Very interesting to read about your tools, Macole - thank you! Wow, that's a lot of tools...

I only use Wrye Bash, I do all my installs manually. Well, I also use the BSA Commander to view, pack and unpack BSA archives, and sometimes I use a command line tool "bsarch" to pack archives if that's more convenient of if the Commander fails.
So the point with the SkyBSA mod was that it was supposed to make Oblivion completely ignore time stamps on BSA archives and always follow the load order. This implies that Archive Invalidation flags would be ignored too. The rule of SkyBSA was supposed to be this: load BSA archives according to the load order
overwriting assets as you go, then load loose files from disk on top always overwriting BSA archives. And this rule does not seem to hold in my setup.
I have a few questions about your notes on Wrye Bash, please.
- Lock the load order. What do you mean by that? My version of Wrye Bash does not have any special option to lock anything... It is distressing to think that the load order could be somehow slipping.

- Sometimes alter time stamps. What do you mean by "sometimes"? My Bash
always alters time stamps of all the ESPs on the list to bring them in line with the load order. It does this automatically as soon as I start it up, without asking me and I cannot turn it off! Just as well, as it seems important. When I move mods on the list to change the order, it immediately updates all relevant time stamps to match.