Should We Extract BSAs?

[Asyrin]

I'm following SR:LE for the first time.

 

Should we extract all BSAs via mod organizer? Only some BSAs? I did a quick find and searched and I can't really find in the guide where it tells you to or not.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Nebulous112]

Yes, if following SR:LE all mod BSAs need to be extracted.

[Asyrin]

Awesome, thanks!

[fbrafa]

Yes, if following SR:LE all mod BSAs need to be extracted.

But why? (serious question)

Even if I won't be optimizing the textures?

I remember back in the day when MO still had the char limit on BSAs the norm was to extract everything other than the officials and STEP Optimized vanilla textures. But whats the point now? Only to be able to hide some files in the otherwise packaged mod?

[paul666root]

and loads faster than having to look inside bsas.

[Nebulous112]

But why? (serious question)

Even if I won't be optimizing the textures?

I remember back in the day when MO still had the char limit on BSAs the norm was to extract everything other than the officials and STEP Optimized vanilla textures. But whats the point now? Only to be able to hide some files in the otherwise packaged mod?

Yeah, the main point I believe is to be able to hide files in packaged mods, as well as to be able to merge mod assets without installing the BSAopt integration into Merge Plugins.

 

Note that this is only the instruction for SR:LE. STEP instructions assume that BSAs are left packed.

[fbrafa]

Understoo

 

Yeah, the main point I believe is to be able to hide files in packaged mods, as well as to be able to merge mod assets without installing the BSAopt integration into Merge Plugins.

Note that this is only the instruction for SR:LE. STEP instructions assume that BSAs are left packed.

Understood. That's what was getting me confused. 

[Pherim]

and loads faster than having to look inside bsas.

Actually, unless you have a very fast SSD, reading data from SSDs and decompress it is usually a lot faster than reading uncompressed data from a conventional hard disk. And even on an SSD it should still be faster or at least not slower than reading uncompressed data. It always takes the longest to get the data into the RAM, but once it's there it can be processed a lot faster. The main goal should be to get it into the RAM as fast as possible, so compressed data is usually better. Especially for Meshes the difference between compressed and uncompressed size is huge, and I have definitely experienced shorter loading times and less stutter after compressing some mods which had a lot of small meshes in them, for example facegen meshes for NPCs. Also, having all files together in one (unfragmented) archive file further reduces access times for conventional HDDs.

 

See here for more information (scroll down to 4.): https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/4591640-update-bsas-and-you/

 

This does not directly correspond to BSAs, true, but it can be assumed that the game is optimized for fast BSA extraction.