Is Alfixes really needed anymore?

I've been wondering if I should get rid of this mod as it does things that I don't want, plus it says on the simlogical Institution mod page that it clashes with the school sign patch. Now looking in my mod folder I see that I added a z at the front of the school sign patch, but that doesn't seem to have helped. I've been having a problem with my prep school students, so I am suspicious it is alfixes causing the issue. If I play my school and leave my students set as prep school students, I am being told they haven't gone to school. If I change them to flexi school as soon as they turn up at school I don't get that message. The sign is out the front of the school and set. I'm thinking of pulling alfixes as I don't really want all the extras it seems to come with. Is this safe? Are there other mods around that fix what it fixes? If I pull this, will mobile(cell) phones start disappearing and other horrible things happen?

Is the schoolsign patch in the same folder as ALfixes? Because if they are in different folders, adding a 'z' to the name will not help at all. In that case you should rename the folders in stead.

For example: put all of Pescado's mods in a folder MATY, and all of Inge's mods in a folder Simlogical. That way, Inge's mods load after Pescado's mods.
Then, if the problem still isn't fixed, *maybe* you should indeed get rid of ALfixes.

My mods are in my Mods folder with these mods in sub folders called MATY and School. So they were already arranged in M and S already. After posting this I went and put some ZZZ at the start of the MATY folder to move it behind the School folder. I guess I'll see if that's changed anything.

No, having the MATY folder be last will not solve the issue at all. Best case scenario, things will only get worse. Perhaps moving out the ALfixes mod is the better solution.

Okay, so what if I make it first? How necessary are alfixes? Are there other mods around that fix the issues it talks about?

I have a revolutionary idea: backup your game, disable the ALfixes mod and then run your game to see what the effect is. If you don't like the result, you can restore the backup and re-enable the mod.

Well there is that, but what it fixes are not boom in your face things I didn't think. I would have to play for some time and take notice.

FIXES:
1. Cellphones can now be answered without being eated.
2. Receiving NL-mail at an apartment now works, no longer renders mailbox
unusable and dooming your sim to eventual eviction.
3. Cooking skill is FUBAR'ed by moving into an apartment.
4. Inactive apartment residents no longer slowly drained of hobby enthusiasm.
5. Pianos no longer ADHD due to function arguments being garbage.
6. Teens able to work on restorable car again.
7. Apartment resident kids not in the active family no longer lose grades
every day and automatically fail school and get taken by the SS.
8. No longer required to greet Gypsy(impossible) or employees<->customers.
9. Should be able to retrieve date rewards dropped outside apartment now.
10. Love Potion no longer restocks as Nice Potion instead.
11. Chance cards at work/school no longer error if you walked.
12. NPC rentpayer hour moved to 1900 so vampire tenants don't suicide at noon.
13. Social Group townies no longer all generate as the same sex.

I could test the teens working on the restorable car as that is something I do some times. Some of it I don't even understand- "Pianos no longer ADHD due to function arguments being garbage." Um what is that even? I would rather find smaller mods that fix things like the restorable car if that is something that needs fixing.

Do you have alfixes? I'm trying to figure out how important it is. Pescado has it marked down as Very Critical which is why I got it.

You are right: that is quite a time consuming process. But on the other hand, it is the only way to figure out for yourself, without any doubt, whether you need ALfixes or can do without it. Still, like you, I would not want to try it, either.

I have ALfixes on my system, but as my PC is not in running order, I can not check anything at the moment. I only know that Pescado's mods are all loaded first (in a folder named "!!! Fishy" including those three exclamation marks), so if there is a conflict with other stuff, that other stuff wins! I do not remember encountering any problems that way.

I have it set up this way, because Pescado has a notorious tendency to not only overstate the importance of his own mods, but also include way too many undocumented features in those mods. You see: that is exactly the same reasons why you would like to do without it. :-)

Lol !!! Fishy, I like that. His bundling of 'extra features' are what I have been finding out recently. I started looking at alfixes due to someone complaining it took away date cards without saying it did that. I would certainly never remove things like no unlink on delete, but I would rather use mods by people who are less cryptic and kinder to us not so awesome fluffy computer people. I meant to remove it and test the car but forgot too. Gah once I hit load it takes close on an hour to get into a house to test, so I must remember to do it tomorrow. So does using !!! make it load first?

Yup, I feel the same way about them extra features. If one has a choice whether or not one wants these extra things, that would ake a nice difference. But Fishy doesn't give us any choice. And of course one doesn't delete certain mods, because they fix important stuff, but the unmentioned extras sometimes make you want to.

As far as your question goes: Yeah, when the folders are sorted (alphabetically) before loading, the folders with !!! prepending their name will come up before the rest. Thus, the game will load the contents of those folders before all others.