Question Possible conflict between Workshop Plus and Equipment and Crafting Overhaul (ECO) - Redux (Game Freeze)

[Trademark]

Hello all,

I would like to report a possible conflict between Workshop Plus and ECO Redux. ECO Redux offers a way to add additional weapon modification types to in-game weapons. It does so by using its "Add Entry Point" functionality.

Basically, you craft a special chest, add weapons to it and it will automagically make these additional weapon modification types available when you edit the weapon on a weapon's workbench.

From ECO Redux's mod page:

Spoiler

Universal Equipment Modification

Please note:
All the extra modifiers available in ECO (damage, protection, recoil, etc.) aren't meant to be used as an additional progression system but rather tools to balance/overhaul your items. Therefore most of them don't have any costs associated with them, just like tweaking an item's stats via FO4Edit/Creation Kit doesn't cost you anything other than a bit of time either.

Mechanics and usage instructions
This feature uses a custom entry entry point for its mechanics and functionality. Because of that, the mod is able to modify all kind of equipment without requiring patches for other mods or Creation Club content. Getting this feature up and running is simple. There are three ways to achieve that:

1. Access an Universal Workbench, select "Add Entry Point" in its menu, a container menu opens, put the items you want to have the entry point in (up to 128 per cycle), close the menu and wait a second. The modified items will be sent back to your inventory.
2. Craft the "ECO Entry Point Applicator" from a settlement's workshop menu, found under "Crafting". Open its container menu and follow the same procedure described under point 1 above.
3. If you're running M8r98a4f2's Complex Item Sorter you can use the "ECO Patcher" part of ECO's download to patch all items in your load order having the entry point by default.

There's actually a fourth method available but that one only applies to weapons. When you modify a weapon with Quick Modification the system automatically applies the entry point if it isn't present already. From that point on you can also make use of all the additional slots from any weapons workbench.

Applying the entry point to an item that doesn't have any attachment points by default (like a majority of vanilla clothing) and therefore doesn't appear/can't be modified in workbench menus, won't work, the item will still be missing from the workbench menu. The entry point will be present but the vanilla workbench UI doesn't acknowledge it as a valid modifiable item. You have to add at least a single attachment point to those items' base forms by one of the following methods:

1. using a mod that makes clothing more modular/modifiable, like my New Equipment Overhaul (NEO), but that would only affect vanilla armour/clothing
2. using the ECO Patcher mentioned above under method 3 to add the entry point directly to the items' base forms
3. using FO4Edit to add the entry point to the items' base forms manually

Or maybe the workbench UI could be changed so that it displays items regardless of the number of attachment points on them. That would fix all of those problems, for other mods as well.

However, when both ECO Redux and Workshop Plus are active, the game will freeze as ECO tries to process the weapons. Disable Workshop Plus, and ECO will have no problem processing all 128 weapons (the maximum amount of weapons it can process in one go).

At least two other users (not including myself) have reported the freezing. It seems I'm the only one who made any attempt to narrow it down. Please refer to my post on the Nexus:

Nexus Mods Forums

forum.nexusmods.com

There's also a bug report on ECO's page to which the author responded: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/67679/?tab=bugs

As posted on the Nexus forums, I'm hesitant to report this as a bug with either mod, since it looks more like a conflict. I really get the feeling ECO and Workshop Plus's scripts are biting eachother.

 

[Dank Rafft]

This response is copied from ECO Redux's posts section:

I've ran some tests of my own with Workshop Plus and I can confirm it to be the cause of those freezes. When WP is installed, in slightly over 50% of the cases the game freezes during the entry point attachment process. I've also narrowed it down to a specific function call:
Activate()
It is a native engine function that either triggers an interaction with an object or, when used on equipment like in this instance, picks it up and puts it in the user's inventory. As soon as I disabled that function call from the script I was able to run the attach entry point process more than 10 times without any freeze.

Since I don't have any experience with Workshop Plus nor the time (and will) to go through the code of a complex mod like WP my journey in this context ends here. Feel free to contact Kinggath with those findings. Maybe they are able to make some sense of it or even offer a solution.

 

[Dank Rafft]

Update:
I've implemented a workaround in ECO's script that contained the Activate() function. If you're using ECO Redux please update to version 4.2.0. It uses a different method now - no more Activate() - and should no longer trigger that problematic part within Workshop Plus.