I have a quest that's going to be re-using some filled aliases in a number of different stages...How exactly do I Get a reference to "Clear" itself so it will be able to re-fill?

The quest is already running, so unless there is a way to use a SM node to change aliases without re-starting the whole quest, that won't really work.

I'm not sure this is what you want, but in order to be able to call Clear() on an alias, it has to be flagged Optional. Even initialising a non-optional alias as having no reference will throw up vague editor warnings.

Oh, I've got them to clear...it's getting them to fill on command that's the problem. How do you tell them when to check their conditions and fill? You apparently can't use GetStage() since that's broken...and GetStageDone() won't work because it will be passing through stages multiple times.

As a simple example, let's take the Barstools in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfcet5hf5bs...let's say we wanted to have it pick 2 stools every time you walk into a bar, and have the same quest running the whole time. Since the Story Manager only launches quests, you can't use the change location event to set the stool references...you would have to clear() the references when you leave the inn...and then somehow tell them to reload the next time you enter a bar. It's that last one that's the source of my pain.

There are several Radiant Story quests that can happen multiple times.
Presumably those would provide an example (as they have to clear and re-fill their aliases each time according to those certain conditions)

I think the key might be that you need to stop() the quest, after which it can be re-started by a radiant story event, or perhaps even through dialogue.
I'm not sure though.
Additionally, you will lose all OTHER information related to the quest also, since it's basically reset. I was under the impression that aliases can not fill according to their conditions in the middle of a quest, only at the start of it.

I'd be grateful if you post when you find a solution, because re-filling aliases looks like it's going to turn out to be vital in a mod I'm working on.

Stopping the quest breaks the flow of the thing. It will "forget" what stage it was in.

You could have a pair of quests however, with one doing nothing but holding aliases, being stopped and restarted, and making its data availabel through props. That should work

I can't get the aliases to fill properly anyway...I'm trying to find 3 locations near the player, and I put a buttload of "OR" conditions on them (Just about any location in the world should have at least 3 such locations nearby...I included "HasKeyword" for Inn, habitaiton, city, house, (If there was a keyword for "door" I would have included those in there too) - but all 3 are coming back as "none"

I think I'll have to give up on using location aliases at all, and just create three invisible balls and bounce them around until they lose LOS to the player, then pick from those.

And before you ask, the location I'm loading in to test the aliases is outdoors at the stables at whiterun. There should be plenty of houses, cities, habitations, etc

Tried this. Not working. They appear to be loading, but they're not propogating back to the main quest.

That could be a dirty save. I lost about a week because an alias claimed it was filling, but eval'd to null at runtime.

Definitely a clean save, from before I even started working on quests.

I cheated...I had the "reload aliases" quest save the references in some ObjectReference Properties, and accessed them from the other quest like I would any global variable instead of trying to fill the aliases by referring to the aliases on the Reset quest. A total Kludge, but it works. (What's the point of having aliases that are loaded externally if they don't update when those aliases are re-initialized?)