Too many mods?

[ElricOfGrans]

I know Oblivion has a maximum number of mods it can handle, but does it reach a point earlier where things do not work `right'? I have noticed on a few occasions now where I have a mod that does not work or does not work how I expected. I then remove a seemingly unrelated mod, and suddenly it changes.

 

A couple of examples. I use LAME and have the module that changes the `script effect' icon. It did not work originally, but the rest of LAME did so I just ignored it. Duke Patrick's Actors Can Now Miss seemed to be causing me crashes whenever I entered the area north of Kvatch (makes no sense, but removing it fixed this). Suddenly, the script effect icon changed! It makes no sense, but it happened. More recently, Enhanced Water was disappointing. It seemed barely any better, and only under certain situations. Last night, I removed some armour mods I was no longer using. Suddenly, the water looked different at times the mod did not previously seem to work. Makes no sense, but it happened. I remember once adding a companion mod and the companion did not seem to exist in the world to recruit until after I removed a mod that had no relationship to that area of the world (this was a while back, so I cannot remember the specific mods now).

 

I use OBMM to load/unload mods, BOSS to get the order right, then Wrye Bash to make the bashed patch. I use all three every time I make a change. According to Wrye Bash, the bashed patch is the 190th mod in my order (give or take a few on any given day). Better Cities, Unique Landscapes, Mart's Monster Mod, Fancesco's Leveled Creatures-Items, Supreme Magicka and Less Annying Magic Experience feel like they make up the majority of those mods (I have no bothered counting, but quickly scrolling the list they seem to take up a lot --- especially with all the compatibility patches for Unique Landscapes). I have observed that removing mods will cause seemingly unrelated mods to suddenly work on several occasions now, so I was wondering if I am pushing the limits a little too hard. Does Oblivion have an `optimal mod point' where adding further mods is probably a bad idea? Does the bashed patch have a point where you are merging-in too many mods? I have recently been `trimming the fat', so to speak, and been noticing with increasing frequency that removing smaller mods is allowing larger ones to work better.

[Fonger]

Does Oblivion have an `optimal mod point' where adding further mods is probably a bad idea?

yes, but it varies by system and your own personal luck

 

the absolute maximum is 255 (coding limit)

 

many people get this around 100

 

some select unlucky few

 

around 25

 

and a few who have been curse by witches

 

5

[hellbishop]

Yay verily lately the fewer mods i use the better. Anything but texture, sound and body mod replacers my game will start to get a little wonky with npcs not following regular paths and landscapes disappearing etc.

[Shadowfen]

I know Oblivion has a maximum number of mods it can handle, but does it reach a point earlier where things do not work `right'? I have noticed on a few occasions now where I have a mod that does not work or does not work how I expected. I then remove a seemingly unrelated mod, and suddenly it changes.

 

 

In addition to the hardcoded maximum number of mods that you can have (255), there is also a limit to the total number of .esm, .esp, and .bsa files altogether that you can have in the Data directory - whether you are using them or not. I don't recall what that limit is, but it is a good idea to relocate any mod .esm, .esp, or .bsa files that you do not actually load into your game to somewhere else.

[ziitch]

Most item inclusion mods that basically follow the guidelines of "insert armor, include in special chest, drop/sell somewhere in IC/random city" don't interfere that much. It's the technical mods that you have to watch out for, especially mods that change around changing the vanilla factions and character ownership, along with AI packages for characters.

 

As for opening up slots, merging item mods based on the creator or location helps with freeing up a lot of those slots. Same goes for races, but that's better off starting off with one mod and inserting other race mods' stuff in manually, so you can avoid duplicate entries for hair and eyes. Landscapes I've tried once, but the problem is that various mods that change up the landscape aren't very merge-friendly, especially when they use the same worldspace in the game. But mods that modify vanilla systems? Forget them, they're too fragile to merge without something not working right.

[Rhieland]

Well if the game starts running too slowly from all of the mods try taking some strain away from your CPU, yes there is a mod for that. Perhaps the problem is your computer can't handle the higher quality models? Well there are mods for that too. In fact if there are mods that you have a hard time keeping in order, well there is a mod for that. This sounds like the iphone and "There is an app for that". Basically we have a mod for your game, a mod for that mod to add new features, a mod for that general mod to increase performance, and a mod that will make the scripts for your mods run in the appropriate order. But why complain? Me specifically, I spend more time modding my game then playing it.

[ElricOfGrans]

Thank you, this has been quite interesting. I did not know about the limit on the number of file in the Data directory. I guess the Bashed Patch is not as all-powerful as I had imagined.

[Shadowfen]

I've found the source for my assertion that the simple number of files matters. Ironically enough it is from the Wrye Bash Readme:

 

 

Auto-Ghost

• Background: The Oblivion game engine has a bug which causes performance problems when the number of mods in the Oblivion\Data directory is larger than 300-350 (roughly). (Note that this count includes inactive mods. You would think that Oblivion wouldn't waste time reading inactive mods, but in fact it does. :shrug:)

 

[ziitch]

Yeah, I keep two different folders in my directory - one for obsolete plugins that have been replaced with a mrerged or newer plugin that isn't exactly the same as the old, and another that has plugins I rarely use in the game.

 

You know, if Oblivion does read the inactive mods, and if they use Gamebryo again (and hopefully give it the major technical upgrade it needs), maybe they could expand that list to 65535 slots, or if they can't, devise that if there's items in the player's inventory and nearby NPCs that are part of a inactive mod, expand the save function to also keep that record of the item within the file, reducing the dependency on the need to keep mods active to use them at the cost of bloat?