I had about 10 aliases and suddenly added 10 more in one go. When I loaded the game, the quest didn't work from the beginning to end.

These added aliases did not directly affect the start or progression of the quest in any way that I can fathom, but as soon as I returned and removed them, the quest would work just fine again.

To be specific, these were 10 virtually identical references that were called at a late stage in the quest to move 10 characters from an area. I expected there could be something broken later in the quest because of this, but the entire thing from the start?

Not only that, but I removed all code relating to them, so they were simply nothing more than aliases without a purpose. The quest was still broken. Then removing the aliases returned the quest to normal, so it seemed to indeed be the fact that they existed was breaking the quest.

If that's the case, I might just make a body removal quest that snatches these NPC's away from under the main quest, without encumbering the quest with more aliases.

Has anyone ever seen this before??

Extensible Follower Framework uses something like a hundred aliases tied to a single quest. So, I'm not sure what your issue is. Did you try this using a new game?

I suppose at least one of the aliases wasn't filled and assuming you didn't check the 'optional' checkbox, the quest won't start if any of them is not filled. Take a look at possible causes of them not being filled (could be normal, maybe there aren't 10 characters available to be moved) and if it's not absolutelly indispensable for your mod to work that all of the aliases are filled, make them optional.

Ok, I see. I will definitely be attempting this again, and will check that I didn't make those mistakes. Thanks, and if something strange happens again, I will let you guys know.

Edit: Ughh, No matter what I check, it won't accept and move the aliases since they are dead bodies... what do I do special for dead bodies??

Simply check the box "allow dead" in the top part of the reference alias form.

If it still does not work after amgepo's recommendation, make sure the load order for the aliases are correct, since aliases cannot reference aliases below them in the list.

Hmm, I checked allow dead from the start, since it sounded important. I'll check about the load order, but I don't think that applies for these.

This does just seem iffy. I don't think it has to do with the amount of aliases. I have some of my quests that refuse to fill, but they do sometimes, but not other times. They're all static (always the same ref), so they should either always fail or always fill.

Just go through them all and make sure that they're set up properly... I'm not sure if you can acquire more info about which ones are failing.

When the quest doesn't work, did you confirm that it isn't starting? (Or that they aren't filling?) With the 'SQV MyQuest' command in the console.

I recently had a problem with some Unique actor aliases that wouldn't fill after a merge to esm. The actors existed, uniquely, in the world: there was obviously no good reason for them not to fill, since I could get them to fill by changing the fill type to Specific: forced and then back to Unique actor. So I don't see that there's any way to be sure which aliases will fill, other than making them all optional and adding them back one at a time

thanks i will check on them and let ya guys know!

I noticed this too.
A workaround is:
- if several quests start simultaneously, do a wait() between the start()
- if it is always the same alias create a new script that checks if the alias is empty and fill it with the object