Invisible Robot Bug Avoidance Guide

[DannyAcme]

Hey, guys, I know this particular bug is driving everyone crazy, so here's a guide to help you avoid the bug and be able to play the game as modded as you can make it. This guide is based on experimentation on my part, and so far it has been working for me well.

First of all, don't consider this a be-all-end-all guide, this is merely based on experimentation and is not a true bug fix. A robot might show up invisible later that I hadn't noticed, but so far I haven't encountered any.

Second of all, unfortunately, if you have a save that has invisible bots, that save is unfortunately useless. If the save has the bug, it'll have the bug even if you deactivate all mods. I confirmed this experimenting with Codsworth in the prologue, with him staying invisible even with the mods turned off but showing up visible by immediately starting a new game. Basically, you need a save that doesn't have the bug or a new game to be able to avoid the bug.

 

Third, the bug is more likely to occur the more mods you have installed, so if you encounter the bug, start getting rid of as many mods as you can live without. Just get rid of those you rarely have use for or that don't make a big difference towards your enjoyment of the game.

Okay, now here's the most important part of the process. You need to follow this STEP BY STEP. This is IMPERATIVE for it to work:

1. Turn off all autosaving. The game must not save by itself at any moment during the process.

 

2. Start a new game with no mods active and play through the prologue all the way through. You must not have ANY mods active until later.

 

3. Here's the main gist of it: when you finally get out of Vault 111, you need to find robots to use as reference to avoid the bug. Luckily, there are three robots within a short walking distance from Vault 111: Codsworth in Sanctuary, the Protectron at Wicked Shipping Fleet Lockup (south of Vault 111 past the electric tower) and the Security Bot at the Robotics Disposal Ground (east/northeast of Vault 111 circling the lake). Go to all three places so you can fast travel to all three and verify that all three are visible.

 

4. After you have all three fast travel markers, do a manual save, NOT A QUICKSAVE.This will now be your CONTROL SAVE.

 

After doing the control save, quit the game and start activating mods in small groups. Don't do it one-by-one, cause you'll go crazy with how time-consuming it'll be, but don't try to install them all at once cause you won't be able to detect problems as they rise. Groups of, say, between 5 and 10 mods are good, depending on how many mods you have. I'm nearing the 255 plug-in cap, for example, so I do them in groups of 10.

Now every time you activate a group of mods, start the game again and load the control save. After loading it, fast travel to all three locations to verify the robots are visible. CHECK ALL THREE ROBOTS. If they are, the bug has been avoided so far. DO NOT SAVE, but instead quit the game and either write down or screencap which mods are installed so far so you keep track. Keep doing this process until you get the bug. When you get the bug, quit without saving and check that particular group of mods to see which one is triggering the bug. If the mod is something you can live without, just uninstall it and continue the process. If you CAN'T live without it, deactivate each mod one-by-one while keeping the mod that triggers the bug active. When the bug doesn't trigger, it means you've found the mod that conflicts with the bug-inducing mod, and you can uninstall that one instead.

And there you have it. It's a bit of a time consuming process, but with some patience, you can have a game loaded to the gills with mods and avoid the bug successfully. Happy playing!

[serrta227]

Ran into this bug too, but I didn't realize it until today. For some reason, it's only Mr Handy/Gutsys that are affected for me. I can still "hit" them with melee. Or the "Killall" command.

Did you figure out what mod caused it for you??

[Wenderer]

I had this issue with my mod, with help of one guy i fixed it. The way DannyAcme described is far too complicate and long then needed. Firs you should know about this bug is that it save-file persistent. It means that if it uccur and you make save after it, this bug bug will be in this save file no matter what you do. Second you should know in bug not global, it per actor bug. Taking in account this two we can consider two posible option:
1) We see it in game and reason is still somewhere in our mods.
2) We see it in game but reason are gone - we removed bugged mod earlier but bug kepps itself in save file.
To ensure that we still have a reason of this bug we should spawn new robot, type in console

player.placeatme 1c246b

It will spawn assaulttron, you also may want togle god mod with tgm so assaultron will not kill in one blow. If robot as well invisible then we should localize bug in mods.
In my case reason of bug was robot race edit, so take a first look on mods that alters NPC resists, damage, behavior. Deactivate esp that you suspect, load you game and save file, spawn robot. If still invisible then it's not a bugged mod we looking for or there is another one. So don't activate it back, deactivate another one and try again load-spawn.
If have realy a lot mods you may try so called binary search: disable half of esp's, try load-spawn. If bug present then it in active half, if not it in inactive half. Repeat with bugged half of mods, disable half of it and load-spawn, and so on until you localize bug.
Note that after removing bugged mod already spawned robots will still be invisible because it in save file, kill them in melee or with killall console comand. New spawned robot should be fine.

Edited February 22, 2016 by Wenderer