Question CTD in all settlements, should I start over?

[JoeSakana]

I have a bit of a complex issue. I played F4 a lot about 16 months ago, and wanted to return to my save file. (I was in the middle of the game, almost 300 hours and about halfway through the main quest. Built up almost all settlements using Sim Settlements to some extent.) The only problem is that it had been so long that I had forgotten how Nexus Mod Manager worked, it needed an update, and also Fallout 4 needed an update through Steam.

I have no idea what happened with NMM. I was having a lot of issues getting it working, had to uninstall and reinstall every mod, and made several mistakes (so much weird shit happened I can't take time to describe it all) It all resulted in me losing track of my original load order. Testing out my old saves, all of them CTD either when opening the workshop, or immediately when loading a save in a settlement. All except for my latest one in Nuka World, which was in an interior cell. After a few days of work, I finally was able to get it stable. (At that point, I had also updated SS and installed the new Mega Packs 2 and 3. I never had Conqueror at any point.)

In this save that I thought was stable, I went from South Boston and traveled through Hangman's Alley->Starlight->Red Rocket->Sanctuary. Everything was fine. Was able to open the workshop in every one. I was very happy and decided to play a bit through Nuka World. I added a couple more mods (Companion Dialogue Overhaul, Player Comments and Head Tracking, a radio mod and some new clothes). Unfortunately, I then had issues with companions not being able to be dismissed. After fixing that, I decided to travel back to the Commonwealth. Went to Sunshine Co-op and I get CTD.

Then I went back to the old save that I thought was stable and tried to re-create it, and get CTD in Hangman's Alley. This time I didn't have to open the workshop. It just crashed after a minute or two of trying to load plots and actors.

I tried using the same load order I used before, without the new mods. Still CTD in exactly the same way.

Tried the technique where you look at the ground with your back turned while stuff loads. Didn't work.

Tried going to Graygarden instead of the Co-op, because it had much fewer SS plots. Same result.

Tried disabling War of the Commonwealth and Scrap Everything. Same result.

I have no idea what happened. Admittedly, my playthough 16 months ago was not the most stable anyway. I was moving mods around and doing all sorts of things, and did a lot of debugging then. But this experience trying to get my old save file running has been the most confusing and inconsistent debugging process I've had.

I'm okay with starting over, but I just wanted advice on whether I should simply start a new save or if I need to do something more drastic and reinstall F4, delete NMM and all the mods, and re download everything fresh. Mostly because I'm worried something weird happened when I updated everything at the beginning and moved files around.

 

[spacefiddle]

That's actually what's "supposed" to happen, when you mod your game. That's Bethesda. There's a mod that disables the .... disabling, and you might have had it before and forgotten about it. It's because consoles; achievements = money to Micro$oft and $ony. You'll need to use the achievement-enabling mod to get rid of the stupid M, assuming that trick still works.

But what you're seeing now is actually the intended behavior.

 

[BinaryMisfit]

So I started everything up with the Unofficial Patch, this time I'm using Vortex instead of NMM, and I'm having weird issues. The game says "Mods loaded, disabling achievements" and the save files now have [M] in front of them. The only reason I care about that is because previously, this only happened if Steam was online or Custom ini wasn't configured correctly... so it makes me think something might be wrong. Checked the ini files and found ini.baked and base files and have no idea what they are. I assume Vortex put them there.

I doubt it's something to worry about, but I thought I should ask anyway.

I think previously you had a mod that enabled achievements.

This is the correct experience if you are modding FO4 without a mod to enable achievements. You haven't done anything wrong.

 

[BinaryMisfit]

That's actually what's "supposed" to happen, when you mod your game. That's Bethesda. There's a mod that disables the .... disabling, and you might have had it before and forgotten about it. It's because consoles; achievements = money to Micro$oft and $ony. You'll need to use the achievement-enabling mod to get rid of the stupid M, assuming that trick still works.

But what you're seeing now is actually the intended behavior.

Actually the whole achievements = money thing has been proven as a complete myth. Bethesda implemented it as modding gives users an unfair advantage over the major non modding community. Truth is less people mod the game then who actually play the game.

I would be curious to see the stats vs sales to be honest but I doubt mods will ever cut into MS or Sony's margins. Truth is they generally lose money on games. They make money out of the hardware itself as well as subscription services.

 

[JoeSakana]

I won't worry about it, then. I don't remember ever caring about achievements, and I certainly didn't receive any playing with Steam offline before. But you are probably right.

The other weird thing that happened is that the game won't run unless my desktop resolution matches the game resolution. This was not the case before. So to play the game at 720 I need to switch everything to 720. Kind of annoying, but whatever.

 

[BinaryMisfit]

I won't worry about it, then. I don't remember ever caring about achievements, and I certainly didn't receive any playing with Steam offline before. But you are probably right.

The other weird thing that happened is that the game won't run unless my desktop resolution matches the game resolution. This was not the case before. So to play the game at 720 I need to switch everything to 720. Kind of annoying, but whatever.

What graphics card do you have?

 

[JoeSakana]

NVIDIA GTX 950m like I said before.

Also, I can't believe I screwed something up using only Fallout 4 Unofficial Patch. But the Vault 111 jumpsuit has been named "LOOKUP FAILED!" I assume this is because I added glasses to my character using console commands pre-war. That's the only thing that I did. Only problem is, it carried across to a completely new character, too. How do I fix this? Do I need to?

 

[BinaryMisfit]

NVIDIA GTX 950m like I said before.

Also, I can't believe I screwed something up using only Fallout 4 Unofficial Patch. But the Vault 111 jumpsuit has been named "LOOKUP FAILED!" I assume this is because I added glasses to my character using console commands pre-war. That's the only thing that I did. Only problem is, it carried across to a completely new character, too. How do I fix this? Do I need to?

Are you using FDI? If you are then you don't have the required patches installed.

 

[JoeSakana]

Yes, I am using FDI. What patch are you talking about? I don't see any on the FDI page.

 

[BinaryMisfit]

Yes, I am using FDI. What patch are you talking about? I don't see any on the FDI page.

The patch isn't on the FDI page. Not all patches are on the mods page. Keep in mind some mods haven't been updated for years and the mod authors aren't around. Always important to look at that.

String Patches for Full Dialogue Interface

I would also suggest you consider looking at Extended Dialogue since it's a better maintained mod and doesn't need a lot of patching.

 

[JoeSakana]

Thanks! I'll use this. FDI works well enough, so I'll continue to use it. From what people are saying, Extended Dialogue looks like it comes with its own set of issues.

Anyway, Vortex was able to recover my exact load order from my old save! So I decided to reinstall the exact old versions of Sim Settlements and expansions I was using and that fixed my CTD issues. I'm going to continue on with my old save, but leave settlements mostly alone. I still haven't played Nuka World and Far Harbor yet, and want to finally play them as soon as possible. I'll build up big cities with SS on a new playthrough when I finally get a more powerful computer.

I decided that I can't play vanilla for very long, haha. I'm the type of player who likes difficult challenges and to take things very slow in survival mode. Playing vanilla like its a speedrun on godmode was really boring, and playing it on survival just took too long and felt like a waste of time. (I already played vanilla all the way through on PS4.)