Seeking Advice for Modded New Vegas and Bloated Save Files

[Jazzby]

I started New Vegas recently with a decent haul of mods, and it worked in the beginning pretty well. However, I've recently noticed some problems loading. At first I thought it was my imagination, but in the last couple of days I noticed it took significantly longer to load a save file. I am using the Ultimate Edition.

 

Mods installed:

 

Mod Configuration Menu

Weapon Mod Menu

Project Nevada, Core, Equipment, Rebalance, and Cyberware

Project Nevada patches for the DLCs and Weapon Mods Expanded

A World of Pain, both the main and the new areas and vendor additions to Dead Money

The Torn City

Run the Lucky 38

Electro-City, both Completed Work Orders and Highways and Byways

Underwater Hideout and the plugins for DLCs and item sorting for them

Underground Hideout and the plugins for DLCs

Liberty Loft

Lucky 38 Suite Reloaded

D.E.I.M.O.S.

The New Bison Steve Hotel

Interior Lighting Overhaul

Razorback Gear aka the Ghost Ranger equipment

Colossus T49XV and the Project Nevada patch for it

Kerberos Jin-Roh armor

Stealth Suit Retexture - Blue Tiger

More MREs

Real World Drinks

Benny's Lucky Lighter

Real Smokes

Marijuana Plant for Fallout New Vegas

Glow Sticks

Unique Items and Collectables plus the Ultimate NES Collection and Vinyl Record Bonus Pack

Bank Card

Casino UnBanner

Better Casinos

Colossus NV - Lienna's Squad

New Vegas Bounties

New Vegas Bounties II

The Inheritence

The Someguyseries mod, that tiny one that acts as a core for the above three mods

Conelrad Radio

Existence 2.0 Radio

Bobblehunt

Monster Mod - MCM Menu

Monster Mod - Wasteland Edition

Monster Mod - Night Spawn

 

A couple of patches to add some mixing with MoMod and A World of Pain, one adds new areas with MoMod creatures in them and another adds MoMod creatures to already existing AWOP areas

 

Spice of Life clothes mod and Robert's Male Body and Type 3 Female Body for the SoL mod.

 

A ton of Millenia's weapons, literally every weapon mod in the following link except for four of them:

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/searchresults/?

 

Millenia's Weapon Retexture Project

 

And finally, Weapon Mods Expanded with all of the DLC patches, a compatibility patch for Millenia's Weapon Retexture Project, and an additional optional bit that adds WMX support to the weapons included in Project Nevada.

 

 

I have everything in a very specific order and currently have Run the Lucky 38 unchecked, but sadly the core files and changes were already made. The order I have it in is such that ensures what's important takes effect, like Project Nevada, and ILO in particular is at the very bottom of the esm and esp list.

 

My computer's specs are 2.7 Ghz CPU, 4 GB RAM, and for the GPU an Intel HD graphics chipset that I've already confirmed is more than capable of running Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas with all DLC and a pretty hefty mod loadout.

 

I'm currently using the 4 GB patch, half due to Liberty Loft and half due to the sheer mod loadout itself. I've never experienced CTDs that did not seem tied to incredibly random anomalies stuck to specific saves(one CTD I had near a group of MoMod related Cazador and the game kept crashing at a specific point after killing the queen, loading a save made a minute prior fixed it, another two seemed tied to specific points in Dead Money when fighting Ghosts, loading a recent autosave fixed both).

 

Never had a memory problem.

 

My initial save in Doc Mitchell's house, the very first save of my playthrough, is 2.57 MB in size. My save just starting Dead Money is 10.0 MB in size. This was after traversing quite a few vanilla and AWOP locations, and setting up stockpiles of supplies(weapons, ammo, food and drink, stuff like that)in my underground and underwater hideout. My most recent save, probably halfway through Dead Money, is 10.8 MB in size.

 

I haven't even started any of the other DLC since, as per when I played FNV back on the 360, I'm doing them in order. I tried loading a save I made in front of Liberty Loft soon before fast traveling back to the Abandoned BoS Bunker to begin Dead Money, and it took about a couple minutes. I then tried loading my most recent save, it took closer to three.

 

I'm assuming this is because of the save file's file size, and I have no idea if there's any way to correct this beyond reinstalling a fresh game or trying a fresh save/new game(I have no idea how to undo mod changes, for Run the Lucky 38 in particular the added areas/interior cells remained even after disabling the mod and deleting the mod's files manually).

 

So far, I'm planning on starting over without Run the Lucky 38, Lucky 38 Suite Reloaded, and Millenia's Weapon Retexture Project.

 

Quite a few of these I'm really keen on keeping. The major ones like Project Nevada and Weapon Mods Expanded definitely, and I don't want to give up mods like the Underground/Underwater Hideout, and I like the smaller ones like More MREs, Real World Alcoholic Beverages, and Real Smokes.

 

As an added note, I do save quite often, does that factor into it? And does anyone have any idea how to fix this if possible, and if not how to prevent or cut back on save file bloating beyond just saving less often and using less mods?

 

Another inquiry I had is that some of these mods I added in midgame. Weapon Mods Expanded and its optional patches and additions is notable, as I added that to the game just before starting Dead Money. Does adding mods in that alter the game after starting the game and playing the same character/game for a good while affect the file size of the save file in any abnormal way or something like that?

 

 

Edit: I completely forgot, I also have Conelrad Radio and Existence 2.0 Radio installed.

Edited June 11, 2014 by Jazzby

[dangman4ever]

As far as I can tell, how long you've played with that particular character determine how big the save file is. I have a character who started at 2MB but now the current save is at 16.6MB because that's the character I've played the longest. Having less saves doesn't make a difference either. I have character where I've only saved like 10 times but it's still the same size as my more multiple saved characters.

 

Mods do affect game saves as well but not as dramatically as length of time spent on a character. My non-modded save is 1.8MB. My modded save is 2MB.

 

So, no real way in-game to decrease your load times short of just never saving and starting from a earlier save. However, upgrading my video card and adding a SSD did dramatically improve my FNV load times.

 

EDIT: Ok I stand corrected. There is a utlity that does somewhat help decrease your save size:

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/49396/?

Edited June 12, 2014 by dangman4ever

[Jazzby]

As far as I can tell, how long you've played with that particular character determine how big the save file is. I have a character who started at 2MB but now the current save is at 16.6MB because that's the character I've played the longest. Having less saves doesn't make a difference either. I have character where I've only saved like 10 times but it's still the same size as my more multiple saved characters.

 

Mods do affect game saves as well but not as dramatically as length of time spent on a character. My non-modded save is 1.8MB. My modded save is 2MB.

 

So, no real way in-game to decrease your load times short of just never saving and starting from a earlier save. However, upgrading my video card and adding a SSD did dramatically improve my FNV load times.

 

EDIT: Ok I stand corrected. There is a utlity that does somewhat help decrease your save size:

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/49396/?

 

 

Thanks, I'll back up what I've done so far in my fresh game and try it out. And I know what you mean. A little something I didn't mention above, I initially started playing it on a friend's computer that was lent to me in exchange for me fixing it up for her. That was an all in one desktop with Windows 8, but I managed to run FNV like a charm on it. 6 GB RAM, 3.30 Ghz CPU, and around the same HD graphics. I didn't start having save load problems until I switched over to my desktop(installed and added the same mod assortment I had before, and I had a backup of my saves I slapped in)after she wanted it back. So that might have something to do with it. Hence my "screw it all, do it over clean" idea. I do wonder if I was hasty though, and that mod you linked works, because I got pretty far into the Villa without backing my save files up(and deleted them when I started fresh).

 

On the plus side, the 4GB patch is more friendly with 7, and I don't have to manually uninstall that infrared crap to unblock the tilde key every time I start the computer up.

 

Reading those comments for the mod though, I'm not so sure. People saying things like getting freezes, unique weapons disappearing from safes, and GRA weapons disappearing from vendors. This one comment helped me though:

 

 

Certain mods are known to cause save bloat. In my experience if you play with a mod that relies on scripts then later uninstall that mod and use the same save then the scripts will continuously fire through your game without doing anything but bloating and causing crashes. If you need to remove a mod fall back to a clean save otherwise you are at high risk of bloat.

 

Not sure if Run the Lucky 38 would cause this, but it's my own darn fault for trying to not use it after already loading everything in it. And supposedly some of the people having problems are not using it right according to some of the comments? I'll check it out later, after my save gets a bit more bloated, probably after the Dead Money DLC and doing some stuff in the Mojave Wastes.

 

His NV New Game Plus mod looks handy as well.

 

 

Edit: Okay I tried it once and it decreased my save by a mere fraction of a megabyte. Like, literally in the 0.00< area fraction size. There were no changes at all. So I just brought out my save backup. Probably not gonna use his NG+ either. It looks like he just took the Skyrim ref deleter and expected it to work on New Vegas.

 

In any case, for some reason my game isn't that bad right now. Due to some complications in the Someguy Series I stopped using Monster Mod and that actually improved the game sort of, and despite the occasional crash and long load times, I haven't had any major problems with area transitions or anything.

Edited June 26, 2014 by Jazzby