I've recently discovered the magic and convenience of quest aliases and was wondering...are there any drawbacks to Forcing refs into aliases via scripted spells?

As I understand it persistence concerns only happen with aliases that are filled with a specific reference and not ones that get filled on the fly?

Actors can be in any number of aliases? or will having an actor in multiple aliases mess things up?

Personally, I don't see many 'drawback' while using Aliases and Forcing Aliases via scripts. The only 'drawback' I had was some flaws in my designs. I have to call 'clear()' on alias before forcing it again. (better be safe than sorry?)

They are both 'persistence' from what I understand.
Aliases 'filled on the fly' as you put it, they are picked in the loaded area (persistent) or specific Form (permanent persistent)
Object/Ref that are unloaded (its 3d, model removed from the cell or memory) become non-persistent.



Actor can be in several aliases. Usually, the one with higher quest priority 'wins' over. Not sure how aliases with different mods behave, but my wild guess is that mod loads later will win over.
By win-over, here is my examples:
- I have 2 quests running, both have 2 different Aliases point to the same Follower (Lydia for instance)
- If these 2 Aliases have 2 separated 'AI Package' running, the one with higher quest priority will win
- Other scripting behavior seems to behave independently, regardless of quest priority.

Actors and objects will be persistent as long as their references are being stored in any script variable, that includes when you've attached an alias to them. But I'm assuming that when your script is finished with a particular item you're clearing the ref so you can force another one into it later.

If you do a normal alias everything seems to work, but don't check the Reserve option for your alias or you might have (or more likely cause) problems.

Thanks for the info guys.


I'm doing just that. Forcing an actor in then clearing it out when it dies.

My only regret is not starting to mess around with these things sooner. Aliases obsolete about 75% of the convoluted workarounds I was derping around with trying to make commanded actors behave better.