Webster, it was my soon to be released Convoy from Hell mission. I haven't tried a career yet, I was in a state of mind for some quick intense action. It worked.
In all my deck gun actions my hull took 51% damage, so the armed merchies coordinated well and got their licks in. As I said before, I was going to use every piece of ammo on the boat or die. Although there are only two warships in the Convoy from Hell, an Asashio and a generic gunboat, almost all the merchies are armed.
Folks, in general, mods installed later overwrite anything installed before. So if you want PE to work as intended, it should be installed over GFO. If it's compatible, you'll get PE effects in a GFO environment. If you install PE first, all the PE effects will be overwritten with whatever stock effects are contained in GFO.
When parts of an earlier mod are overwritten, the newest JSGME grays the name of the overwritten mod. That isn't necessarily bad, but it means that some features have been replaced. In all cases that I can think of GFO should be installed first and any modifiers installed later in an order of your choice, depending on what flavor of mod soup you are creating.
In any event, when cooking mod soup you lose the right to complain to Webster or any other modder. Your creation is your own responsibility. So be nice and ask for help if you have a problem. I'd start a new thread for that to keep this thread focused on GFO alone and issues with the base mod. That's the considerate way to proceed.
Don't let this keep you from experimenting. Unintended consequences are how great discoveries are made. JSGME makes it very easy to undo any conflicts you create and try something different!