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Researching Still CTD with 3.2.1

I suppose Refresh Local Plots does, and it works fine, but upgrade attempts still cause CTDs. I also started getting scrap crashes, only in Sanctuary.
 
Kinggath, thanks for the answer. Just tore it all down an started rebuilding, we'll see what happens. Still getting scrap crashes though, which is a pity 'cause my logistics net runs on IDEK's stations and I'm afraid to build this thing in the wrong place now
 
I found this old, but interesting thread on reddit while researching these issues. I don't have a solution, but it provides some good insights into the engine's workings.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/3tlzs7/fo4_noticed_possible_engine_limitations/

How the game handles multithreading, specifically, is interesting. It gives a little insight as to why higher end machines may be seeing more instability.

I've tried setting my processor to only use 4 cores for fallout and it seems to have helped a lot in regards to CTD's. A near complete save still runs terribly, but nevertheless...

While the game is running:
Go to the Task Manager (CTRL-SHIFT-ESC)
Under the details tab, right click on the Fallout4.exe and click "Set Affinity"
Uncheck all but 4 of your cores.

Let me know if that helps.
 
I wonder if it could be as simple as someone putting a bad texture in an update. I always update addons whenever they are released. Don't those potentially cause CTDs in Fallout 4?
 
Usually bad model files over bad textures. It’s definitely feasible. I think the best thing folks can do is compare load orders. I’m stretched pretty thin, but maybe another programmer who hangs out here could write up a quick utility to compare plugin.txt files and find matching entries.
 
I've had a pair of boots cause CTD. Somehow it became corrupt after 6 months of use. Even nifscope wouldn't open it. lol
A bad texture is a process of elimination to find.
One thing you could do is..
Load the save, and use the console command showspecial to change the player name, CTD_Testing or some such..and save. This will prevent messing up your current play through and you can just delete any saves with that character.
If I'm doing the disable mods process, I will disable.. load.. wait a couple minutes.. save.. load the new save.. check.. rinse & repeat.
 
I'm probably not the only one who installs every Sim Settlements addon. The last ones for me before I had issues were:

Updated IDEK's Logistics Station on 4/18
Updated Industrial City on 4/17
Added Flotsam & Jetsam on 4/17 (no plots added yet),
Updated Ruined Homes and Gardens on 4/17,
Added the Foundation Addon on 4/12
Updated Altairp's Animal Farm and added the Milk Cooperation Patch on 4/11.

I could uninstall F&J and the foundation addon since I haven't added new plots from those yet. I already removed all of the custom non-ESP texture packs with their loose files to see if that mattered. Wow does my Fallout 4 look like crap with vanilla textures haha.

Edit: Does the load order of settlement addons matter for anything?
 
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I seem to have resolved the upgrade issue. Here's what I did:

1) Disabled ALL mods
2) Loaded last save, checked if I could scrap stuff at Sanctuary - I could now
3) Enabled all SS mods (SS, IR, RoTC, IDEK's, Recruittable settlers with Leaders addon), armor/quest mods I had running (Merc package, Black Widow, America Rising, Fusion City) and a player home mod (Outfield Retreat)
4) Loaded last save, checked if I could scrap stuff at Sanctuary - I still could
5) Scrapped all the stuff I built myself save for the logistics station
6) Upgraded the town to lvl 2 - went fine this time
7) Saved, quit, enabled the rest of my mods, reloaded

Scrapping sill causes CTD's, but the city is upgraded, settlers build their stuff and everything else seems to work fine for now. I've been in and out of Sanctuary several times - both by fast travel and walking - and had no issues so far.
 
Nothing works well for me I'm afraid. Maybe my save is just too large at almost 100MB. I've already turned down the graphics and removed custom textures but I get CTDs outside of settlements even if I walk too quickly. I'm pretty sure it's on cell load and unload. Unless I can figure it out I'll probably just move on.
 
In console, type:
TWF (Toggle Wireframe mode)
TB (Toggle borders)
You can see cell borders with that, if i'm not mistaken.

I wonder if you are getting the same visual c++ crash that I get. It's odd how it seems to happen mainly with higher end systems. I think it has something to do with how the engine handles multithreading and offloading resources to the GPU's. The bigger the save, the worse it gets for me as well. Whether this is due to items on your person or settler AI or placed objects. I'm not sure.

You can check with the visual c++ just-in-time debugger. Kinggath and I had gone through this a couple months ago. It's not a fix, but would confirm that we have the same issue.
 
Triple digits saves are very fragile no matter the system. Learned a long time ago.. just because you can, doesn't mean you should. hehehhe
 
I'll see if TB shows me the borders to see if that's really where the problem occurs. I reset the ini settings to default on the past tweaks I made to see if that helps any.
 
I found a copy of a save from before this happened! It's 25% smaller than the current save so something bloated it. I can't really tell what though. The script instances jumped a great deal but aren't attributable to a specific mod. The SS script count is about the same overall. My backup corrupting at exactly the wrong time keeps me from seeing when it went wrong though so I'll need to watch things and see if it's stable with the current mods.
 
My old save is playable at least. The last really stable Sim Settlements I had personally was 3.1.4. Version 3.1.5 had the empty plots which wouldn't build, 3.1.6 had the plot refresh which would tear down but not rebuild plots, 3.2.0 is fairly stable but still has more CTDs if approaching a large settlement or some cell borders if I go too fast; probably ones with scripts. 3.2.1 is unplayable and I can't even get anywhere in Red Rocket or Sanctuary and I get lots of CTDs just walking around away from settlements. On 3.2.1 I tried setting multithreading to 1 and that didn't help.

I think the comment about how more robust systems have more issues for this may be right. I suspect that the engine overreaches if it thinks it has the resources for Papyrus when it really doesn't somewhere. Setting iMaxAllocatedMemoryBytes too high can actually cause more instability. On 3.2.1 I tried resetting any tweaks, something else people with more memory and processing power probably do, but that didn't help me any. So, number of threads, all those multithreaded settings, etc. were removed and it didn't help. The display settings don't seem to matter as I turned the settings way down and removed all the custom texture packs and that didn't matter. I lowered my
uExterior Cell Buffer back to the default of 47 but that didn't help. I thought it would avoid loading objects for a longer time and they display later but it didn't seem to avoid the issue.

So, I'm not sure what a solution for me would be. Version 3.2.1 seems to be better for most users doesn't it? I tried an abundance of changes to configurations. For now I'm paring down Sanctuary and turning Red Rocket into a spa :) I'm relocating the extra people and switching to non-SS power which perhaps contribute less to the build limit.

Were changes made to the global on cell load and unload? Maybe in settlements they should skip some logic? I don't know if the scripting is doing something for the entire settlement each time you cross invisible boundaries within the settlement that it can avoid doing but maybe it's worth looking into.

Also, how does 3.2.1 work for players with many active settlements? I wonder if the number of total plots could be a factor.

Perhaps the cell-change scripting for one cell isn't completing before I enter another cell and I get a CTD from moving too quickly outside of settlements in some locations? One specific place was exiting the Boyston club (BostonCommon02) and turning right (East?) past the park and metro station and continuing straight down the street. That spot always seems to cause a CTD if I head straight down the street too quickly. Maybe someone else can try that same spot because it's really consistent for me. I always collect speed enhancing armor so I may run without sprinting more quickly than most.

Anyway, thanks for all of the suggestions and I truly appreciate the work of Kinggath and his team!
 
The game has a vanilla limit of 128 assignables (not the proper term..but..) per settlement. Going over that causes issues. Going over that limit at every settlement in the game will cause even more issues. Exceeding 800 settlers total will start causing game wide glitches. (Dunno why... it just does)

This is partly due to the system it's running on, but mostly to the built in errors in the code and how those errors are dealt with.. or more like, not dealt with. Lets not forget we're playing a Bugthesda game! LOL
Running faster than the default has always caused cell loading issues, especially in downtown.
If you're using the ini tweak, or a mod to break precombines then it gets even worse.

On a side note, setting the time scale above 20 (default) will also cause issues/glitches. At 30 it will very slowly start causing little oddities, you might not even notice, until it finally starts bugging noticeable things out.
 
What are your system specs Cranky Cat? I'm just curious if our builds are at all similar. If you could include the resolution you play at, that would be great.
 
@woodfuzzy I only have Sanctuary as one settlement that's really big and it has 104 plots. I'm cutting that down though. I'm definitely nowhere near 800 total. Maybe 200 something settlers total. I think part of the issue may be errors from old plots built on earlier versions of Sim Settlements and upgraded. Some have no ASAM lights even though they have power, etc. I'd could probably use a rebuild command which deletes a plot completely but builds a new copy of the same plot and upgrades to the appropriate level and reassigns the owner automatically. That might be tough though since as far as I know there's no force to level 3 or whatever.

@Drask I have 2x GTX 1080 Ti's in SLI running at 2 Ghz and an i7-8700K cpu running @ 4.7 Ggz and 64 GB of Kingston memory. Motherboard is Asus ROG Maximus-X Hero. I also use a 1TB 960 Pro SSD that Fallout 4 runs off of.

Edit: 3440x1440

http://www.3dmark.com/spy/3203754
http://www.3dmark.com/spy/3130795
 
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Similar setup to mine, just 2 years newer. I'm pretty confident that this is an engine issue. King has all settlements built and has never experienced a crash and his system is way behind either of ours as far as specs go.

I'm pretty sure there is a reason that Bethesda hasn't released a patch for ultra-wide resolutions as well. As that reddit post that I had linked mentioned. There's something odd about the way Fallout 4 handles "draw calls". It's common for games to be around 2-5000 drawcalls to the engine, whereas Fallout 4 will hit 12000+. My CTD's end up finally crashing the game when Visual C++ fails to find one of the .dll's for the game. This may be due to the GPU's waiting on the CPU to catch up. Keeping in mind that this engine has been around in it's base form since 2002.

I've tried disabling/pulling one of my GPU's, but it had no effect. I don't recall downclocking my CPU, but I may have done that previously as well. I have changed my resolution to 1080p and that helped a bit, but did not solve all of the CTD's at the time (previous builds of SS). Another odd thing is that my game's framerates will typically drop if I lower my graphics settings. I've ptretty much given up on a fix and am just playing off and on to see the various city builds. It's far better on a fresh save, but you can't see the Bunker Hill variants without completing the main quest (which are pretty damn cool btw).

This problem may only get worse as peoples systems are upgraded over time. I've sent my debugger logs, etc. to Bethesda with no response. Maybe if more people do the same they might be able to find a solution on their end.

I apologize if this turned into a bit of a rant, but I'd like to save some people some time by mentioning some of the things I've tried.
 
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