follow the guides on here and catchup a lot of what I had to manually invest, a lot faster.

Oh, and you gotta install those unofficial oblivion patches nomatter what! They are essential.
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Tessa Mullins
 
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Post » Mon Mar 14, 2011 11:04 pm

II'm really more interested in unique landscapes, better cities, and some quest mods. But I'm most importantly looking for a stable build.


Then I'd go with MMM and OOO for the time being at least - you can always "upgrade" to FCOM later on. With MMM/OOO you'll get much of what's in FCOM anyway, it's a simpler install plus once you have that setup stable it's not such a big leap to add FCOM if you'd feel like it.
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David John Hunter
 
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Post » Tue Mar 15, 2011 7:48 am

I would second the others: Do not install FCOM at this point, above all because you are new to modding the game.

At the risk of oversimplifying I will say that full FCOM is pretty much OOO + MMM with "only" more enemy types and more items to be found in-game. In terms of actual gameplay and difficulty, OOO + MMM is pretty much what FCOM is. And the installation of it is much more simple. :)
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Flutterby
 
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Post » Tue Mar 15, 2011 4:38 am

Nowadays I use OOO+MMM. These two mods are, arguably, the back bone of FCOM anyway and I prefer to keep my mod lists as simple as I can.

There are things to be said about FCOM. It is a fantastic achievement and a great many people like it and swear by it. I've run several games with FCOM and probably will again, sometime in the future. But, given what you say in your post, my advise would be to go with Oscuro and Martigen and put the rest of your energy into getting Unique Landscapes, Better Cities and quest mods working together. You can always install FCOM in your next game. ;)

I agree; I like to keep things nice and tight with as few major building blocks (large mods) as possible and knowing the function of each of those, so OOO+MMM does enough for me at this time. I've tried FCOM in the past (briefly), but its more a matter of choice - I don't feel I need its features, nor feel it is worth the maintenence. If someone could sell it to me convincingly, I may be tempted.
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J.P loves
 
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Post » Tue Mar 15, 2011 7:50 am

I find myself going against the tide here...

I recommend just trying OOO (plus some other stuff, once you're confident you have that figured out and working properly).

Reason being, OOO+MMM is not *that* much simpler or easier, if you're not used to all this, than FCOM. Especially these days.

Try one overhaul, see if you like it (OOO is, after all, the "backbone" of most configurations, including both the forementioned), and go from there...?

:shrug: That's what I would do.


edit: Full disclosure - I use FCOM++ (++++++++ ...) ;)
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Talitha Kukk
 
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