guide Fallout IV for Beginners - V3.2.9 (Fusion Girl / Bodytalk)

[Guest yeah758]

I can offer some help on the ESL flagged ESP's. I am current using your SSE guide to run 747 plugins in Skyrim SE. That is 31 ESM's, 213 ESP's,  and 503 ESP's flagged as ESL's. I am going to discuss SSE since I don't yet know anything about modding FO4. Since you know how to mod both I bet you can take the SSE info and apply it to FO4. I am about to start the ESLifying process on FO4 and can provide feedback. This discussion is only about esp flagged esl's. 

 

 

Mods that have less 4000 records are okay to ESLify. Since the 255 limit comes from only having 4 digits you therefore loose one to the ESL process. 

 

Any mod that less than 4000 records can be turned into an ESL. (See new cell discussion below) SSEDIT has a script that will find ESP that can have the ESl flag added to in it. I looked and FO4EDIT has the same thing. This is a no brainer. SSEEDIT will let you make any changes you want but will not let you save messed up files. All I do is run the script, save the results in note pad, then click on record flags in SEEDIT and click the ESl box and then save. You can do this during a playthrough but it may corrupt your save and it may not. If you just do a few you are probably okay. If you do your entire load order then probably not so much.

 

Now after you run out the easy ones you run into having to compact form ID's. The SSEEDIT script turns up three results, Mods that can have the flag added as is, Mods that need form ID's compacted before the ESL flag is added, and mods that add new cells. I will talk about the new cell added ones separately. 

 

If the mods has Form ID's that have a number over 1024 but don't have a total number over 1024 then the form ID's can be compacted. This is a major change to the mod. Some mods just don't function after this even though they meet the requirements. The issue is any mod that uses the compacted mod as reference has to be changed. SSEEDIT takes care of this if every esp is loaded but you can really paint yourself into a corner. Mods that are used by a lot of other mods are just not worth the downstream hassle. For instance lets say you compacted and added the ESL tag to a mod that caused SSEEDIT to change the form id reference in 10 other mods. Now the first mod gets an update. Since the first mod is now different even if you compact the form id's they are also different and it breaks all the mods involved.  You then have to reinstall all the effected mods and compact again. BTW if you compact form id's on Masters you get what you deserve unless nothing uses them as a reference. It goes without saying that if you aren't handy with error resolution in SSEEDIT then only do mods that have no other references. I spend a considerable amount of time  in SSEEDIT working out errors. I currently only have 48 errors in my current 747 plugins and they are almost all the damn Navmesh triangle warning which is not worth fixing.  Also if you download a future mod, or update, that uses an already compacted mod as a reference it will not work. Same basic scenario as above. Lots of trial and error in this process. Also your load order matters. What works for one person may not be possible for you. In a perfect world mod authors would compact before uploading. 

 

Compacting Form ID's break saves. There is no fix or way around it. You must start a new game. 

 

 

Also for compacting mods. 

Mods that have Facegen data have issues. (May be SSE specific. It causes the black face bug. I just open and close CK and it fixes it. I have mods that automatically generates Face gen data and saves it to the mod for me.)

 

Mods that Have Seq have issue. (Once again use CK)

 

Mods that add new cells in SSE are not good candidates. I believe this is a SSE flaw. SSEEDIT clearly warns you not to do it but will let you save the mod with the esl flag. Some people have had some luck doing small cells that nothing else references but I have met with failure trying it. 

 

Also for compacting mods all the esp's that reference said mod must be loaded. This can get tricky as you get more mods due to SSEEDIT loading all masters and referenced files. Cleaning masters from Mods using SSEEDIT can really help. 

 

I currently don't have any merges since I think they lead to stability issues. However if you do merge use the Zmerge feature of Zedit. Also don't add the ESL flag or compact the form ID's of merges. That didn't turn out real well for me. Merges tend to be unstable anyway and the ESL process didn't help. 

 

Once last thing I have more trouble compacting mods from Lovers Lab than mods from other sources. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest yeah758]

This is from FO4EDIT Showing the output of the esl script. 

FO4 ESL

[asebw]

17 hours ago, yeah758 said:

I can offer some help on the ESL flagged ESP's. I am current using your SSE guide to run 747 plugins in Skyrim SE. That is 31 ESM's, 213 ESP's,  and 503 ESP's flagged as ESL's. I am going to discuss SSE since I don't yet know anything about modding FO4. Since you know how to mod both I bet you can take the SSE info and apply it to FO4. I am about to start the ESLifying process on FO4 and can provide feedback. This discussion is only about esp flagged esl's. 

 

 

Mods that have less 4000 records are okay to ESLify. Since the 255 limit comes from only having 4 digits you therefore loose one to the ESL process. 

 

Any mod that less than 4000 records can be turned into an ESL. (See new cell discussion below) SSEDIT has a script that will find ESP that can have the ESl flag added to in it. I looked and FO4EDIT has the same thing. This is a no brainer. SSEEDIT will let you make any changes you want but will not let you save messed up files. All I do is run the script, save the results in note pad, then click on record flags in SEEDIT and click the ESl box and then save. You can do this during a playthrough but it may corrupt your save and it may not. If you just do a few you are probably okay. If you do your entire load order then probably not so much.

 

Now after you run out the easy ones you run into having to compact form ID's. The SSEEDIT script turns up three results, Mods that can have the flag added as is, Mods that need form ID's compacted before the ESL flag is added, and mods that add new cells. I will talk about the new cell added ones separately. 

 

If the mods has Form ID's that have a number over 1024 but don't have a total number over 1024 then the form ID's can be compacted. This is a major change to the mod. Some mods just don't function after this even though they meet the requirements. The issue is any mod that uses the compacted mod as reference has to be changed. SSEEDIT takes care of this if every esp is loaded but you can really paint yourself into a corner. Mods that are used by a lot of other mods are just not worth the downstream hassle. For instance lets say you compacted and added the ESL tag to a mod that caused SSEEDIT to change the form id reference in 10 other mods. Now the first mod gets an update. Since the first mod is now different even if you compact the form id's they are also different and it breaks all the mods involved.  You then have to reinstall all the effected mods and compact again. BTW if you compact form id's on Masters you get what you deserve unless nothing uses them as a reference. It goes without saying that if you aren't handy with error resolution in SSEEDIT then only do mods that have no other references. I spend a considerable amount of time  in SSEEDIT working out errors. I currently only have 48 errors in my current 747 plugins and they are almost all the damn Navmesh triangle warning which is not worth fixing.  Also if you download a future mod, or update, that uses an already compacted mod as a reference it will not work. Same basic scenario as above. Lots of trial and error in this process. Also your load order matters. What works for one person may not be possible for you. In a perfect world mod authors would compact before uploading. 

 

Compacting Form ID's break saves. There is no fix or way around it. You must start a new game. 

 

 

Also for compacting mods. 

Mods that have Facegen data have issues. (May be SSE specific. It causes the black face bug. I just open and close CK and it fixes it. I have mods that automatically generates Face gen data and saves it to the mod for me.)

 

Mods that Have Seq have issue. (Once again use CK)

 

Mods that add new cells in SSE are not good candidates. I believe this is a SSE flaw. SSEEDIT clearly warns you not to do it but will let you save the mod with the esl flag. Some people have had some luck doing small cells that nothing else references but I have met with failure trying it. 

 

Also for compacting mods all the esp's that reference said mod must be loaded. This can get tricky as you get more mods due to SSEEDIT loading all masters and referenced files. Cleaning masters from Mods using SSEEDIT can really help. 

 

I currently don't have any merges since I think they lead to stability issues. However if you do merge use the Zmerge feature of Zedit. Also don't add the ESL flag or compact the form ID's of merges. That didn't turn out real well for me. Merges tend to be unstable anyway and the ESL process didn't help. 

 

Once last thing I have more trouble compacting mods from Lovers Lab than mods from other sources. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just as a forward, i've done this kind of experimentation with FO4. Not sure if it applies to skyrim

 

 

One thing I would add to this. The general consensus from what I have been reading is that the mods that should be converted are those that use their own assets. Any mod that uses the base game or dlc assets should not be converted, as it could cause issues. Also, anything with its own world space should also be avoided. Again, it could work, but it could also cause problems. 

 

Ideally smaller mods, or independent mods are the best candidates for being flagged esl. Weapon and armor mods can be a good example of this, assuming they are the right side. Patchs and override mods can also fit into this category, though those ones can be iffy from what i've seen in my own testing.

 

I'm going to try converting some of the smaller useful mods to pure esl and see how that works out.

 

 

[asebw]

@Aylis

 

Curious to know how you did with the flagging. Been playing around with the Creation Kit, and I've converted and repackaged a few of the older mods to be true ESL. Will be testing them later, but so far, so good.

[Aylis]

Sorry, didn't get to it. I received a few updated mods (which will hopefully be released later) to check if they cause problems or still got hidden bugs. This will take some time and my schedule is already a bit tight... 

 

Also i'm trying to figure out why the NVME helps a lot with Skyrim SE (loading time wen't very noticably down) and doesn't do much for Fallout 4. This should be similar or at least an improvement for FO4. But it doesn't.

 

I got a theory what might be the problem. So i got to test a few things for that as well (and hopefully won't kill my savegame in the process). 

[asebw]

17 minutes ago, Aylis said:

Also i'm trying to figure out why the NVME helps a lot with Skyrim SE (loading time wen't very noticably down) and doesn't do much for Fallout 4. This should be similar or at least an improvement for FO4. But it doesn't.

NVME? Which one is that?

[Aylis]

33 minutes ago, asebw said:

NVME? Which one is that?

This one: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07HR83J4S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

I got in SE a mod that switches the screens during the loading screen. With a normal SSD i saw 4-6 different pictures, now its down to only two and most of the time i only see the second pic for ~2 seconds.

[Guest yeah758]

3 hours ago, asebw said:

@Aylis

 

Curious to know how you did with the flagging. Been playing around with the Creation Kit, and I've converted and repackaged a few of the older mods to be true ESL. Will be testing them later, but so far, so good.

 

For FO4 I now have 289 plugins, 17 masters, 109 ESP's, 163 ESL's. The majority of the ESL's are ESP's flagged as ESL. I have yet figure out CK for FO4 yet so this was done in FO4EDIT. FO4 runs and I been have travelling around the Wasteland with no real issues. I was hoping to get more testing done but work really gets in the way. In addition I am not sure what most of these mods do so that kinds hampers testing. This count is without compacting form ID's. BTW I can't help myself I keep adding mods. 

[Guest yeah758]

I found this which explains much better than I can. 

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/35922?tab=posts

 

[asebw]

36 minutes ago, yeah758 said:

I found this which explains much better than I can. 

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/35922?tab=posts

 

I don't know which conversation you are following, but maybe go back a page or two and get caught up.

[asebw]

1 hour ago, Aylis said:

This one: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07HR83J4S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

I got in SE a mod that switches the screens during the loading screen. With a normal SSD i saw 4-6 different pictures, now its down to only two and most of the time i only see the second pic for ~2 seconds.

If you are referring to the NSFW slideshow whilst loading mod, I was the one who sent it your way as a replacer for iluvloading. I am however confused. Are the pictures not showing up because the game is loading faster, or are they showing up one and two, then hanging on 10-15 seconds of black screen?

 

As for an improvement in loading time with FO4, you can't compare skyrim and FO4 for that unless your playing vanilla FO4. Skyrim, at least for me, has always loaded faster that FO4. 

[Kaitol]

Just recently decided to reinstall and found this nice guide, and I have a couple questions. Exactly how critical are mods not labeled optional? For example if I felt like excluding a small mod like the one that fixes mirelurk gills, could I just ignore any further mods/patches dependent on them and be fine? I feel like that's the case since there's no big custom master patch listed at the end, but thought I'd ask before I get too far in and have to redo everything because I skipped a small mod.

 

Also, South of the Sea is labeled March 2018 and has a note saying wait on it because an update is coming, but it looks like it was updated just on the 22nd, is there some problem with it that you were waiting for a fix? And if so is it okay now? I'm mainly asking because I haven't tried it before and it looks quite interesting from the description.

[Aylis]

2 hours ago, asebw said:

I am however confused. Are the pictures not showing up because the game is loading faster, or are they showing up one and two, then hanging on 10-15 seconds of black screen?

 

As for an improvement in loading time with FO4, you can't compare skyrim and FO4 for that unless your playing vanilla FO4. Skyrim, at least for me, has always loaded faster that FO4. 

Skyrim loads a lot faster now. I'd say around ~50-60% (and the pics show up fine ?). Only the start of the game is still a bit slow.

 

Thats right. But still there should have been a noticable change.

 

 

31 minutes ago, Kaitol said:

Exactly how critical are mods not labeled optional? For example if I felt like excluding a small mod like the one that fixes mirelurk gills, could I just ignore any further mods/patches dependent on them and be fine? I feel like that's the case since there's no big custom master patch listed at the end, but thought I'd ask before I get too far in and have to redo everything because I skipped a small mod.

 

Also, South of the Sea is labeled March 2018 and has a note saying wait on it because an update is coming, but it looks like it was updated just on the 22nd, is there some problem with it that you were waiting for a fix? And if so is it okay now? I'm mainly asking because I haven't tried it before and it looks quite interesting from the description.

1. If you want the best visuals then only the optional mods are optional. ?

2. If you use MO2 you don't have to worry about that too much. I've been adding, removing or just moving mods around quite a bit. No problem with that.

3. That is exactly the update i've been waiting for. Thanks for the info. ?

[asebw]

54 minutes ago, Kaitol said:

Just recently decided to reinstall and found this nice guide, and I have a couple questions. Exactly how critical are mods not labeled optional? For example if I felt like excluding a small mod like the one that fixes mirelurk gills, could I just ignore any further mods/patches dependent on them and be fine? I feel like that's the case since there's no big custom master patch listed at the end, but thought I'd ask before I get too far in and have to redo everything because I skipped a small mod.

 

Also, South of the Sea is labeled March 2018 and has a note saying wait on it because an update is coming, but it looks like it was updated just on the 22nd, is there some problem with it that you were waiting for a fix? And if so is it okay now? I'm mainly asking because I haven't tried it before and it looks quite interesting from the description.

huh, missed that south of the sea update when I did my last patch of updates. Thnx for reminding me. 

 

To answer your question, the optional stuff in the is list pretty much, optional. Stuff that Aylis flags as optional are usually things that either 

 

a) don't have a lot of impact on the list, so it's good fodder for trimming your esp count

b) Includes stuff that can conflict with other optional mods, so it's a pick and choose scenario

c) mostly list author's choice, and might not turn your crank is it were.

 

optional files don't usually have dependencies further down the list unless that dependency is right under it, in which case it will be the same group.

[asebw]

32 minutes ago, Aylis said:

Skyrim loads a lot faster now. I'd say around ~50-60% (and the pics show up fine ?). Only the start of the game is still a bit slow.

 

Thats right. But still there should have been a noticable change.

to be honest, when I put together my new rig, I didn't see much of a speed difference in loading times between new and old machine. Part of it is do to some of the mods I run, but I think part of it is just the game itself. Personally I think it's either the time it takes to unpack those Ba2 archives, or maybe the game itself was just never as optimized as it should have been. Either or, or something else. That being said, there was a definite improvement in game performance once everything got rolling that I noticed between new and old rig. 

[Aylis]

13 minutes ago, asebw said:

I think it's either the time it takes to unpack those Ba2 archives, or maybe the game itself was just never as optimized as it should have been.

Exactly my thoughts.

 

Regarding the BA2 i could possibly do something...

[prometheusx]

For faster loading times try this:

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/10283

 

On my setupt it helped a lot.

[asebw]

6 hours ago, prometheusx said:

For faster loading times try this:

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/10283

 

On my setupt it helped a lot.

Only works if the game is running off an SSD.

[mudcrabmerc]

Just dropping in to say I really appreciate this guide.

Also curious as to which ENB you ended up choosing. Guide still says Fusion ENB but your last comment is saying Decent ENB is still best.

Cheers!

[mudcrabmerc]

On 8/2/2019 at 1:32 PM, asebw said:

 

Foundation

Sim Settlements: The vanilla settlement system is really crappy. Kinggath's sim settlements is still a great alternative, and is still being actively developed. I should note that SimS is in my foundation because of a number of other mods that I also use that have it as a requirement.

 

I would also encourage you to check out Sim Settlements... Kinggath does amazing work, and really stays on top of it. I enjoy his youtube videos about it as well.

[asebw]

26 minutes ago, mudcrabmerc said:

Just dropping in to say I really appreciate this guide.

Also curious as to which ENB you ended up choosing. Guide still says Fusion ENB but your last comment is saying Decent ENB is still best.

Cheers!

Yeah, the list also originally started with ReShade as well. Best to wait on the ENB until after the list becomes more finalized.

[mudcrabmerc]

@asebw

Where do you figure we ought to throw SS in the load order?

[mudcrabmerc]

Fix for people having CTD issues when tab into pipboy; My issues was with DEF_UI and HUDFramework 1.0f:

My fix was to uncheck the DEF_INV option when installing DEF_UI (VIS-G instructions tell you to check it), then to install the DEF UI Compatibility patch.

I'm not sure if there's any loss of functionality, as this is my first time installing these particular mods, but at least this will get you going.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/20309?tab=files

 

 

[Aylis]

12 hours ago, mudcrabmerc said:

Just dropping in to say I really appreciate this guide.

Also curious as to which ENB you ended up choosing. Guide still says Fusion ENB but your last comment is saying Decent ENB is still best.

Cheers!

The 'Fusion ENB' is a new ENB that popped up (aka it didn't exist when i was writing about Decent). So for now 'Fusion ENB' is the way to go.

 

6 hours ago, mudcrabmerc said:

Fix for people having CTD issues when tab into pipboy; My issues was with DEF_UI and HUDFramework 1.0f:

My fix was to uncheck the DEF_INV option when installing DEF_UI (VIS-G instructions tell you to check it), then to install the DEF UI Compatibility patch.

I'm not sure if there's any loss of functionality, as this is my first time installing these particular mods, but at least this will get you going.

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/20309?tab=files

Interesting. Got to give this another go then. With VIS we got way to many ESP for my taste...

[asebw]

16 hours ago, mudcrabmerc said:

@asebw

Where do you figure we ought to throw SS in the load order?

If by SS you mean Sim Settlement, I currently have it in the Foundation section, near the top just before the unofficial patch. It's an ESM, so it's going to end up at the top of the list regardless, but as I said in the earlier post, there's a number of mods I use on and off that require SimS to be available, so the further up in the list it is the better.