If I have a quest that is not started and I force the Alias ref on an NPC does the Quest automatically start? Does the Alias actually do anything at that point or does the quest have to be started ?

Starting a Quest is what fills Aliases

No, the quest does not automatically start. Dialogue is not available. The Alias however is filled and assigned packages, inventory, factions, etc. will work. Didn't know that this is possible at all. I assumed quests have to be active for their aliases to work, but they don't, just tried it out.

What!!?

Hmm, interesting. But would be also good to know if those you forced will be overwritten/cleared if you start the quest after you forced the aliases? Did you checked that?

Couldn't believe it either, but I tried it out. http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/407/skyrimaliastest.jpg/

Yes, I did. The alias remained after starting the quest and was not cleared after stopping it again. The whole scenario turned weird when I tried it on multiple NPC's, one still continued with his package, though his alias was cleared, so I wouldn't recommend filling aliases that way. Better do it properly by starting a quest or ForceRef an alias of a quest which is already running.

Ok I thought Maybe I was imagining it as I had a script that worked and I had not started the quest at all ?

But this just applies to forced aliases, right?

If so, that would make a sort of sense: reference gets made persistent and forced into alias when quest loads. If the alias has packages and if the packages aren't conditioned then they will then apply.

Maybe it's like a static variable in C or C++...

But if you assign the aliases more dynamically, I'd expect them still to fill at start time. They'd have to do that for the condition matching ones. The unique actor ones could go either way,

I'm still baffled ...

I don't think we care, but it's a bit mad that it works like this.

I've always seen a Quest as the Container of Variables (aliases, whatever) ... but if you can "fill" items in that Quest, when the Quest isn't even running (and/or has never run) ... well then it's no wonder persistance drives us all up the wall.

It seems it is not really supposed to work this way ... given the issue experienced on the NPCs that are filled before the quest is started (and they would have to be forced, I assume, or there's even less I understand!) ... so something behind the scenes isn't quite working the way we thought it worked from the "documentation" (note the quotes )