"Mod it till it breaks"

[godescalcus]

Been having some discussions on the subject of how heavily you can mod SSE before noticing the consequences. But I can't quantify those consequences, beyond the basic things like full 4k textures will demand more VRAM than 2k, etc. There were tools to quantify exactly how much VRAM you're using for the classic version, don't know any for SSE. But that's not even my main concern: what's the consequence of adding more actors to the game? And more scripted events like basic needs and survival simulation? Where's the breaking point? Can the total amount of scripts firing at run-time wear your savegame file out? I've been playing very stable, heavily modded builds for a few years - but sometime after 150-200 hours they usually "wear out", become unstable, start crashing on save, on load, out of the blue and that, without making any changes to the load order. It just goes from stable to unstable at some point.

How can we put some figures into this, so we can have an idea of what impact each mod will have on your game? Just to mention an example, I have a gut feeling that adding Inconsequential NPCs to a heavily modded game will be nonsense. It puts a ton of NPCs in the game with their own AI, schedule and the lot, that you don't interact much with, but is weighing on the engine - but how much? If anyone would like to discuss what weighs and how much, it would help to avoid the situation referred to in the title. I like how this game plays with mods, but would like to stay well in the "safe zone" that would allow me to play a character for as long as I like.

[lmstearn]

13 hours ago, godescalcus said:

Been having some discussions on the subject of how heavily you can mod SSE before noticing the consequences. But I can't quantify those consequences, beyond the basic things like full 4k textures will demand more VRAM than 2k, etc. There were tools to quantify exactly how much VRAM you're using for the classic version, don't know any for SSE. But that's not even my main concern: what's the consequence of adding more actors to the game? And more scripted events like basic needs and survival simulation? Where's the breaking point? Can the total amount of scripts firing at run-time wear your savegame file out? I've been playing very stable, heavily modded builds for a few years - but sometime after 150-200 hours they usually "wear out", become unstable, start crashing on save, on load, out of the blue and that, without making any changes to the load order. It just goes from stable to unstable at some point.

It depends on the health of the system, and if SSE is correctly configured for it. It's always a good thing to use ini parameters slightly under spec as using mods will in most cases reduce performance. There was a thread for Light impact & Heavy impact mods for LE somewhere. And mods can break things as well.

Watch the logs! There still hasn't been a good Papyrus Log Analyser created for SSE- this one for LE is okay- but light on analysis.

13 hours ago, godescalcus said:

How can we put some figures into this, so we can have an idea of what impact each mod will have on your game? Just to mention an example, I have a gut feeling that adding Inconsequential NPCs to a heavily modded game will be nonsense. It puts a ton of NPCs in the game with their own AI, schedule and the lot, that you don't interact much with, but is weighing on the engine - but how much? If anyone would like to discuss what weighs and how much, it would help to avoid the situation referred to in the title. I like how this game plays with mods, but would like to stay well in the "safe zone" that would allow me to play a character for as long as I like.

Benchmarking mods? It will surely be coming!

In Oblivion NPCs were a thing, performance impact is not so much in SSE per NPC now- but there can be a lot more of them! Can Inconsequential NPCs be configured for performance? There's also the much bigger Interesting NPCs, the SSE port (is it still in alpha?)  is one to watch.

[godescalcus]

I'm actually using 3dNPCs, which is a huge mod far exceeding the added NPCs themselves. Some of the best fully voiced followers, interesting small quests, it's one that I'd be willing to keep if it meant sacrificing others. I know there were discussions on how this mod contributed to exhausting the string limit in LE - string count seems to no longer be a problem for SSE, but even if it were, I'd maintain I'd rather keep 3dNPC, and leave others out. Not the case with Inconsequential, for what I've seen shortly after testing the mod. No quests, no interaction, it's by definition only adding dead weight on your game - I'm sorry if this sounds like criticism directed against that particular mod, because it isn't. I just came from two long playthroughs made impossible to continue after 200h due to crashes on save, which I couldn't pin on any particular mod. After playing a stable (though heavlily modded) build for 200h and suddenly losing stability, without touching the build, twice in a row, makes me wonder about SSE's own limits regarding the *amount* of mods, not just the quality of those. I never saw a stack dump in my savegame. Active scripts were around 10 usually, never above 30. Mostly DynDOLOD.

Number of actors is one of my concerns. I've noticed often on those playthroughs that wild animals or bandits would stand still, allowing me to engage before they even acknowledged my presence. I didn't have script lag on other instances (for example, picking up flora, or even using spells to change full equipment sets). So maybe those animals and bandits were simply actors queued because the max amount of active actors was reached within my zone.

I've also read about an "Ability Condition Bug" where going over a limit of 4096 cell loads makes yout game unstable - in particular, certain ability dependent effects no longer work (check Enai Siaon's threads on that subject, as it affected a good number of his mods). Such as this one, what other limitations could there be that only manifest after a long span of time, perhaps due to some cumulative effect on your savegame?

I am indeed using a heavy build, but one that is conflict-resolved to the best of a large group of people's abilities. It performs well on my ageing rig, over 40fps in exteriors almost 100% of the time, with ENB accounting for 15-18 of those fps. Capped most of the time at 58 in interiors. It's only after many hours playing that these builds have lost that stability. I'd love to figure out why, so I could trim it where it would actually make a difference.