Annoying ctd issues, PLEASE help...

[warsaint]

so, i recently decided to pick up all the dlc and reinstall FO3. for brevity's sake, i'll keep this as short as possible and my issues are in bold and colored typeface for people who scan more than read. after modding up with lots of shiny, wonderful new mods, i've discovered that i have a ridiculously high amount of ctd issues. i've successfully troubleshot and fixed the majority of these problems, however, the MOST annoying one just will not go away. I ctd with terrible frequency on saving game.turning off autosave seems to have helped, but it's still pretty much a crapshoot as to whether or not i'm going to lose progress every time i save. i enjoy cranking difficulty up to high levels so losing an hour of progress from death is ok with me, but succesfully pillaging a camp loaded with angry, heavily armed super mutants only to lose my progress when i try to save afterwards is not! lol.

 

Also, after loading dimonized type 3 female bodies and breezes male bodies, i'm getting what looks like a funky texture clipping issue around the edges of the npcs' armors and it seems that i no longer get project beauty faces on female char models. (sorry, no screenies, and i'm pretty sure it's just load order or file overwrite thats causing the face issue). lastly, before i list mod load order and pc specs, i was wondering if anyone had any advice on difficulty tweaking in respect to combat. i have FWE installed plus a number of other mods, as you will see. npcs do great damage, but at lvl 18, using any weapon that has been added or tweaked by my mods (anything non-vanilla FO3) just does too much damage. one shotting super mutants in vats or from stealth and being able to single handedly shred through evergreen mills without dying once seems thoroughly un-epic to me, so any suggestion on reducing my character's damage via mod or settings would be greatly appreciated. sorry for all the questions, i've fixed what i could on my own, but this has become majorly annoying and with two jobs, i'd like to spend my little bit of play time troubleshooting less and raiding supermutants more!

 

i have run FO3 ram boost, and while i have fo3edit installed, i simply have not had the time to read the manual. i also have fose installed. I've seen lots of articles about FO3 and win 7 not playing well together, i currently run FO3 from fomm as admin in win xp sp3 compatibility mode

 

Pc specs (i know, my box is pretty dated, upgrading in a couple months)

intel core 2 e6400

3 gb 800mhz ram

nvidia 9800 gtx+ - driver revision 197.13

windows 7 ultimate 64-bit os

 

Mods NOT in fomm list (some were installed with fomm, some were not)

Dimonized type 3 body replacer - with shoulders fix

breeze's fo3 males - don't worry, underpants are installed, lol

enhanced blood textures - not installed with fomm, but working properly

foip fixes for project beauty, mmm and followers enhanced

hi-rez weapons v3.1 - latest posted version, not installed with fomm, but installed before anything else that changes weapons (FWE, EVE, MMM) and never been an issue in the past.

 

mods and load order from fomm

Fallout3.esm

Anchorage.esm

ThePitt.esm

BrokenSteel.esm

PointLookout.esm

Zeta.esm

CRAFT.esm

CALIBR.esm

Project Beauty.esm

FO3 Wanderers Edition - Main File.esm

Mart's Mutant Mod.esm

Enhanced Weather - Rain and Snow.esm

bzArmour.esp

Project Beauty- Broken Steel.esp

Project Beauty- Point Lookout.esp

ACE2-0.esp

CRAFT - Activation Perk.esp

Enhanced Weather - Sneak Bonus during Storms.esp

Enhanced Weather - Rain and Snow in Fallout.esp

Enhanced Weather - Radioactive Rain and Snow Plugin.esp

FO3 Wanderers Edition - Main File.esp

FO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC Anchorage.esp

FO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC The Pitt.esp

FO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC Broken Steel.esp

FO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC Point Lookout.esp

FO3 Wanderers Edition - DLC Mothership Zeta.esp

FO3 Wanderers Edition - Followers Enhanced (BrokenSteel).esp

FO3 Wanderers Edition - Followers Enhanced.esp (Inactive)

FO3 Wanderers Edition - Project Beauty.esp

FO3 Wanderers Edition - Project Beauty (Followers Enhanced).esp

FO3 Wanderers Edition - Controller Assistance.esp

EVE.esp

EVE Operation Anchorage.esp

EVE - FWE Master Release (Follower Enhanced).esp

EVE Anchorage - FWE DLC Anchorage.esp

EVE - FWE Master Release.esp

EVE - FWE with WeaponModKits.esp (Inactive)

Mart's Mutant Mod.esp

Mart's Mutant Mod - DLC Anchorage.esp

Mart's Mutant Mod - DLC The Pitt.esp

Mart's Mutant Mod - DLC Broken Steel.esp

Mart's Mutant Mod - DLC Point Lookout.esp

Mart's Mutant Mod - DLC Zeta.esp

Mart's Mutant Mod - FWE Master Release.esp

Mart's Mutant Mod - Project Beauty + FWE.esp

Mart's Mutant Mod - Project Beauty.esp

Mart's Mutant Mod - No Floaters.esp

Mart's Mutant Mod - No Geckos.esp

Mart's Mutant Mod - No Wanamingos.esp

Mart's Mutant Mod - Hunting & Looting.esp

Mart's Mutant Mod - Natural Selection.esp

Enhanced Weather - Weather Sounds in Interiors.esp

Fellout-Full.esp

Fellout-pipboylight.esp

MTC Wasteland Travellers.esp

A Box of Quantum.esp

PersonalTerminal.esp

 

if any mod makers read this, THANK YOU GUYS SOOO MUCH for taking the time to make this game better in a million different ways for those of us who don't have the time to do it ourselves. Buggy or not, you guys took what was an incredible game and cranked it up to an indescribable level of fun!!!!!

[Burbinator]

non vanilla fo3 weapons dealing too much damage? generally FWE cranks up weapon damage so high that stuff added by mods deals too little damage in comparison... although it seems you're only using FWE and EVE for new weapons. Either way, modifying weapon stats is perhaps the easiest thing to mod. Anywa, you can change the global damage multiplier in the FWE control panel. Also, changing the ingame difficulty will adjust how much damage you do relative to enemies. I think hard is 2/3rd damage, take 3/2 more damage, very hard is deal 1/2 damage, take 2x more damage. Very hard is not recommended unless your characte ris already very advanced... dealing 1/4th the relative damage is sorta impossible if you're just starting out from your shack.

 

Using FO3Edit for merged patches is very easy. Simply have all the mods you want selected in FOMM, then open FO3Edit. It will have all the mods in FOMM already selected in FO3Edit so just hit okay. Then, when it finishes loading, select them all, right click, and create a merged patch. Click the patch in FOMM. Next rename FO3Edit to FO3MasterUpdate and run it. This should improve stability significantly. Just remember to rename it to FO3MasterRestore and run that if you ever want to change your load order.

 

oh and a major reason for instability might be some of your MMM mods. Don't load no floaters, no geckoes, no wanamingos, hunting an dlooting, and natural selection. These are all configurable from the FWE control panel and I think it will cause issues if you also load those mods.

 

Look up CASM on fallout3nexus, it automatically makes saves for you. No guarantee it won't CTD during saves too, but it usually runs quietly in the background and is just something to try out anyway. '

 

you might possibly have to reinstall any textures of PB that were overwritten when you installed type 3 and bz's bodies, not sure about that though.

[warsaint]

gotcha. thanks alot for the quick reply. damage thing is really just a tertiary concern. i just want combat to feel more challenging. i'll tweak around with it some more. i like the damage that mobs do to me, i just think i do too much to them. i'll give the merged mod thing a shot. but i haven't seen anywhere to remove wanamingos and such in fwe. will do more research as i have time.

[Burbinator]

The bottom most option in the FWE control panel is like "support mod configurations" or something, idk. Anyway, it's the bottom most option. AFAIK only MMM is supported by FWE in such a manner. Anyway, you can click on MMM and adjust absolutely everything (spawn increase, ghoul revival chance, and yes turning off wanamingoes)

 

oh and remember that you can also change how weapon skill affects damage/accuracy. FWE is by default high acc/low damage (skill has a high effect on acc with minor on dam) but you can swich it to be almost all accuracy. Early on I suppose you get a damage boost with very low skill levels, albeit with terrible acc, but on higher levels your damage will be noticeably lower.

[warsaint]

ok. gave that a shot. but it didn't fix the problem. =(

[Burbinator]

yeah, sorry, what I was giving you advice on was only a minor issue at first. I'm just as lost as you are about the whole crashing thing.

 

Have you tried CASM, though? Or does that just make you crash more frequently?

[warsaint]

not sure what CASM is. i'll look into it. seems that blowing myself up or just dyin period fixes the problem temporarily, as a number of people have stated. not even sure where to start tracking this bug. =(

[RastahMan]

Cipscis' Automatic Save Manager, or CASM for short, replaces Fallout 3's saving system so that you no longer have to rely on only a single autosave or quicksave to fall back on.

 

CASM

[warsaint]

haha thanks man. I overlooked it in his previous post as well.