Add-on vs Replace
Quick answer
Add-on clothing creates new collections and costs YMT slots. Replace clothing overwrites Rockstar's existing items and costs no slots at all — but you lose whatever you overwrote, and you inherit different problems.
Difficulty: Core decision · Affects: both
INFO
Search: addon vs replace, replace clothing, overwrite vanilla, more capacity, no slots.
Comparison
| Add-on | Replace | |
|---|---|---|
| YMT slots | One per gender per collection | None |
| Capacity ceiling | Free slots for your build | Number of vanilla items you are willing to lose |
| Vanilla content | Untouched | Overwritten |
| Global drawable IDs | Appended after vanilla | Occupies existing indexes |
| Adding more later | Shifts IDs | Stable if you replace in place |
| Streaming cost | New files | New files streamed over base game items |
| Typical use | New clothing catalogues | Textures, heels, hats, targeted fixes |
When add-on is right
Almost always, for a clothing catalogue. It is the safer default: nothing vanilla is lost, packs remain independent, and removing a pack removes exactly its content.
Use add-on until you run out of slots, then repack before considering replace.
When replace makes sense
- You are permanently out of YMT slots and cannot repack further.
- You want to change a specific vanilla item rather than add a new one.
- You are targeting textures, heel behaviour or hats, where community practice has long favoured replace.
- Your server does not use the vanilla items you would overwrite.
What replace does not solve
WARNING
Replace bypasses the collection limit only. It does nothing for TxdStore — every replaced texture is still a texture dictionary — and it adds streaming load, because you are streaming files over base game assets that the client already has.
Nor is it unlimited. You are trading capacity for vanilla content, one item at a time, and each replaced item is content your players can no longer wear.
A practical mixed strategy
Most large servers end up combining both:
- Add-on for the bulk of the catalogue, packed into as few collections as possible.
- Replace for the specific vanilla items nobody uses, when the slot budget is genuinely exhausted.
- A written record of every replaced item, so a future admin knows why a vanilla shirt looks different.