Installing via mod manager

[UndeadPirate]

Is there any sort of benefit to doing this as opposed to installing it directly, or is it simply a secondary option?

[jlf65]

When you use a mod manager like Mod Organizer (2), you keep the ability to have lots of mods with overlapping files that don't actually overwrite anything. So if you decide you don't like a mod, deleting it means nothing else needs repair to work - all that mod's files are gone without disturbing anything else. It uses a little more disk space, but who cares about that? If you constantly test mods, it's very handy.

MO2 also has profiles, so if there's more than one of you in the family playing the same game, you can all have different mods and save games without interfering with each other. Different profiles can also help with single players... maybe you have your main profile with all the mods you like, and a completely separate profile for testing new mods that won't interfere with your ongoing game.

[gnarlyfingers]

I should add that if you want to use any mods at all with TTW or even vanilla FNV then you absolutely need a mod manager to set up your load order.

Although there is a file %LOCALAPPDATA%\<game>\plugins.txt which list your active plugins, that is *not* used for load order. Only the timestamps of the esp or esm files are used for that. So, unless you want to go and touch each esp or esm file with Windows shell commands, you'd better let a mod manager do that.