How many mods can Fallout handle?

[LordEmm]

Recently thought of updating some of the mods i already had installed with F3 (taking a short break from Oblivion ;) But something strange is happening:

 

whenever i activate more than 156 (9C) mods i crash to desktop on the second slide of the loading screen. Does not matter what mod the 157th is, happens every single time. At first i thought there was a conflict somewhere, but i did not change anything (except update a few mods that i had before, like Amy Wong Companion, CALIBR, etc... ).

 

I am pretty sure i had activated many more mods before i stopped playing it a while ago, so this confounds me a little bit. Especially since for Oblivion the number seems to be 255 (FF) which makes sense.

 

One thing i did do was also update Fallout to patch 1.7 (although i can't swear if i did not do it before already and it worked).

 

So is there a limit and have i reached it? Really i could have sworn i had many more mods activated before i came back, but maybe i just thought so because of the many Obl mods running.

156-157 seems to be an odd cutoff number too. Anybody else experience that?

 

Also even below that limit the game crashes often when trying to start a New game (or loading an old one). If i take out 10 more or so mods, then it is more stable.

 

It also seems that some mods simply do not start. Like the DarnUI. While i get the notification on the loading screen slides, it does not seem the HUD is using it. And several quest mods start only if i take out even more...

 

So any idea what is going on here? (by the way i did try the Auto Sort, as well as BOSS, but as i said before i did not add anything, and before taking a hiatus everything worked fine with my own custom load order) I am certainly not a newbie to modding as i have done this for several years with both Oblivion and Fallout and by now know probably almost every reason for a crash there could be. This one is new to me.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

I have had something similar. I wouldn't get CTD, but I would have random missing meshes and textures. Cutting down on the number of esps fixed it every time. I did that with a combination of just removing stuff I didn't use, and merging esps with the fo3plugin utility.

[scrivener07]

Original Post - Zuzaski

"Keep in mind that both Oblivion and Fallout 3 have a strict limit of 255 plugins activated at once!

(this includes the main one and DLC's)

there is no way around this number, besides combining mods, using:

for Oblivion: Wyre Bash, for Fallout 3: FO3Plugin

both can mess with savegames -so be warned!"

[Quetzlsacatanango]

This is not the same problem. This issue occurs well below 255. I hit it about the same # as the OP, I have seen others hit it a bit lower or higher. Seems to be fixed the same way though.

[scrivener07]

Load Order + Hardware specs

[LordEmm]

Quetzlsacatanango,

 

yeah, i just found out about the FO3Plugin utility after i posted and it has helped tremendously. If i keep under that limit (actually about 10 or so less if i do not want random crashes in game or texture distortions). I have merged all mods above that number and everything works. However i still find that odd. Only problem with that utility is of course if there are mods that are updated often. But i guess those are the ones that you would leave out anyway. So far i only merged the Unofficial Patches, all weapons and armor mods, and several minor tweak ones... all seem to work perfectly (but i have not tested deep in game yet, was too busy getting it to work in the first place).

 

scrivener7,

 

as i posted originally i am well aware of the 255 mods limit (as that is as high as two digit hex can go, even though i have seen claims by people running 300+ mods. I call BS. Simply not possible unless you merge of course.)

 

Load Order is completely unimportant with this issue. Trust me i moved around everything. And there are no conflicts either way (as it worked before as well) and i solve every single conflict by hand with FO3Edit (via a merged/bashed patch if necessary). I got quite good at it too. That was before i discoverd the Plugin utility, which is a godsend. Would have been cool if TES4Gecko worked as clean as this one does...

 

Anyway, if you need to know my specs, here you go:

 

AMD Phenom II X4 965BE (@3.8 but as always also tested with standard clocks)

8GB DDR3 Mushkin

ASUS Crossfire III Formula

HIS Radeon 5870

ASUS EAH 5870 (in CF)

Windows7 64bit

 

Game is not installed in default, but rather on another hard disk alltogether (always do that anyway).

 

I should maybe note that the crashes on load (when over the above limit) do strangely not occur when Archive Invalidation is off (but obviously then most mods don't work well or not at all).

 

I mean i guess the FO3Plugin utility is a great solution, however i am just wondering why we hit the mod wall much sooner than we should. I do not have this problem with Oblivion by the way. Although there i am getting close to 254. Already merging like crazy ;)

[Quetzlsacatanango]

It is a different issue for sure, I would go so far as to say it's a coding bug. It does not seem to be affect by amount of memory, 32 vs 64bit OS, or anything else I have thought to try.

[LordEmm]

Quetzlsacatanango,

 

i am now wondering if we could actually go well above our limit? Maybe it is something about that range we are in that is buggy in the games code, so that it reads it like having more than 255? Maybe approach 200 or so. I am loathe to try though as it is working for me now (and i really don't see that many new mods i would like to install at the moment).

 

I am guessing our computer setups are not similar enough to maybe find a source there? Then again this hardly sounds like a hardware issue anyway.

 

Ah well, at least now i can go and check to see if the mergers really work as they should :)

[BaronofHe11]

i was just about to make a post about missing meshes. I get random missing meshes from vanilla fallout 3 objects and never from objects from mods. I currently have 208 mods. The problem goes a way when I remove Seducing Women mod or one of the other 2 mods I was playing with today. I think the computer is having a hard time unpacking the bsa file with all the other mods active. I'm going to try unpacking it to see if that fixes the problem or try turning off some other crap I got running. I think I will also try merging some of these other mods also to reduce the number of mods I'm dealing with.

 

To restate my problem I get random missing meshes. Sometimes they are missing and then then sometimes they come back after reloading the area I'm in. This is only with vanilla objects in the bsa file. I haven't seen it yet with other mods that have bsa files but imagine they could have the same problem if it is large.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

It sounds like the same issue. I never thought of it being related to bsa files. That's a good idea.

I don't remember ever having a problem with vanilla assets, though. Which doesn't mean it's not the same problem, I just never noticed that part of it.