well i have been on a NV hiatus for a lil while and decided to come back to it and i let steam do its updates (and bought the DLC as well). before the patch my game was fine now after it alot the mods i had installed ( mostly weapon and armor mods) are having issues appearing. in stead of a model of the weapon i just get a red ! sign. im hearing rumors about that steam is preventing the ini files from being changed by making them read only which blocks archive invalidate. is this the case? i have tried making the inis NOT read only in there properties but steam seems to keep changing them back. if this is the case is there a work around for this?

also before any one ask i have NVSE, FOMM, and NVedit.

2 mods i have for example that are not working are


http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37999

and http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37887


EDIT! i just saw a thread on nexus which might explain a "possible" reason this might be happening since i have about 151 mods active (i thought the limit was 255). http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/278666-max-number-of-mods/

ill check this out but ill still want to hear what info you guys may have.

Despite Steam making fallout.ini read-only when you start the game through the launcher, it copies whatever changes you made to the fallout_default.ini in your game's root folder to fallout.ini. So if you activated archive invalidate through fallout_default.ini, it applies to fallout.ini as well. Therefore, to my knowledge, this shouldn't block archive invalidate.

Oh, and just on that issue regarding "maximum" # of mods, it's more or less maximum # of .esp's and .esm's, I.E. you can cheat the limit by merging mods together using either FNVEdit or FNVPlugin. I'm correctly at around 126 esp's / .esm's myself with one .esp being a merge of about at least 10 - 12 mods. The # varies from system to system but you're reaching the breaking point at around 140 usually. 255 is the max # of .esp's the game engine can supposedly handle but the 140~ # is the # the engine can actually take, even if all of them are just blank .esp's.

damn then maybe thats my issue. so my next question is how do i merge mods into a new esp so i can delete the old esp(s)? im assuming i should merge all the weapon and armor mods that dont have scripts right?

Personally, I use http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39655. Fairly fast and easy to do but some types aren't supported for merging yet so it'll give you a warning when you attempt to merge. When the merge is successful, then you can save the created .esp and delete the others. Note though, the items in the mods you merged will have to be re-acquired.

Well, you can merge mods with scripts. That works too so long as you know what the scripts are doing. For instance, a mod adding it's weapon to a container, vendor, and/or leveled item list is all fine to merge but adding something that requires a master other than FalloutNV.esm, like the ones with CaliberX support, or change how an item works, then you just have to be more aware of what you're getting into. My merge mod actually does have CaliberX as a master, but that's because I did it on purpose for the weapons in the merge mod. Mainly, my merge mod consists of a bunch of physical game setting changes, a holster mod, a backpack mod, and a few weapons. So it's not a whole lot but adds up to over a dozen .esp's if they were all separate.

Personally, I don't like merging mods into my merge mod that would make my merge mod get listed as a master when I do the FNV merged patch. That and any mods in development / still being updating / related to things like body and texture mods. That's just me of course. You can set your own standards too of course.

Where the ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa goes in the ini files has changed. I should look something like this:

SArchiveList=Fallout - Voices1.bsa, Fallout - Sound.bsa, Fallout - Misc.bsa, ArchiveInvalidationInvalidated!.bsa, Fallout - Textures.bsa, Fallout - Textures2.bsa, Fallout - Meshes.bsa

rename it fallout - AAI.bsa in both the ini file and in the data folder.

i found the solution to the problem. i gotta cut down on the number of .esp files and start merging mods.

This is pretty weird, I'm playing with 182 and no problem in 32bit WinXP. Are you using a 64 bit OS by any chance?

Simply put, the # varies from user-to-user. I don't think anyone can give you a straight answer why it varies or why the limit is 255 when the game pretty much breaks long before that.

If someone can load the game up with 255 .esp's / .esm's, without having '!' marks everywhere, I'll be impressed.

actually yeah i am win7 64bit. in winxp with FO3 i could have far more mods.

Then I wonder if the OS 32 bit translation is what is making your threshold so far below 255.

Skyline- it's hard to attribute the behavior you've described to solely the amount of mods someone has loaded. A poor choice of load order / bad mod install / fudged FNVedit usage could produce that. An inexperienced user with 100+ mods might be inclined to blame it on the number of mods they're using rather than their own error.

Edit: The reason the limit is 255 is because the game uses an 8-bit memory address for each mod index position. 2^8 = 256, the 0th index is no mods and 255 is the max.

True but I'm just stating the case when one has too many .esp's / .esm's loaded. Even if they're blank .esp's, the end result will still be the same. There is a post on the Nexus regarding it and if you want me to find it, I'll source it.

Remember, there's a difference between # of mods and # of .esp's / .esm's. A re-texture mod doesn't count towards the # of mods usually. As well, highly modular mods are still one mod but take up a vast amount of .esp's /.esm if required, depending on what the user chooses. 'sides, most people that comment on how mod X doesn't work on their computer will have users A, B, C, etc... deny that happens and possibly attempt to resolve it. 95% of the time it works. The other 5%.. well you can guess.

Of course, I've only seen people mentioning this a few times in relation to the # of user-created errors that happen whenever I just play answerer on some threads on the Nexus. You can't forget though, some errors are caused by the authors themselves, which can't be ruled out. Human error happens; that's why other humans need to point them out.