Too many mods?

[stori11]

So I have faced a problem which is not all that easy to solve, I have too many mods. Now Im working my ass of and compromising as much as possible to get down to the limit.

So the question I have is, has anyone in the STEP team considered doing a bit of merging? I know I could be doing it myself but chances of getting it to work are pretty low, now you guys without a doubt have some experienced modders in the team. The amount of mods included in STEP is huge and most of them are very small minor tweaks and what not, so why not merge some of them into mod packs with a single or hell even 2 or 3 esps instead of 20 or 30? Now obviously someone might want to skip some mods included in STEP so I propose keeping the current list of mods but also creating some packs for people who would like to get everything out of STEP. Or hell, even a guide would be nice on which mods can be merged, how to do it and all that step by step.

 

I mean srsly, probably 100ish out of my 300 esps are a part of STEP and most of them are minor tweaks and small mods, Im sure they can be merged somehow.

 

Also if there already is some kind of a guide for this or something I would appreciate a link or something, and if it is spelled out in big letters somewhere I apologize for having missed it.

[TehKaoZ]

You simply can't take another person work indiscriminately and merge them with another to provide it publicly without permission.

If you want to merge some of the plugins yourself for personal use that's fine, I use: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37981/?

Personally I don't see how anyone can hit 200 esp's much less 300 But, I don't use all of STEP and only use what I deem a necessity for my load order in general. Troubleshooting must be a living disaster at that number

[torminater]

Even if you merge many of those esp files, it'll surely be a mess. Skyrim seems to have problems as you go over a certain amount of active esps (130ish I think).

 

If you actually want to play Skyrim rather than only troubleshoot, cut down on your load order as much as possible, use only one mod for each game aspect you want to be altered.

-> Combat & enemies

-> Needs

-> Survival

-> Lighting

-> Post-processing

-> Stability

-> Followers

-> Mounts

etc.

 

If you then consider your load order as final for that profile/playthrough. You may start merging. Do it in small increments - you don't want to trash everything at that point and start all over.

[WilliamImm]

The exact number is 128... which is half of the hard cap of 255 ESPs + 1. Exact reason seems to be caused by values at or above 80 hex (128 decimal) being treated as negative, and breaking important script functions.

 

... this particular bug so reminds me of the strange behavior with Ms. Pacman at high levels (because the programmers were testing for the wrong flag). Here's the details of said behavior... look familiar?

 

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[stori11]

Im wandering though, is the limit at 255 because skyrim is a 32 bit application? Or is it just because Bethesda is as per usual a buncha lazy dicks and decided to hardcode 255?

Or is it because of the engine? I mean Im pretty sure that the team behind OpenMW removed the 255 limit which would lead me to believe that its all because of the engine. I dont know where Im going with this, I would really appreciate it if someone clarified this for me.

[Salvinha]

Im wandering though, is the limit at 255 because skyrim is a 32 bit application? Or is it just because Bethesda is as per usual a buncha lazy dicks and decided to hardcode 255?

Or is it because of the engine? I mean Im pretty sure that the team behind OpenMW removed the 255 limit which would lead me to believe that its all because of the engine. I dont know where Im going with this, I would really appreciate it if someone clarified this for me.

Man, the problem is, you can't simple activate hundreds of mods, many of them being scripted mods or textures mods and do not have trouble.

I can tell you, it is none related to be a 32 bits application, or even Skyrim engine, even if you have a monster machine it will not help much. We know this game engine do not takes well huge modifications, but in any game, if you install 200+ mods, you can be sure you will have CTDs, freezing... (and you told us about mods which has ESPs, you have 300 activated plugins, but there many mods which haven't ESPs, so your mod list is probably bigger).

You can't wait an almost "open source" game like Skyrim to be the example of stability, the producers must to leave a lot of things "open" for edit. And because of this, you can't compare Skyrim stability to other games which naturally do not support mods. If Bethesda wanted the Elder Scrolls to be the example stability, they would close the natural mods support, and you would have no bugs at all.

The modders can indeed make some modifications to the game with the Creation Kit, this way removing the mod limit as well, but it doesn't mean the game will be stable, there are things which cannot be changed. Try to put 200+ mods in any game which has mod supports, the game will crash for certain. I think Skyrim and Fallout handle mods very well comparing to other games.

So there is no way out, as some friends said above, you will have to shave down the mods number, it is not a big deal. I once had 247 mods installed in my game, but later I saw there were many of them which I was not using, and easily reduced my number for 165 mods (counting the mods with ESPs and no ESPs, mods with no ESPs I mean texture mods, meshes mods, ENB, some bug fixes...), today my game is much more stable and I do not miss any mod I removed. But of course your actual savegame will be compromised, and reducing a significant number of mods for sure will brake it, so its your choice.

1- You can have a stable game, starting  new game.

2- You can keep your savegame and have stress everyday (or every minutes with CTDs).

 

It is always this way, you can install 300+ mods, play a lot, and your game does not show any problems, so you think it is alright. But as you progress in the game, the CTDs, freezings and Infinte Load Screens becomes more constant, until the game finally breaks.

I had dozens of broken save games (Chars in level 45, 60, 70, 80), and it is usually when you hit around level 40, the problems start to appear.

So it is better to cut down a good number before starting a game than wait to see.