Optimising a mod

Before you ship a release, optimise. RPFM’s optimiser strips dead weight from a Pack — duplicated rows, rows identical to vanilla, modding-tool byproducts, unused portrait variants — and the result is smaller, more compatible, and less likely to break neighbouring mods.

Why bother

• Size. Removing dead rows shrinks the Pack — sometimes dramatically.
• Compatibility. Duplicated and identical-to-vanilla rows tend to be left forgotten in mod packs (even when Diagnostics warns about them) and end up causing compatibility issues when another mod tries to modify them. Your mod accidentally overwrites changes for no reason.
• Multi-language support. Identical-to-vanilla loc entries will overwrite the player’s localisation files if the player is not on English. So even though you’re not changing those lines, the optimiser-untouched Pack would silently turn them to English for non-English players. Bad.

How

Two right-click actions on the Pack root:

• Optimize PackFile — opens the optimiser dialog, runs the steps you’ve ticked, applies the result to the in-memory Pack but doesn’t save. Lets you review the result before committing.
• Save Pack For Release — opens the same optimiser dialog, runs it, and saves the result to disk. The shipping shortcut.

Both use the same OptimizerOptions under the hood. The dialog is where you fine-tune which steps run; your tick choices are persisted as defaults for the next invocation. There is no separate “Optimizer” pane in PackFile → Settings — the dialog itself is the configuration surface.

When

Right before you publish a release / update. Not earlier — the optimiser strips data, and that data is occasionally what you’re using as a reminder of intent during development.

What it actually does

The full step list lives in rpfm_extensions::optimizer, and the dialog groups them into four sections:

• Pack — Remove ITM (identical-to-master) files, Apply compression.
• Table (DB / Loc) — Import datacores into twad_key_deletes (Warhammer 3+, see Datacores), Optimize datacored tables, Remove duplicated entries, Remove ITM rows, Remove ITNR (identical to new row) rows, Remove empty files.
• Text — Remove unused .xml files in map/ folders, remove unused .xml files in the prefab folder, Remove .agf files, Remove .model_statistics files (the last two are BOB exporter byproducts).
• Portrait Settings — Remove unused art sets, Remove unused variants, Remove empty masks, Remove empty files.

Each step can be ticked or un-ticked from the dialog. The defaults are conservative — destructive steps like “Optimize datacored tables” and “Remove unused art sets / variants” are off out of the box.