CTD on enabling any ESL/ESP

[Gasman6669]

As the title suggests, I've reached a point where enabling any plugin (Merges excluded) in MO2 results in a CTD on start up (The ENB Text shows up, and eventually it crashes before reaching the main menu). I've got 250 ESPs and 219 ESLs. It doesn't seem to matter whatsoever, what mod I am trying to enable; whether it is a weapon mod or a script one. I was wondering, if I happened to reach a certain limit somewhere and how to bypass it. Down below is my modlist & Load Order. (All the Caliber Complex, AWKCR, Leveled List Injectors and VWAS are individually merged)

Gameplay wise everything is fine from what I've seen and played.

 

 

[showler]

AFAIK, there's a hard limit of 254 ESMs and ESPs combined, including the ones from the base game and DLCs. If you're trying to exceed that, it is probably the reason.

[StormWolf01]

I second this. And you have to remember to count in the DLCs.

However, later versions of the game .163 and later, can handle a massively much higher number of .esl files. (Because bethe$da wants you to buy every creation club mod they create)

This includes .esp files, that are flagged as .esl files.

 

Looking over your files, your loadorder.txt file has a total of 716 countable lines in it. 716 files that listed. doing a quick search for ".esp" in your file, with PSPad http://www.pspad.com/en/ found over 600 entries of .esp in your loadorder.txt.

 

[edit] Actually, before you open that file in psp, I HIGHLY recommend that you make a backup of it, somewhere else on your computer, in case you hit a wrong key somewhere along the line and end up corrupting your plugins.txt file [/edit]

 

Now, however. I don't know how your installer handles things. But, the file that Fallout4 uses, is plugins.txt which is located "C:\Users\Howlin Wolf\AppData\Local\Fallout4\Plugins.txt"

I would suggest opening that file, with psp pad, by right clicking on it, and choosing pspad, as the option to open it with.

Then press the CTRL key, and the F key at the same time. A dialog box will open, put a tick next to Count and then type in .esp or .esl or .esm

and that will tell you how many entries of that phrase that it finds.

 

Now, however. IF you DO end up screwing up your plugins.txt file, one alternative is to simply replace it with the backup. Another option is to just delete the file, start the game through fallout4launcher.exe and let the game build a new one.

[Gasman6669]

I second this. And you have to remember to count in the DLCs.

However, later versions of the game .163 and later, can handle a massively much higher number of .esl files. (Because bethe$da wants you to buy every creation club mod they create)

This includes .esp files, that are flagged as .esl files.

 

Looking over your files, your loadorder.txt file has a total of 716 countable lines in it. 716 files that listed. doing a quick search for ".esp" in your file, with PSPad http://www.pspad.com/en/ found over 600 entries of .esp in your loadorder.txt.

 

[edit] Actually, before you open that file in psp, I HIGHLY recommend that you make a backup of it, somewhere else on your computer, in case you hit a wrong key somewhere along the line and end up corrupting your plugins.txt file [/edit]

 

Now, however. I don't know how your installer handles things. But, the file that Fallout4 uses, is plugins.txt which is located "C:\Users\Howlin Wolf\AppData\Local\Fallout4\Plugins.txt"

I would suggest opening that file, with psp pad, by right clicking on it, and choosing pspad, as the option to open it with.

Then press the CTRL key, and the F key at the same time. A dialog box will open, put a tick next to Count and then type in .esp or .esl or .esm

and that will tell you how many entries of that phrase that it finds.

 

Now, however. IF you DO end up screwing up your plugins.txt file, one alternative is to simply replace it with the backup. Another option is to just delete the file, start the game through fallout4launcher.exe and let the game build a new one.

Thanks for the response!

 

Yes, I am well aware that there's an ESP/ESM limit of 254, it is why I've marked esp files to be read as esls, as I have heard that it would (theoretically) make it possible to have as many mods as your PC/the game can physically handle. I should've mentioned, that out of the 716 plugins, only 470 in total are enabled; a majority of the plugins that are disabled have been merged using zMerge as I had hoped it may have helped in performance or in my CTD (It di not). Out of the 470 active plugins, 219 of those are ESLs.

 

AFAIK, there's a hard limit of 254 ESMs and ESPs combined, including the ones from the base game and DLCs. If you're trying to exceed that, it is probably the reason.

Thanks for the response,

 

but unfortunately that is not the issue. I'm below the 254 ESM/ESP limit (Sitting at 251 at the time of writing this).

[StormWolf01]

Heyas again, Gasman :)

Ok, yeah... I kinda figured that you'd been flagging some (a lot) of your .esp files, as .esl. That has it's own set of problems. And (forgive me, I've been away from fallout 4 for 2 years) BUT... when I left the game, Merging mods for this game was BAD. We wanted to avoid it, unless we really knew what we were doing. Tho... the application you mentioned is something that I will have to take a look into! :D

Now, the problem that we have with .esl and .esl flagged .esp files.... is that they don't follow the load order ! :wallbash:

The game engine will load them in whatever order it sees fit (hence a reason why CC mods are so effed up!) AND because the game sees .esl files the same way that it sees .esm (Master) files, it will try to load them first. Which means that if your .esl flagged .esp is a mod of a mod, it COULD load the flagged file BEFORE the file that it's mastered to.

 

So with your new information, *starts using doctor voice* What I think we have here, is a massive load order conflict. Possibly combined with savegame corruption from scripts firing out of order (because of the "master" setting on your .esl flagged files).

 

I'm really hesitant to give advice on this. Because a lot of savegame tools have come out since I left fallout 4 about 2 years ago. So I don't really know what works and what doesn't as far as that goes.

[Gasman6669]

Heyas again, Gasman :smile:

Ok, yeah... I kinda figured that you'd been flagging some (a lot) of your .esp files, as .esl. That has it's own set of problems. And (forgive me, I've been away from fallout 4 for 2 years) BUT... when I left the game, Merging mods for this game was BAD. We wanted to avoid it, unless we really knew what we were doing. Tho... the application you mentioned is something that I will have to take a look into! :D

Now, the problem that we have with .esl and .esl flagged .esp files.... is that they don't follow the load order ! :wallbash:

The game engine will load them in whatever order it sees fit (hence a reason why CC mods are so effed up!) AND because the game sees .esl files the same way that it sees .esm (Master) files, it will try to load them first. Which means that if your .esl flagged .esp is a mod of a mod, it COULD load the flagged file BEFORE the file that it's mastered to.

 

So with your new information, *starts using doctor voice* What I think we have here, is a massive load order conflict. Possibly combined with savegame corruption from scripts firing out of order (because of the "master" setting on your .esl flagged files).

 

I'm really hesitant to give advice on this. Because a lot of savegame tools have come out since I left fallout 4 about 2 years ago. So I don't really know what works and what doesn't as far as that goes.

Unfortunately I doubt that is the case, as I've said I've tried activating multiple mods of different types, the only ones that seem to work somewhat are patches for other mods (?). Some of those mods do have masters tied to other mods, some don't; but in the end they both do not work. It appears though as if disabling some mods I currently have more or less "adds space" for other mods (however, it does not appear to be a "One out - One In" kind of deal, which only further increases my theory); and I've also noticed that a faulty mod (One, which I forgot to install textures for) caused the game to CTD on launch the moment I got said textures; which makes me believe that it may be a memory issue of some sort? However, I also had mods like AFT cause crashes, I don't know if that mod has some sort of impact on my memory.

 

Also as for you claiming that my esl flagged files have a 'master setting', is this something that comes with setting them to ESL - Flags, or was this something I messed up on my side?

[StormWolf01]

So before I get into the reply I'ma ask. Did you update from an older version of the game, right before this started happening? If so you are gonna need to install this mod.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/42497 version patch checker.

 

As for AFT, I have been using that mod for years, and have not had problems with it, on two of my laptops. Both of which were lower end machines, with integrated (shared memory) video cards. It's very interesting that you bring that up tho. As I'm currently ALSO fighting with CTD on my laptop that has a dedicated vid card. I will test that theory about AFT on my next attempt to try to fix my own CTDs.

 

.Esl files with their master settings is Bethe$da's fault. They set them up that way so that CC content would load first, after the main .esm files used by the base, and the dlc files.

 

I haven't rechecked your list. But I did two things that dramatically extended the time between my own CTDs last night. One, I disabled a mod called Invisible Cosmetics. And two (tho I really don't think that you will like this one) I removed ALL of my previous save games from my save game folder. Which means I had to start a brand new character. Which resulted in.... instead of immediate CTD within the first 3 minutes, I got around 30-40 minutes of game time.

Keep in mind tho, that I'm barely over the hard limit, and have very few active .esl flagged, or .esl files.

 

The laptop that I'm having probs with is an Intel, with Nvidia graphics. The two that are running fine, (tho laggy) are both AMD with Nvidia. For curiosity sake, what is yours running?

[HeyYou]

There IS a hard limit on how many esl files can load as well. The way they work, they assign IDs to *stuff* that were unused in the Fallout.esm file. There are only so many, and if you go beyond that number, strange things start happening.

[Gasman6669]

So before I get into the reply I'ma ask. Did you update from an older version of the game, right before this started happening? If so you are gonna need to install this mod.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/42497 version patch checker.

 

As for AFT, I have been using that mod for years, and have not had problems with it, on two of my laptops. Both of which were lower end machines, with integrated (shared memory) video cards. It's very interesting that you bring that up tho. As I'm currently ALSO fighting with CTD on my laptop that has a dedicated vid card. I will test that theory about AFT on my next attempt to try to fix my own CTDs.

 

.Esl files with their master settings is Bethe$da's fault. They set them up that way so that CC content would load first, after the main .esm files used by the base, and the dlc files.

 

I haven't rechecked your list. But I did two things that dramatically extended the time between my own CTDs last night. One, I disabled a mod called Invisible Cosmetics. And two (tho I really don't think that you will like this one) I removed ALL of my previous save games from my save game folder. Which means I had to start a brand new character. Which resulted in.... instead of immediate CTD within the first 3 minutes, I got around 30-40 minutes of game time.

Keep in mind tho, that I'm barely over the hard limit, and have very few active .esl flagged, or .esl files.

 

The laptop that I'm having probs with is an Intel, with Nvidia graphics. The two that are running fine, (tho laggy) are both AMD with Nvidia. For curiosity sake, what is yours running?

I've tried downloading and installing the Version Check Patcher, but unfortunately it doesn't appear to work :(

 

Also for clarification, AFT was merely an example. Any mod that I install and enable outside of the mod list I currently play my main save with CTDs before I reach the main menu. I might try to uninstall the saves from old characters though, thanks for the advice!

 

Also I play with Nvidia, an RTX 3060.

 

There IS a hard limit on how many esl files can load as well. The way they work, they assign IDs to *stuff* that were unused in the Fallout.esm file. There are only so many, and if you go beyond that number, strange things start happening.

I assumed as much, but wouldn't that theoretically mean that merging ESLs should work? Because unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case. Also at the time of writing this, I've disabled some mods (mods that I didn't like/are defunct/etc.) and the issue still persists? I believe I've disabled like.. 5 mods or so, but it still results in me CTDing as soon as I start my game whenever I enable a mod outside of the mod list I currently play with.

[showler]

There IS a hard limit on how many esl files can load as well. The way they work, they assign IDs to *stuff* that were unused in the Fallout.esm file. There are only so many, and if you go beyond that number, strange things start happening.

Isn't that limit somewhere around 16000 ESL files, though?