Dorryn

Which mods did you use to make Aela look like this?

I don't see FNIS anywhere. Did you put it in your data folder?

I'm curious : What mods were not working well when you unpacked their bsa ?

Why wouldn't I keep the bsa, if that's the feature in the mod that was added? If what I need is the bsa, I would 'unpack' it...why??

If you unpack the bsa the files in it will still be there, just not archived. That's what the bsa is : an archive same as a .rar or .zip.

Like I said it's usefull when you install your mods directly in skyrim's data folder, like you said it's a lot easier to remove one archive than loose files. However since MO keeps all mods separated in their own folder even loose files are easy to find and remove.

Also, if your bsa contains texture files, you'll have the possibility to safely optimize them with tools like DDSOpt or texture optimizer. (Although both have the ability to optimize files inside a bsa every tutorial I've read advises against it).

A bsa can be removed ever-so-easily.

So can a folder, which is why I don't see the point. But if keeping the bsa makes things work better for you then that's a good reason.

Hello there.

This is my first post here so sorry to kind of barge in like this but as a fervent user of MO I cringed when I saw this :

[...] be sure to say "NO" if it asks if you'd like to unpack the .bsa (if it has 1 or 2).

Now why would you not unpack your BSAs when using MO? The purpose of a BSA is to keep files confined within an archive so the data folder doesn't become a mess. It's useful with NMM but MO already confines every mod into their own folders so there's no point in not unpacking a bsa (unless they have another use I don't know about).