System Limitations on Mods

[KnightBlade2]

While there are a lot of troubleshooting posts, I haven't seen any general discussions on how game engine or hardware limit the type and number of mods, so here we are.

 

I believe that the maximum number of mods the game will recognize is 256. OK, it makes sense that there's an upper limit and I can always combine mods if needed. What is more murky is how stability and game performance are affected by the number and types of the mods.

 

Late last year, I bought a high end system, with 8 gb ram and three high-end SLI graphics cards. After playing Fallout 3 on an older computer, I couldn't wait to play New Vegas and a machine capable of running everything maxed out... or so I thought.

 

Even with a high end machine, I find that I actually start having troubles with mods when their numbers reach the 120+ range. Now, many of these are small "tweak" mods but there are some large mods that add a good deal of material into the game- Classic Fallout Weapons, AWOP, etc.

 

So, I'm playing on a high end machine and am far from the 256 mod limit, yet the mods still make the game very unstable. FNVEdit, the 4gb extender, merged patches and bashed patches help but they don't eliminate the trouble.

 

One problem area I've noticed is Goodsprings. AWOP ads a store there and a couple of other quest mods add buildings and NPCs. Often, when I enter the Goodsprings cell, I find that my escape key ceases to function, I get random texture and model drops, quicksave fails, etc. My guess is that the game engine just can't handle so many buildings, NPCs and changes in one cell.

 

What confuses me and what I'd like to discuss is the general impact of the number and type of mods on your game play. I have personally tried to avoid mods which make extensive changes to the game. While I have a few, like AWOP, I see the load orders of other players with mods like Nevada Skies, the Book of Earache, FOOK, etc. and wonder how their systems perform.

 

Please share your experiences with system performance and stability. How many mods were you running before you began having issues (if you do). What types of mods do you run? Small mods that add individual weapons or equipment? Large overhaul mods? Aside from crashes, what weird things have happened to your gameplay due to this?

[KnightBlade2]

Bump. I'm hoping to generate some interest in this.

[Quetzlsacatanango]

There is a 'soft' limit on the number of plugins that causes the exact symptoms you describe. It has been around since FO3. The only solution so far seems to be what you said, combine plugins or disable ones that aren't that important to you. Doesn't seem to matter which ones. Doesn't seem to matter which OS, amount of memory, 32 vs 64bit, or anything else anyone has come up with.

[Gribbleshnibit8]

I think generally, game issues crop up between 80 and 100+ mods. Anything over that and unexplained behavior (such as yours) can happen with no visible cause. I try to keep my loads below 60, and preferably in the sub-50 range, to maximize stability. I also avoid massive location adding mods, as it is my experience that any major changes to worldspaces cause more issues that are harder to troubleshoot.

 

I've never had too bad gameplay issues, though in Fo3 I had a game where I would crash consistently when heading in one direction across the wasteland, but not in the other. Was horribly frustrating, since I couldn't go in the direction my quest was. Had a similar issue in FNV back when I first started playing. Never figured either one out, but I now make sure I run under 60 mods to make things easier.

[michel92]

This is a good question, and I'll share my experience with it. Back in the time when I was a young mod user and FO3 was at it's golden age, I used FOMM just to sort load orders, not to install anything. My only knowledge of FO3Edit was creating a merged patch. I had about 175 plugins installed, and it became hell. Textures were messed up, everything was. I had to do a clean install, cause I didn't had backups of the Data folders. I've been growing up in knowledge about fallout modding since then, and now I know my way around FNVEdit, I only install mods with FOMM and I even have a few mods uploaded on nexus. That being said, I saw your post here and I came up with an idea: test how much fallout can really handle. I took one of my plugins, which has absolutely 0 conflicts/NULL references, and copied it over and over in the data folder. 254 plugins including FallouNV.esm and the caravan pack. As you may know, fallout without mods launches pretty fast, but as you gather more and more mods, the launching time can increase a bit. Well, with this setup, it loaded just like it had no mods, but a weird thing happened. There was no background menu music! And all my save files were corrupt! Alright, then I dropped about 50 plugins, which, according to popular belief, would still cause issues. Well, everything normal, loaded fast, background music playing. Fired up a save game and played smoothly for a couple of minutes.

 

Conclusion: This study of mine was solely based on numbers of plugins, as all of the plugins did the same thing. But putting only the number of plugins into account lead me to believe that, only this, can't make the game have issues, if you don't push it to the engine limit, ofc. So, what I recommend:

 

-Get along with FNVEdit, here's an awesome guide: http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=38413. This will not only teach you how to create a merged patch, but to solve all conflits between your mods as well, by creating your own patches (the famous compability patches, that a lot of good souls release on the nexus, to save people's lifes).

 

-Only install mods with FOMM, ESPECIALLY those that have resource files (meshes, textures, sounds, etc). This makes your life much easier, as you don't need to rely on backups, FOMM does the hard work for you: http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36901. And keep an eye for the Nexus Client, not yet released, but that will surpass FOMM and make our lifes even easier.

 

I hope it helped.

Peace and Love.

[HeirApparent]

It would seem like the answer to an inquiry of this sort would be quite simple. And actually, it is quite so. However, it can be complex at the same time. The reason why you get system instability is quite simply a connection between three things. All of the stuff in your data folder, the game engine, and your system speed. While your system speed can be very high, even a six core, 4 GHz+ processor can't handle all of the data influx coming from your data folder and sending it to the game engine.

 

Now, I understand that "packets" aren't the right variable to use (as this applies to networking, and your internet connection) I'll have to stick to using it as it's quite easy to understand. When you run your game, one main thing happens. Your packets start sending from your system to the game engine. The game engine has to recognize and select what packets it needs. After they're selected by the game engine, the system processor has to select them and send them to the game engine. However, this isn't quite instantaneous. While it is not noticeable when you have so few mods, the game engine takes slightly longer with each and every addition to the data folder. Not only does it have to register them one at a time, it has to do more at a time which also results in your computer having to duplicate it.

 

Now, to take care of this problem you only have to do two things. Keep all of your big mods separate, but load ALL of the little mods into one single mod. Now, there's one very big reason why you do this. Every mod takes about the same amount of time to be loaded and read. In normal cases, most of your mods will be small mods. They can range from adding new perks to the game, increased ammo loots, to small weapon additions. Simply adding them all together will mean the game engine and system only has to read one at a time.

 

Doing that will greatly improve your experience. Remember, it's not just computer power - it's also the game engine. Not combining things together can cause the game engine to bug out. Especially the one for this game. It's not too powerful, so no matter how fast your computer runs, the game engine still can fall behind. Combining mods is the only workaround.