Frontier Size Issue / FNV Maximum Records Documentation

[JimboUK]

I saw in your OP that it wasn't as bad on earlier saves so thought I'd suggest waiting, it's a trick I've used for years which has allowed me to have hundreds of hours on a save and the game still be stable, it looks like your issue is different though.

 

Obsidian had to patch out references in the base game to free them up for the DLCs which does suggest a limitation, maybe memory as it was only an issue the for DLCs on consoles. Maybe you have found a limit of some sort? I would imagine The Frontier is adding a number of persistent references on top of those already loaded from other mods. It wouldn't surprise me if such a limit were present, it's an old game running on an even older engine, it was never designed for this sort of thing.

[kylemarshiku]

Right right. We tried to wait for 4 days as you said. It just didn't seem to make a difference, unfortunately. We're aware of how they had done that for consoles (if we're not mistaken, the Strip being segmented was a console-induced limitation as well, no?), but that seems to us like it might have been the more traditional type of out of memory error, perhaps? i.e. simply the number of assets, not so much the sheer stuff in the entire game world. But yeah, perhaps we simply have hit another limit.

 

We're currently trying to test our hypothetical solution to offset the anchor by moving references into an ESP instead of using an override. If our supposition that the override is making the record count twice, this should ideally cut down some of the largest chunks in half. The problem is that, without knowledge of xEdit scripting, we're doing this manually, and it is EXTREMELY TEDIOUS just to do to even one merge. We'll post results when we can.

 

Anyone know a good xEdit scriptwriter by any chance?

[kylemarshiku]

Okay, so we tried it.

 

Try 18: We did the above, trying to move the reference IDs into the anchor itself so that we could cut down on overrides. It was tedious, but we managed to do it for our Merged Plugins Someguy Quests file. We cut down on hundreds of thousands of records in this manner, and it still worked. Then we tested out loading the game with the prior and altered versions with the Frontier loaded. We turned off the larger merges so that this one was the crutch. With this mod on, the game would crash on the crash sites. Without it, it would work. And... the altered version made no difference at all. So unfortunately our assumption that overrides in separate plugins counts towards this record limit seems to have been false. There's no need to try this with every merge, sadly.

 

 

So, we failed. Sigh. It's worth noting that perhaps we have discovered a record limit. But if overrides don't count, the record limit is probably less than 5 million. (FNVEdit doesn't seem to give us an easy way to count only non-override records.) At least something was learned from this endeavor.

 

As for us, we'll be forced to choose between the Frontier and 2 or 3 large merges (which could amount to hundreds of mods). Because we're tenacious, we're thinking about holding off on trying to incorporate the Frontier until the moment we're ready to start it. Then, we can test whether any crash sites show up in that later save at that point. So far, no crash sites have appeared in the Frontier, so we're hoping the phenomenon could remain localized in the Mojave. We could then play it and unload the mod after playing (and reverting to prior saves). i.e. the mainstream way of playing quest mods. While we would prefer to integrate it with our game and go home with boons and rewards, that simply won't be an option for us. We've hit a limit. That's our thoughts at the moment, anyway.

 

Thank you all for attempting to help. If anyone else ever deduces something, feel free to post here or message us.

[RoyBatterian]

The limit is FEFFFFFF-800 (hex) or FEFFF7FF (4,278,188,031) records as the highest are reserved for temporary references (FF) and the lowest 800 are hardcoded and cannot have an index higher than 00. That is across 255 plugins. Per plugin the limit is FFFFFF-800 or FFF7FF records. That's 16775167 records, you will never ever use 16 and a half million records in a single plugin most likely and if you do, you're doing it wrong.

 

Not that MMX will ever see this information, but someone else can quote me.

[kylemarshiku]

Thank you for repeating Post #5 where that information was already provided.

 

Thanks for trying though, buddy.

Edited October 10, 2021 by MysteryMachineX

[Pixelhate]

Oof! What a way to answer to someone who is knowledgeable, who gives you the full answer with extra bits of info when I gave you only a second hand conditional answer.

[kylemarshiku]

Lol. We thank you for your help, ExhalePit, but we said we said what said.

[RoyBatterian]

Aren't you special.

[kylemarshiku]

Thank you, same to you.