Will mod break my game 2019 edition

[DesertRanger111]

Proceed with caution, reading and/or participating in this thread is completely VOLUNTARY

[DesertRanger111]

There are a million threads on Nexus asking this question, you wonder about a mod, google if it will crash your game, and get a lot of hits but they are from three years ago and that mod has been updated 15 times since then.

 

Let's discuss if and why a mod will break your game. This is a place for people to ask about mods as of 2019 breaking Fallout 4, Oldrim, or SSE as well as a place to get a basic on the "mechanics" of the game and modding. I am in no way the expert, I'm just someone who has been using a lot of mods for awhile and want to open up a fresh discussion of Q/A from new and seasoned modders to discuss mod mechanics and if specific mods will break their game.

 

I just spent entirely too long writing a Discord post about whether or not a mod would "break" the game so I figured I would start a fresh thread.

 

This is a SAFE place so please don't let this dissolve into something stupid and try to stay on topic. That said, if you disagree, feel free to, I do things the way I do them and it works for me, maybe it will help someone else too. If there is a different strategy for getting mods to work feel free to chime in at any time.

 

*** Contributing any of your time to this thread is COMPLETELY VOLUNTARY

 

[DesertRanger111]

Q: Is it safe to add _______ mid-game?

 

 

A: No, it is not safe to change the mechanics of your game once you have started it. Will it BREAK your game? Probably not. Is it SAFE? No. Its not as bad as REMOVING a mod mid-game though.

 

Also, we need to be more specific about what we mean by "mod". The only things some mods do is change textures and/or meshes for example. They don't change the location the core game and game engine reference materials from.

 

Mods that add SCRIPTS ESPECIALLY, and mods that change reference locations are going to be the riskiest. They are changing how the game operates/functions.

 

They are changing the "rules" that the game follows. It is less unsafe, generally, to add conditions mid-game than it is to take conditions away.

 

A save relies on running and reading everything that has happened up to that point and all the scripts involved in order to load. If you add something in, as long as it doesn't conflict with anything else or create conditions that force the engine to operate beyond its boundaries like: jumping through the map, bashing 1000 plugins together so you meet the 255 limit, making extreme values like a 1,000,000 strength stat, have 15 people following you and entering new cells with you, etc... it typically won't cause a problem.

 

If you REMOVE a mod midgame though that has created a new condition from the base game then the save may fail as it tries, and continiously fails, to reference that condition that no longer has any references in the game. As the save is processing for load, "reading" those references are gone so those conditions cannot be satisfied for the load process to move on to the next condition it has to process. That causes a crash, or crash to desktop (CTD), or at the very least, breaks something in your game.

[DesertRanger111]

Take AmazingFollowerTweaks (AFT) for example. Adding AFT mid-game will probably be ok. To be safe, dismiss anyone that AFT will be managing. The mod author MIGHT know whether or not the companion they created will be recognized by the AFT process. They are in no way obligated to know so don't get mad if they don't. Maybe they don't know anything about AFT.

 

Anyway, dismiss and and all, and once you have dismissed your companion do a HARD (manual) save of the game, add the mod, load the save back up, and re-recruit the companion along with others. That way there is less new stuff going on, the environment is being affected less, so it should work.

 

Now if you REMOVE AFT mid-game, here are a couple of scenarios: 1) you didn't dismiss your companions first and when you removed the mod and loaded the save back up, assuming it loaded at all, then your companions all wander off and become unrecruitable or interactable for the remainder of the game, OR, 2) if you dismiss them first, save, then remove it, they SHOULD be ok. The conditions that the mod created are not currently directly affecting any character. BUT there are exceptions to that which are even more complicated than what I have already said.

 

 

Some other guy: "Be careful with big scripted mod like AFT"

 

 

me: Right

 

 

Some other guy 2: "Don't remove it mid-game you will f*** up your save game or you will have to clean it*. There is a lot of orphan scripts that will still be on after that"

 

*See next post about "cleaning" a save.

 

me: Right. As long as nothing the game requires to function requires those scripts to load, the save SHOULD load up. Assuming you used their vanilla recruiting method and not by using AFT to recruit them as long as nothing IN the game is affected by the conditions in those orphan scripts than you shouldn't notice anything. All references in the game need to be removed from the mod though. SO if you were ONLY using AFT to have multiple companions and not for the million other things it can do, as long as you dismiss them first, it shouldn't be a game changing issue. No moving piece in the save is referencing the orphaned script so it shouldn't break.

 

You WILL have longer load times though as the save tries to process those scripts on loading and can't make sense of what that scripted instance/condition is talking about.

 

 

Some other guy 3: "Yeah, but if AFT was only for the companion recruit part is fine but you can do a lot to your companion with AFT"

 

 

me: Good point. AFT is potentially a complicated one because of how much stuff it can do.

 

If it ONLY changed the rule that you can have more than one follower at a time, than it should be fine as long as you don't have more than one follower when the game tries to reload without the mod. The game is still going to lag trying to figure out what those missing scripts were when its reading a save to load it though. But AFT can do so much so there are so many different things it can affect. So bad idea is to remove mid-game.

 

It SHOULD be safe to add mid-game though. We are assuming though that OP is not replacing one companion framework with AFT though like Unlimited Companion Framework, (UCF), for example, or there is a mod already doing something that AFT is going to also try to do when you add it to the game.

 

That last one is a conflict though, not necessarily because of a script change.

 

Is it safe to add AFT? Yes, IF: you are not using it to replace something else, and as long as nothing AFT has the ability to change is not being done already by a different mod, especially if it is done a different way. If you have cheat terminal before aft, boost your special to all 10, and then add AFT, it will recognize that all your special stats are at 10. If you were using a mod that uses a script for example though to boost all your stats to 10 and then tried to add aft and change your stats through aft then you might ctd because two different mods are using two different methods to do the same thing and suddenly the game is trying to do something two different ways at the same time and it hangs up on running that script and crashes because it cant read the scripts that come next. That's just one example of many scenarios though.

 

 

Op: "I understand the risks associated with running mods but AFT in Skyrim Special Edition is very buggy. If installed mid-game usually breaks stuff."

 

 

Me: So a couple of things, AFT on Skyrim has not been updated in 6 years. The SSE version is a port of the oldrim version by a different person that was created in 2012 and hasn't been updated since 2013. Not taking anything away from what the SSE version authors have added, changed, or went through to get it to work for SSE, just saying, the SSE is relying on a framework created by someone a LONG time ago. AFT for FO4 has been updated, by Dheuster himself, within the past 6 months. A lot of the mechanics for how AFT works for Skyrim vs FO4 are different as well, for example using MCM vs using an in game interface like a holotape.

 

As far as installing mid-game, that should not be a problem if there are not other issues like I mentioned about using it to replace or do what UCF or other mods have already done up to that point in your game.

 

That said, if used to its maximum, AFT will break your game even if it's on a fresh start if not used word for word the way it was INSTRUCTED to be used. That is 9 people's problems out of 10.

 

Don't force recruit or force AI onto a follower that doesn't follow the extremely generic dialogue framework. Custom companions and companions like Serana for example would be a "no use" thing. Doesn't mean you cant have AFT, just don't use it on them. Followers like Lydia or Mjoll should be fine. Same for Fallout.

 

Don't use AFT on custom followers unless they follow the completely generic dialogue and behavior systems. If you do, you will basically overwrite their AI and have to start a new game to get that AI back to how it was originally designed by the companion mod author. The mid-game issue by itself though should not be a problem.

 

AFT isn't buggy, it changes scripts as you use it and once you do that you have to follow the specific instructions for how to manage the game or it will break things. It is also very script HEAVY so it can conflict with a lot of things. Don't worry about installing it mid-game if it is not going to conflict with another mod. BUT, it just depends on what you are using it for.

 

Using it to have more than one companion and that is it would not be an issue. In Fallout 4, AFT doesn't even manage MOST custom dialogue followers or even recognize them in your 5 companion limit unless you force recruit them. And if you do that, you just overwrote their custom AI and custom dialogue and now they are just going to give generic responses assuming that it doesn't break the companion mod in the least or just all out crash the whole game.

 

 

 

OK, hopefully that gives an idea for what I want this thread to be about. Feel free to chime in, agree with me, disagree with me, whatever floats your boat just try to be constructive.

 

Note that I have not addressed Load Order for AFT or many other issues, this is just a little bit on the basic side to give people an idea.

[DesertRanger111]

Some other guy 2: "Don't remove it mid-game you will f*** up your save game or you will have to clean it*. There is a lot of orphan scripts that will still be on after that"

 

*See next post about "cleaning" a save.

 

 

Don't use a mod or program to clean your saves unless you know EXACTLY what you are doing, the mod/program may think it is removing an orphan that is actually a scripted instance from something else or something the entire game engine is depending on to function.

 

And it could be as simple as removing ONE LINE from a Papyrus command in a 1,000 line script and it will no longer load that save or will CTD as soon as you load.

[Deleted49413338User]

I install Horizon after finishing Main Quest. It seems to work fine but it gives you a huge load of XP on installation, depending on you level. For Balance its probably best from the start but I wanted to get thru the main quest with no mods and make a save from there to use for modding, coz I hate when my game breaks from too many mods and I gotta go thru the main quest again. Pretty sure we have all done it. But you learn as you go.