Sudden performance drop in X areas of the map with mods

[Alexiel26]

Very good everyone. First of all, thank you for reading this and taking your time if you stop by.

Taking advantage of my mistake of updating the game to the NG. I have taken to testing different mods individually, since before the patch, I was suffering a series of errors in X locations on the map and I couldn't quite find the reason (I had about 120 modifications).
On the eve of waiting for the new version of f4SE, I have decided to test different mods that do not need it to run, since having only about 20 mods, what was mentioned at the beginning happened again.
The fact is that going in small groups or 1 at a time, I discovered which one or which were the causes. It turns out that mods like We Are the Minutemen or Militarized Minutemen are the cause or I have come to the conclusion that they are the reasons for this happening.

It surprises me, because in the past, with a much older PC, these things never happened to me. What's more, with my current PC, by 2022, I had both mods and I don't have that memory at all.
I know that it is currently complicated without f4SE to find a solution, but if anyone can give me any advice, reason or alternative so that this does not happen, I would greatly appreciate it.

 

SYSTEM SPECS:
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Home v10.0.19045
CPU: GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-10600K CPU @ 4.10GHz
GPU #1: Nvidia GA106 [GeForce RTX 3060 Lite Hash Rate]
GPU #2: Microsoft Basic Render Driver
PHYSICAL MEMORY: 9.51 GB/15.92 GB

My hard drive is a 1TB SSD, I can't find its specifications right now, but if necessary I will look for 

These are the mods that I am testing in case it serves as a reference:

 

# This file was automatically generated by Mod Organizer.

  0  0     Fallout4.esm
  1  1     DLCRobot.esm
  2  2     DLCworkshop01.esm
  3  3     DLCCoast.esm
  4  4     DLCworkshop02.esm
  5  5     DLCworkshop03.esm
  6  6     DLCNukaWorld.esm
254 FE   0 ccBGSFO4044-HellfirePowerArmor.esl
254 FE   1 ccfsvfo4001-modularmilitarybackpack.esl
254 FE   2 ccgcafo4011-factionws11vt.esl
254 FE   3 ccgcafo4022-factionas11vt.esl
254 FE   4 ccBGSFO4115-X02.esl
254 FE   5 ccBGSFO4116-HeavyFlamer.esl
254 FE   6 ccBGSFO4110-WS_Enclave.esl
254 FE   7 ccBGSFO4096-AS_Enclave.esl
254 FE   8 ccFSVFO4007-Halloween.esl
254 FE   9 ccBGSFO4046-TesCan.esl
254 FE   a ccSBJFO4003-Grenade.esl
254 FE   b ccOTMFO4001-Remnants.esl
  7  7     YouAndWhatArmy2.esm
  8  8     VisibleCompanionAffinity.esp
  9  9     Eli_Rockin Red Rocket.esp
 10  a     MilitarizedMinutemen.esp
254 FE   c SprintOutOfCombat.esp
254 FE   d Dank_ArmorOverrides.esp
 11  b     LooksMirror.esp
 12  c     ImmersiveVendors.esp
 13  d     Natural2KFaceTexturesAllInOne.esp
 14  e     Eli_Armour_Compendium.esp
 15  f     F4NVServiceRifleRedux.esp
 16 10     MilitarisedMinutemen_PatchesAddon.esp
 17 11     Gorgeous VaultGirl.esp
 18 12     MiscHairstyle.esp
 19 13     actress piper.esp
 20 14     RoundGlasses.esp
254 FE   e WhoIsTheGeneral.esp
 21 15     BetterJunkFences.esp
 22 16     The Eyes Of Beauty.esp
 23 17     AzarPonytailHairstyles.esp
254 FE   f CCMMB REDUX.esp
 24 18     Insignificant Object Remover.esp
 25 19     EasyHacking.esp
 26 1a     LongerPowerLines3x.esp
254 FE  10 SF Beards N Staches.esp
 27 1b     KSHairsFemsheppingRadbeetle.esp
254 FE  11 CROSS_InstituteExpeditionarySuit.esp
254 FE  12 CROSS_CourserStrigidae.esp
254 FE  13 Look At Me IE.esp
254 FE  14 CROSS_CoA.esp
 28 1c     RBJustin.esp
254 FE  15 SF Valentine.esp
 29 1d     K9TacticalHarness.esp
 30 1e     EveryonesBestFriend.esp
 31 1f     Brotherhood of Steel Kit.esp
254 FE  16 Dank_ArmorOverrides_DLCCoast.esp
254 FE  17 Dank_ArmorOverrides_DLCNukaWorld.esp
254 FE  18 Dank_ArmorOverrides_DLCRobot.esp
254 FE  19 Dank_INNRoverride.esp
 32 20     CBBE.esp
 33 21     BetterCompanions.esp
 34 22     Pip-Boy Flashlight.esp
 

 

 

Edited May 8 by Alexiel26

[worm82075]

I don't use Militarized Minutemen but i do use WATM and having married it to Liberty Reborn(made a mod combining the two into a seamless experience) I am quite familiar with what it actually changes. WATM only edits one interior cell and one exterior cell to which the player has access. Knowing that, it is unlikely that world edits are the cause of the performance hit. That leaves the scripting as the most likely candidate and unfortunately only the original author can remedy that having never released the source code. 

[Alexiel26]

48 minutes ago, worm82075 said:

I don't use Militarized Minutemen but i do use WATM and having married it to Liberty Reborn(made a mod combining the two into a seamless experience) I am quite familiar with what it actually changes. WATM only edits one interior cell and one exterior cell to which the player has access. Knowing that, it is unlikely that world edits are the cause of the performance hit. That leaves the scripting as the most likely candidate and unfortunately only the original author can remedy that having never released the source code. 

I appreciate your response, I will do a clean test again to check it again and see if I had something else activated at that time and I missed so much checking.

 

P.S: I signed up for the Liberty Reborn

P.s.2: I think the problem is You and What Army 2. That separately it works well, with it what I mentioned happens, and WATM and MM alone do not happen. I'll try to comment on it in the mod to see if there is any reason that I'm missing.

Edited April 27 by Alexiel26

[worm82075]

I can tell you why You and What Army 2 affects performance. It adds outposts all across the commonwealth and spawns a large number of NPCs that are immediately hostile to the other NPCs already present. Believe it or not the reason performance issues persist in downtown Boston is because there is ALWAYS at least a dozen or so NPCs spawned and in active combat at any given time. This will always be a bottleneck for this engine no matter how optimized the renderer is.

[Alexiel26]

26 minutes ago, worm82075 said:

I can tell you why You and What Army 2 affects performance. It adds outposts all across the commonwealth and spawns a large number of NPCs that are immediately hostile to the other NPCs already present. Believe it or not the reason performance issues persist in downtown Boston is because there is ALWAYS at least a dozen or so NPCs spawned and in active combat at any given time. This will always be a bottleneck for this engine no matter how optimized the renderer is.

Maybe that's why even my old PC was better with this graphics engine hahaha Knowing what that is, I'd have to be selective.

The YAWA2 car told me that it has a lot of influence on facial/body textures and weapon animations. I only had a couple of animations, which I deleted, and my texture pack is in ba2, which I disabled. The result improved, but there was still that second of "lag", which does not happen to me if I do not combine WATM+MM or stay only with YAWA2.

So it seems to me that even though I like that added mechanic, I will stick with the traditional way of my WATM+MM games.

 

Thank you for the support and teaching me something more about this world and the "wonders" of the eternal Oblivion graphics engine hahaha

[rsm000rsm]

Isn't there a bug between WATM and Militarized Minutemen, despite the patch? I don't recall specifics, but I do know it is a longstanding claim.

Also, Eli's Armor Compendium breaks precombines around Diamond City. 4estGimp - Eli's Armor Compendium Edit fixes them.

My testing while creating my "Diverse" series indicates that stuttering caused by too many NPCs has more to do with non-vanilla textures and body/face morphs than the quantity of NPCs loaded up. While testing "Diverse Settlers," for instance, I spawned in over 200 settlers at Starlight before I saw any stuttering, and as I've said elsewhere, I suspect spawning in 200+ of anything would cause stuttering, too. In an earlier test using "Diverse Raiders," I spawned in all 80+ of the new raiders, fast traveled away, and then returned on foot, but I didn't have any stuttering.

On a related note, Disk Cache Enabler helps with stuttering in general, though. Since installing it, I've not had stuttering at certain times/locations that always gave me trouble regardless of my load order.

[Glitchfinder]

10 hours ago, worm82075 said:

I can tell you why You and What Army 2 affects performance. It adds outposts all across the commonwealth and spawns a large number of NPCs that are immediately hostile to the other NPCs already present. Believe it or not the reason performance issues persist in downtown Boston is because there is ALWAYS at least a dozen or so NPCs spawned and in active combat at any given time. This will always be a bottleneck for this engine no matter how optimized the renderer is.

Spawned, yes. In combat, no. Just like every workshop NPC in every settlement you own and every NPC currently part of a quest you have active, some of the YAWA2 NPCs will be always be loaded into memory. That said, "loaded into memory" is not even remotely close to being the same as fully loaded and actively processing, the way NPCs near the player are. Otherwise settlements themselves would be a permanent performance impact simply for existing anywhere in the game world. Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of YAWA2 NPCs are temporary and created/destroyed using the same system as random encounters. The total number of persistent NPCs managed by YAWA2 is:

• 30 camp caretaker NPCs, one per camp
• 15 patrols containing between 3 and 5 members
• 4 minutemen for each settlement you build a YAWA2 workshop in

Aside from the workshop item NPCs, that is roughly equivalent to building a little over 5 settlements up to the 20 NPC limit that Bethesda set. Similarly, the primary reason it's an ESM rather than an ESP is to ensure that temporary references are only loaded as needed. That's a feature specific to master files - if YAWA2 was not a master then there would be several thousand persistent objects placed around the commonwealth which would always be loaded into memory.

I was very careful to consider performance for this mod, especially in light of how the original YAWA was built and affected saves. That's not to say it's perfect or won't affect performance. Just that It's nowhere near the impact you made it out to be.

[worm82075]

No need to be sensitive. I use your mod, am aware of your efforts and have no complaints.  I have never even made a measurement of the supposed performance hit. My downtown Boston comment was refering to vanilla spawns not spawns from your mod. They made the measurement and I simply explained why the result was the way it is and eluded that knocking on your door for answers would be fruitless.

[Glitchfinder]

I see, my mistake. That said, the NPCs aren't the source of downtown boston's performance hit. That's just an issue with how much the game is rendering at once. The combat can make it a bit worse, but even with all NPCs dead or disabled you're still going to take a notable hit in areas downtown simply because the game is rendering more than the creation engine was built to handle. If it were the NPCs, then Battle for Bunker Hill would be essentially unplayable. In fact, on many modded setups it actually is unplayable due to texture and armor mods that overload the game and cause it to lock up and even crash.

The specific area Alexiel26 mentioned having the most remaining issues post-testing was the region between Sanctuary and Lexington. I have three waystations along the edge of that area but nothing of significance beyond that. They're not even close enough to each other for more than one to be loaded at the same time.

I think the most telling part of what came up on my mod page was "It is the place where I notice these "load/lag" effects the most while running and moving through them (sometimes it even happens without moving)." If it happens without moving, there's only a few potential causes:

• Something else on the computer that is running at the same time is affecting performance.
• Persistent NPCs entering and leaving the area are affecting performance (If this is the case, then one or more of the mods in the load order is making NPCs use models or textures that are too much for their computer to handle)
• A mod is doing things in the background via script, and those things are causing performance issues. This should only be able to happen if the mod is placing or otherwise manipulating a lot of objects, much like the original YAWA mod did. None of the mods I'm familiar with in their load order will do this, including YAWA2.

Overall, without more information this will be difficult to assess. The Lexington-Concord region doesn't have much in the way of persistent wandering NPCs, and interference from software and hardware is something that would be difficult to properly verify even on the best of days.

[Alexiel26]

6 hours ago, Glitchfinder said:

I see, my mistake. That said, the NPCs aren't the source of downtown boston's performance hit. That's just an issue with how much the game is rendering at once. The combat can make it a bit worse, but even with all NPCs dead or disabled you're still going to take a notable hit in areas downtown simply because the game is rendering more than the creation engine was built to handle. If it were the NPCs, then Battle for Bunker Hill would be essentially unplayable. In fact, on many modded setups it actually is unplayable due to texture and armor mods that overload the game and cause it to lock up and even crash.

The specific area Alexiel26 mentioned having the most remaining issues post-testing was the region between Sanctuary and Lexington. I have three waystations along the edge of that area but nothing of significance beyond that. They're not even close enough to each other for more than one to be loaded at the same time.

I think the most telling part of what came up on my mod page was "It is the place where I notice these "load/lag" effects the most while running and moving through them (sometimes it even happens without moving)." If it happens without moving, there's only a few potential causes:

• Something else on the computer that is running at the same time is affecting performance.
• Persistent NPCs entering and leaving the area are affecting performance (If this is the case, then one or more of the mods in the load order is making NPCs use models or textures that are too much for their computer to handle)
• A mod is doing things in the background via script, and those things are causing performance issues. This should only be able to happen if the mod is placing or otherwise manipulating a lot of objects, much like the original YAWA mod did. None of the mods I'm familiar with in their load order will do this, including YAWA2.

Overall, without more information this will be difficult to assess. The Lexington-Concord region doesn't have much in the way of persistent wandering NPCs, and interference from software and hardware is something that would be difficult to properly verify even on the best of days.

I really appreciate all the support, and the only thing that is clear to me is that something is hindering everything. So I think I'll do a TOTAL delete of the game and mods, and I'll try again this time checking one by one to make sure things aren't interfering.
Maybe with the NG update I have left things unremoved from the previous combination I had. Probably because of what you mentioned, some texture beyond the face, which is the only thing I have in mind that I added (and I made sure it was ba2).

Again, thank you, I now eliminate the part that I "hold responsible" to a single mod that I also love. It simply caught my attention that it only occurred combined with the other active Minutemen mods, and that both these, and YAWA2, by themselves work perfectly for me. So I'll do that, and give thanks.