grumbler

My problem with this "complaint" is that it isn't true. Bethesda said they planned to have the CS ready for release when the game was released. I have no reason to doubt that this was true. Their plans didn't get fulfilled, but that's understandable; the manpower may have been needed to make the initial release/first day patch as bug-free as possible. Documentation of the CK in a form uninitiated users can use has gotta be hard. They succeeded in the latter. I didn't have a single crash the entire time I played the game before the Nov 21st patch. Some people surely did, but that's unavoidable given the potential combinations of CPUs/motherboards/GPUs out there - nothing can be optimized for every rig. Not even windows. The Nov 21st patch, which broke the game for me (pretty much - I can get up to 40 minutes of playing between crashes) is another story.

Try this: load the level 18 save, open the console, click on your character, type "kill," and close the console. Your character should die, and the game reload. That apparently clears some settings in the save, and could help out. That helped me in FO3 when i had a crash every time I tried to save. Nothing to lose, right?

NVSE versions are backwards compatible, so I don't think your problem is that the plugin needs to be updated for the new version of NVSE. What I suspect is that your NVSE isn't properly installed. Follow the NVSE troubleshooting directions: - Launch NV, then open the console and type "GetNVSEVersion" (without the quotes). It should print back "NVSE version: 1". If this works, then NVSE is working properly. If it prints an error, then something is wrong. Recheck the installation instructions, especially to verify that you have installed everything to the correct directory. If this check is satisfactory, go to http://nvse.silverlock.org/ and get some email addresses of people who can help.

Are you sure it is saving to the FONV folder and not the FO3 folder?

Turn on archive invalidation in FOMM (under tools, IIRC) and see if that helps.

Just the opposite for me - zero crashes since update. Do you use FO3Edit to create a merged patch of Wrye Flash to create a bashed patch? I use the latter, and find it aids stability a lot. In FO3 I used the former, also with some success. One weird solution to the "crash on save" bug that I used successfully in FO3 was to open the console, click on my player, and type "kill." My character would die when the console closed, the game would reload at the last successful save point, but it wouldn't crash on save for hours afterword.

Here you go: http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34811

Wow, neko1kitty, I must admit that I didn't see how this fix could work, but it does. You do not have to disassociate winamp from .ogg files, though, and that's probably a bad idea for other reasons. Thanks for the tip, I was at my wit's end with the sound problem, and I would never have thought of your solution in a million years.

Uncheck all your mods and see if this still happens. If it does not, activate them one at a time until it recurs. If it doesn't recur on single mods, activate them all and deactivate them one at a time until the problem goes away. If it happens with no mods active, you have a real problem (install, or machine). Reinstall in that case.

No mod altered that area, per se, because the crash occurs no matter where I am and happens with all mods turned off. It started without me making any mod changes. It doesn't happen after masterupdate is run, but that isn't a viable long-term solution because I will want to someday continue to modify my FO3 mod, and I cannot do that if my mod is a master. Thanks for the suggestion, though. It is all very mysterious to me, and I had (up to this point) thought I was pretty savvy about avoiding FO3 crash problems. :wallbash:

I would prefer something less drastic, if there is a less drastic solution. I used master update during the patch fiasco, but didn't much like it.

Mine just started top do this very same thing. I thought at first it was a memory leak issue, but a clean system start from power-off didn't resolve it. No mods added, no changes made in the .ini files, and it just went from perfectly stable to crash on save. :blink: It even crashes on a console save!

You will love it, but be frustrated by the many zillions of mods. I would just note a couple: Better Bodies, and Non-generic NPCs. Get those before you get any others, and then search google for "essential Morrowind mods" and try them out one by one.

I still go back to it every once in a while to get some gameplay out of the huge number of quest mods that the game has. Currently, I am trying to finish the Black Queen Chronicles. Oblivion has some awesome quest mods, but they are far fewer in number and scope to MW quest mods, because of the extra effort needed to make them work. There is nothing like The Underground available in any game more complex than Morrowind, and that keeps Morrowind alive, IMO.

The original question was about Autumn's survival, but that was dealt with in the 10th post, and then we saw the very common tendency for threads to drift off topic, especially when the initial question has been solved but people have introduced extraneous suppositions in the meantime.

The initiate in the building is always dead by the time I get to him as well, and often Hoss is killed as well. The loot is worth as much as the reward, once you discount it for mediocre barter skills, so it all evens out.

You understand what a strawman argument is, right? If you don't, look it up. If you do, figure out what part of the above argument is pure strawman. Really? Here is some game dialogue: PC: Wait a minute. What are you doing here? Holt: I didn't want to help them at first, but... The technology they have here. It's so far advanced from anything I've worked with. PC: What have you told them? Holt: They wanted information. About Doctor Li, about Project Purity. They want to know how to start it up, and why it wouldn't work. Holt: I told them everything I could. About the G.E.C.K., about the damage caused by the explosions... All of it. PC: What did you tell them? Holt: Everything they needed to know to improve on the original design, and to make sure it's actually completed. Now, find me the in-game dialogue which says that she has never worked at project Purity. It seems to me that the above statements by her clearly indicate that she HAS worked on Project Purity - since she knew everything about it that Autumn wanted to know. Exactly, which is why the argument that Autumn wouldn't kill the player because of the PC's "high science" is bunk. Really? Dad just offs himself, for no reason related to Autumn? Or is Dad's choice between dying and letting Autumn take over Project Purity, a decision made after Autumn has just shot a co-woker down in cold blood? I don't see how you can argue that the PC would not be out for revenge because, after all, it was "funny" that "Dad dies by his own choice." "This" is a pronoun without an antecedent. The statement makes no sense. Again with the attempt to make this about me, rather than my arguments. How about we leave my "desire to be ignorant" (which you could not possibly know about, given that you don't even know who I am) out of the discussion, and stick to debating arguments? The "facts" are that (1) Autumn has a very good reason to consider the PC a potential threat, given that Autumn has just been responsible for the death of Dad (and the murder of Kaplinski). (2) Anna Holt knows a great deal about Project Purity; enough to tell the Enclave the problems encountered and how to solve them sufficiently to get the whole project completed. Both of these statements are demonstrably true, and both of them are "facts" which you deny to be true. What does this say about your absurd charge re: me? As do The Master, The Lou, Horrigan, etc. That's what games have. All game characters are imbecilic compared to real people. I thought you wanted a "gray" character? And when you get one, you complain that, like real humans, it is hard for you to figure out his motivations. Personally, I had no problem doing so (though I don't know the specific reason why he thought the plan to kill off all the "defectives" indiscriminately was wrong). He never changes in terms of his main objective, though, which is to gain control of a working Project Purity so that he can use its power to establish the Enclave as the dominant power in the region. If you get confused by the dialogue into thinking that at some points this isn't his objective, I am sorry for you. But your confusion doesn't make an argument. I disagree. It is impossible to make a game at the lowest common denominator, that will confuse no one, and still make it interesting to the average player. At some point even non-bad writing says "some people just won't get it," though good writing should make that number as small as possible. Can you point me to the games in which your plots and characterizations have been successfully implemented? If not, then statements like this are as easily dismissed as those of any amateur talking about how he could have played the pro game better than the pros, because you simply do not understand the constraints under which pros work.

Yes, he disobeyed orders, but because of a specific disagreement with Eden about tactics (ie whether or not to kill off the "impure" types indiscriminately). We don't know what his long-term plans were, nor whether he felt his break with Eden was permanent. You are assuming that this is illogical because it suits your purposes, not because it is, in fact, demonstrably illogical (aka "bad writing). Treason is to side with the enemies of one's own side. Autumn does not do this. Source? The PC doesn't have high science (except maybe when you play him/her). Autumn shoots you when he gets the code because he fears that "you" will try to get revenge for his responsibility in the death of "your" father. Lame writing would involve "you" ignoring that and working with him. The repeated assertion that Colonel Autumn is a badly written "complete imbecile," despite evidence to the contrary, remains unpersuasive. Trying to combine assertions into arguments does not make the assertions true. I didn't compare Autumn to any specific characters. He adequately fulfills his role, as does The Master, Lou, Horrigan, etc. his dialogue is not as complex as, say, The Lieutenant, because it doesn't need to be to fulfill his role. There is a limit to how much dialogue and exposition can be built into any game. Fallout 3 doesn't need as much as, say, Fallout 2 because it isn't the same type of game. That isn't to say that Fallout 3 is perfect, or that it meets my own expectations for a "hybrid Fallout 2 and Oblivion," but I am realistic about how far any company can afford to go in building a game, and I think assertions of malice or incompetence because some given expectations are not met is illogical.

When my debate opponents resort to personal attacks, i take that as a sign that they are frustrated because they realize they have no logical arguments left. Thanks for the concession. I won't bother responding because I have no idea what "on the same level of quality" means in this context. I do not decline to respond to your point because you directed me not to. :biggrin: If you cannot write posts that are neither personal attacks nor meaningless directives, then we really don't have any reason to continue the discussion, do we? I enjoy the intellectual side of debates here, but when the discussion starts becoming about whether my statements are based on not playing some game or based on a desire to avoid (unstated) facts so I "can twist them to [my] own liking" (avoiding them and twisting them at the same time makes me dizzy), it isn't intellectual anymore.

Dunno what the age of the NCR has to do with NCR-style governments. The NCR was established as a cooperative republic with representation from various surviving/newly established towns. No reason why such a thing could not exist in the DC wastelands, though it would take time. Fascism is completely inappropriate in a non-industrial society. The purpose of fascism was to heal class conflicts through the subordination of all activities to the needs of the state. It was totalitarian and expansionist. With the lack of class, the lack of communication, and the lack of the industry and population to support expansionism, fascism solves no problems in the DC Wasteland but still exerts its costs. Feudalism would be a much more appropriate social/political model than Fascism, if republicanism is deemed impossible to achieve. Argument by assertion is no more persuasive when repeated than it was when first stated.

I don't see anywhere where he says that he never rebelled against Eden. He does say (in one path of the final dialogue tree) something about respecting the chain of command, but that could simply mean that his "rebellion" against Eden's orders is simply a case of refusing to obey orders he thinks are misguided. This happens plenty of times in fiction, and sometimes in real life. Now, the fact that you can talk about loyalty to a machine that no longer exists is either an oversight that should have been precluded by conditions in the dialogue choices, or is based on an assumption that Autumn doesn't know Eden is destroyed. That is a plot hole either way, but a pretty minor one (especially as it isn't likely you can follow that tree anyway). By the time the PC would be of use to Autumn because of his/her relationship to Dad, Dad is dead. Autumn is against you because Dad was against him, whereas Holt was for him and had experience with the actual SCIENCE! involved. Autumn has plenty of reasons for shooting the PC (avoiding your attempts at revenge, for instance) and none for sparing him/her. If you think that this is bad writing, fine. But arguments that it is bad writing merely because you say so are unpersuasive. Sure, in a game with an infinite amount of time and resources devoted to it, you could extend the dialogue with a bunch of dialogue options which couldn't go anywhere because the game's end would be wrecked by your simple cooperation with the Enclave, but I think that this is a pretty minor complaint. There are many other places where those theoretical infinite resources could have been applied to more effect. All of the characters in the game are "cardboard cutout characters" because they are just characters in a game. Autumn seems no more out of place here than any of the other characters in this game or any Fallout game.

Disagree. His motives and methods seem to be pretty consistent to me. Your inability to understand them may be a sign of weak writing, or maybe weak reading. I think you are reading into his actions things that are not there, nor even implied. His rebellion against Eden may not be at all altruistic - he may want to spare the mutants and ghouls and "damaged humans" because they represent potential slave labor that he wants to see killed off discriminately, rather than en masse. His actions seem perfectly consistent with a military man who thinks solutions come from the barrel of a gun, and everyone outside the Enclave is just a tool to be discarded when of no further use to him (see what happens top the PC if the PC gives him the code).

Agree 100%. It is the only explanation that makes sense. Remember the working computer terminal outside the Germantown police station? Not even the laziest designer would believe that it could still be working after exposure to the elements for 200 years (let alone that power to it would have lasted that long)!

The fallacy of the false choice. The real choice is between a fascist government with a better chance of establishing a government earlier, or an NCR-type government whose chances are not so good as early. That choice would be easy for me to make. The nuclear damage has already occurred. The damage a fascist regime would inflict would go on longer, IMO, than the damage anarchy would inflict. The seeds of order have already started to be established in the DC wasteland. Pockets of civilization have started to spring up, and they are in communication with one another. There is no guarantee that a stable non-fascist government will come of this, but there is no guarantee that the Enclave would succeed, either. Colonel Autumn turning against Eden doesn't make him good or even gray, and the argument that anything opposing the "good guy" argument is simply "bad writing" is totally unpersuasive. We have the evidence that we have. A wonder-drug that works instantly against radiation is perfectly logical in the world of SCIENCE!

Reminds me of the old joke: "You know that historians have established that it wasn't Homer that wrote the Iliad?" "Really? Who was it, then?" "Turns out to be some obscure dude with the same name."