Im working on my own personal balance mod that basically touches every monster, eventually items, stat graphs, and some spawn classes. But I'd really like if it "built off" of unearthed arcana because I can't possibly fathom why anyone wouldn't be using that gem. In modding skyrim I could just add it as a dependency but there's no such feature or ability to compare conflicting records for TL2. I could just mod directly in the unpacked Unearthed Arcana mod, but if I ever finish I'd probably want to release it and I don't think it would be kosher to just have UA packaged inside. Do you guys have an tips/tricks/ideas for comparing mod files/conflicting records/mod compatibility?

Go ahead and build on it with my blessing

As for distributing it, I'd rather it wasn't, perhaps you could build your mod using UA as a base somehow and then distirbute yours stating UA is a dependancy? I think that's a common practice with Skyrim as you say. AFAIK there's no simple way to check conflicting files with GUTS so it would be the arduous task of going through each file in each directory, then packaging your mod with just the 'changed' files - effectively, you;d be modding a mod if that makes sense?

In that instance, users just need to get the load order right, the same thing they'd face with Skyrim

As Phan said, you can do your modding work in an unpacked UA, then diff your directory against a clean unpacked UA, and delete the unchanged files. If loaded after UA, you will get the desired (or DeeZired) result. (Sorry, pun. Couldn't help myself.)

Now, things go all to hell if you want to remove something from UA. Depending on what it is, you might be able to mod away all references to it, or you might be stuck copying the entire remainder of UA. So long as you're only adding and changing things, it's relatively straightforward.

doudley, I'm not seeing that problem at my end, seems to look ok.