What mod(s) could be causing problems with Old World Blues?

[jimnms]

Are there any mods that are known to cause problems with the Giant Robo-scorpion battle at the end of Old World Bues?

 

I'm playing with a lot of mods installed, but I haven't run into any major problems until now. I'm near the end of OWB, but when I enter the Forbidden Zone where the X42 Giant Robo-scorpion is, I die almost immediately. At first I thought this was because I was was not wearing the Stealth Suit Mk II. I didn't use the suit after getting it and running it through the tests. I was curious if it was required to be worn for the final battle, so I assumed this was why I was dying. I got the Stealth Suit, equipped it and went back in, but I still die.

 

I turned god mode on just to be 100% sure I wasn't dying because of some other reason. It looks like I'm dying because the giant robo-scorpion immediately fires at me when I enter, and it's firing at an extremely fast rate and kills me near instantly. It's been a long time since I last played OWB, but I thought the robo-scorpion didn't fire at you until Dr. Mobius finished his speech and the lights come on, and I don't remember it shooting so fast.

 

The scorpion doesn't seem to have any visual or sounds effects when it fires either. I only hear a squish sound when it fires and hear the splat as whatever it is firing hits my body, and there is no explosion sound either. It even seems to be hitting me when I move behind a wall or other objects. Then after a few seconds, it spontaneously blows up without me doing anything to it.

 

It has to be one or more mods causing the problems. This is my mod list exported from Mod Organizer. I probably won't have time to play again until Friday night, so hopefully someone might know what's causing this and save me a lot of time troubleshooting mods. I'm suspecting EVE or Project Nevada. The settings I'm using for PN ramp up the damage, especially from explosives, so maybe it's doing so much damage that it's killing itself, and EVE is the only mod that would be effecting its visuals. I don't know why either of those would be causing it to fire immediately instead of waiting for Mobius to finish his speech and turn on the lights though.

 

One other thing I noticed. For the short time I wore the Stealth Suit Mk II, it didn't auto inject stimpaks or Med-X when I got injured or crippled limbs.

[dubiousintent]

I notice you are using both MMUE and YUP. They make conflicting changes. It's recommended you use one or the other but not both. Please see the 'Towards Game Stability' section of the wiki "FNV General Mod Use Advice" article.

In addition, YUP usually needs to be placed at or very near the top of your "load order". (That's your plugin list and not your "load order" as I understand MO, so might not be an issue.) Your "My Tweaks" file should (in general, because it's overriding things) be placed below that which it "tweaks".

 

Do not use an "Auto-purge" mod for game play. (That was old advice from before we knew better.) They are designed for debugging by mod creator's only, according to the author of the JIP extensions to NVSE. See the 'Issue: CTD without warning, "Out of Memory error", or stops responding after the Main Menu', "Cause-2", "Solution-3" entry in the wiki "Fallout NV Mod Conflict Troubleshooting" guide for the game settings that do the same job.

I also did have PN (but not EVE) installed for that confrontation, so I would exclude that as a conflict. No idea if EVE has any effect on that scene. As I recall, you need stealth to avoid getting detected (and likely killed) initially.

 

If you ramped up damage, you might not be surviving the damage long enough for the Stealth Suit Mk II to inject you with chems (assuming you have them in inventory). Pretty sure it uses a script, but may not be using an "EventHandler", so the delay while waiting through the next frame might be too long. (An "eventhandler" would take immediate effect instead of waiting for the next frame cycle through the "GameMode" scripts.) One of the risks of increasing difficulty is exceeding the design parameters of a "boss fight".

 

No idea why you are having "sound" issues if they aren't a problem elsewhere. That probably is a mod conflict.

 

Also can't tell if you have a "merge patch" file with that collection of mods, but you probably need one as the last entry in your LO.

 

-Dubious-

[jimnms]

I'm not using the MMUE bugfix patch, just the Mission Mojave x93 terrain and object fix only version. It's just mesh files, the description on the download page says: "for use when not installing MMUE itself. Does not require DLCs. Also compatible with pretty much everything."

 

I do have a merge patch, it took me days to comb through everything in FNVEdit and sort out conflicts. I fired up FNVEdit briefly to see if anything was making changes to the Giant Robo-scorpion or the Stealth suit. YUP is the only thing that makes a change to either of them. It does mody the Stealth Suit's script, but I looked through the changes and don't see any reason would not be working. The only changes it makes to the X-42 Giant Robo-scorpion is add a couple of actor effect flags to make it immune to radiation and poison.

 

I only stuck with the Stealth suit through the X-13 tests, and the last two of the X-8 tests. I got nearly killed during one, down to ~20% health and my right arm crippled and the suit didn't inject me with Stimpaks or Med-X.

 

I'll try it without the auto-purge script and see if that fixes it. This has been a long game, nearly 400 hours, but I've had very few crashes. Due to the massive amount of texture packs installed, it does tend to slow down over time forcing me to restart because my frame rate will begin to tank.

[jimnms]

Ok, it turns out YUP breaking the Giant Robo-scorpion. I didn't expect that. I disable YUP first just to rule it out since it was the only mod that changed the giant robo-scorpion and then it was working as "normal" (more on that below). I poked around more in FNVEdit and discovered the cause. YUP changes the NVDLC03RoboscorpionGiantUseWeapon package to an object type of Weapons: Ranged instead of the ObjectID: NVDLC03LaserStinger. This basically removed it's weapon, effects and sounds, and replaces it with some magical ranged weapon that hits through any object and fires at an extremely fast rate. I reverted this one value in a test.esp and it fixes it. What is odd to me is that this package is added to the scorpion in a script which is supposed to give the player 10 seconds to find cover before enabling the combat package.

 

There is still something wrong though. The Giant Robo-scorpion seems to have a very limited view distance. I can literally stand in the door with my pip-boy light on, jumping up and down and it doesn't see me or fire at me. If I shoot at it, it sometimes fires back then goes back to idle as if it can't see me anymore, but most of the time it aggros for a second and then goes back to idle without returning fire. If I go down on the floor and slowly walk up to it until it sees me, then back up a step, it loses sight and goes back idle.

 

I remember this being a pretty tough encounter, but now it's too easy since the Giant Robo-scorpion just sits there ignoring me. Using FNVEdit, I've combed through every bit of OWB to see what is modifying what, and the only mods that directly change anything with OWB are YUP, Interior Lighting Overhaul, FNV Realistic Wasteland Lighting, and EVE. I tried disabling everything I can think of that might cause it to be practically blind, but I couldn't find the cause of that.

[dubiousintent]

Sounds like something to take up with the YUP development team. It's supposed to be restricted to "bug fixes" and that change seems to go beyond the intent of the collection.

 

Nice detective work, BTW. Unfortunately I don't have any better insights.

 

-Dubious-

[jimnms]

I sent a bug report on the mod's page. It seems that the X-42 Giant Robo-scorpion not attacking is a known bug according to the Fallout Wiki. Perhaps YUP was trying to fix that. I'm going to take a closer look at that script and see if something in it might be causing it to not engage in combat.