Anchorage/Aiding the Outcasts no buildings etc. issue

[maxhamee]

Hello

So I've got fallout 3 running stable at the moment, which is great. That's base fallout 3. While I can get new perks from broken steel for example, Anchorage is another discussion. I went through Bailey's crossroads, came out the other side and its just flat ground texture, a door floating in the air the BoS outcasts are shooting at, a couple super mutants in the distance (cant shoot at even due to invisible wall) and 2 i can interact with fully in front of BoS. The 11exp checkmark hit for finding the place, and no door is behind me.

I checked mod organizer's LOOT, and didnt see any issue or conflicts. And searching on other forums didn't bring up any fix/issue either except 1 reddit page (which the user himself didnt't even know what they changed to fix it). I have saved an image i will try to share here or elsewhere of what it looks like. I'd appreciate any help possible, this is my favorite DLC by far.

Please and thank you!

[Xan]

Did you try to "cleanup" the DLC with FO3Edit? I did, and it all got borked. Thankfully, I had the vanilla ESM's backed up.

[maxhamee]

Originally posted by EXTRA DIP:

Did you try to "cleanup" the DLC with FO3Edit? I did, and it all got borked. Thankfully, I had the vanilla ESM's backed up.

I have but i havent had other issues yet ( i kept vanilla just in case i do need to roll back)

I'm curious if its an overwrite conflict (upper right corner has a red triangle with exclamation). I noticed overwrite has a red line, both overwrite and my designated "test mod" location have FO3Edit Cache, and Anchorage itself is older 12/27/2019 and overwrites anchorage refcache is 1/5/2020. So if that happens to be the case, what should I do you think to resolve the issue?

[maxhamee]

So i went through, unchecked my dlc cleaned mod. Checkmarked all the dlc's to the right in MO again. loaded up game, braced for worst coming through door. i see an escalator staircase. THATS CORRECT THATS DIFFERENT.
Why.
Why is unofficial fallout 3 patch and this now conflicting.
I'll update if anything else goes or it works for good.

[Kvinden]

It is because the unofficial fallout 3 patch is now, for some reason, delivered as an .esm.
.esm CAN cause conflicts with the base game because they override the vanilla forms, unlike the .esp.

What you describe is typical of the problem.

Generally Unofficial patch work for everyone, with some exceptions ( Obviously your configuration is one of the exceptions). For you it is bailey crossrods but for someone else it can be in Raven Rock, and for another at the entrance of Megaton, or nowhere, if you see what I mean. It depends of the global configuration and it is, to say the least, difficult for the modder to guess what each user has in his computer and to reproduce the bug to prevent it.

You can try to convert the .esm to .esp. It is not an ideal solution if the ressources are used by another mod but often it works. Again with exceptions, sometimes the ressources of the .esm are needed elsewhere ( the master reference differs).

You can also use the masterupdate option of FO3edit, it is safer because it only changes the extension of the file and undoes the override. Try it and see if you get the outcast's base.
Edit : If it does not work you can reverse the update just by using the command line again
But be sure you do this only on this mod, not on all your mods.

Or you can try to fix it manually. the overriden forms are visible in Fo3edit and the conflicts are not difficult to locate. If you see one of the original forms in Baily crossrods or anchorage modified by the mod and it has nothing to do with the mod you can safely remove it. It is not difficult but if the patch is big it can be a tedious work.

[blitzburns4]

Originally posted by Kvinden:

It is because the unofficial fallout 3 patch is now, for some reason, delivered as an .esm.
.esm CAN cause conflicts with the base game because they override the vanilla forms, unlike the .esp.

What you describe is typical of the problem.

Generally Unofficial patch work for everyone, with some exceptions ( Obviously your configuration is one of the exceptions). For you it is bailey crossrods but for someone else it can be in Raven Rock, and for another at the entrance of Megaton, or nowhere, if you see what I mean. It depends of the global configuration and it is, to say the least, difficult for the modder to guess what each user has in his computer and to reproduce the bug to prevent it.

You can try to convert the .esm to .esp. It is not an ideal solution if the ressources are used by another mod but often it works. Again with exceptions, sometimes the ressources of the .esm are needed elsewhere ( the master reference differs).

You can also use the masterupdate option of FO3edit, it is safer because it only changes the extension of the file and undoes the override. Try it and see if you get the outcast's base.
Edit : If it does not work you can reverse the update just by using the command line again
But be sure you do this only on this mod, not on all your mods.

Or you can try to fix it manually. the overriden forms are visible in Fo3edit and the conflicts are not difficult to locate. If you see one of the original forms in Baily crossrods or anchorage modified by the mod and it has nothing to do with the mod you can safely remove it. It is not difficult but if the patch is big it can be a tedious work.

Okay, I thought about it and it might be best to reply here if possible, that would allow others searching about this issue to find help as well. I apologize for the double-notification.

Edit: I noticed that I bumped this older discussion as well by about two years, and I apologize for that to any moderators of this forum. This issue is literally not showing up in any other google results. It could be a problem for other people, especially if it has to do with the unofficial patch that could be a big problem.

[blitzburns4]

Okay fellow users, with Kvinden's help we discovered and solved the issue here.

For starters, this glitch can be observed in the images below. It can also happen in the original game world sporadically for random users, depending on their playthrough. If you google search "missing location fallout 3" you can find other instances of people having a blank zone maybe with other DLC and even settlemetns like Megaton. Again take a glance at the image below to get a grasp of this problem. The frustrating thing is there's no easy reason to understand why it affects some and not others. But in this one case, the error can be reproduced. Perhaps this can help other examples and occurances of this glitch too.

Operation Anchorage Game-Breaking Bug, Before Fix

https://imgur.com/gallery/VP1ZEnY

Operation Anchorage Game-Breaking Bug, After-Fix

https://imgur.com/gallery/BwvsWOg

Second, the major issue seems to be tied somehow to the Fallout 3 Unofficial Patch. If I have the time, I'll bring this up on their main Nexus forum, but the FIRST THING to try to help salvage your situation is to try de-activating the Unofficial patch via your mod manager, this is a situation where it helps to utilize a mod manager like FOMM or Wyre Bash, because if you installed the Unofficial Patch via those programs, you can simply uncheck a box, load a save file, and see if the DLC is now working again. This is not something I confirmed will solve the issue, but it's something worth trying out. Especially if this glitch has to do with some other area that's not Bailey's Crossroads or the Operation Anchorage DLC.

Third, with Kvinden's help and brainstorming, the exact methodology for causing this glitch to appears to be--especially with this Operation Anchorage DLC as I've replicated it on a second computer--when you go out of your way to clean the DLC utilizing a program such as FO3QuickClean.Exe. (This is usually installed in the same folder as FO3Edit) This glitch may sometimes appear regardless of cleaning the DLC, but in this case, cleaning the DLC has been confirmed to reliably break it. See the image linked below to understand.

https://imgur.com/gallery/LH01W8f

A LOT of users may be confused/tricked by accident into doing this because LOOT, a load-order program comomonly relied upon by many players, tells players in a warning message that there are necessary ITM records and deleted references and tells users to go clean the DLC, this is horrible advice and should be outright ignored. If you DID happen to clean the DLC, and don't have a backup of those original uncleaned files, you're going to have to re-install Fallout 3 and its DLC and avoid cleaning those DLC in your second setup. It's a major drag so don't clean them. Goodness knows we have enough problems caused by Bethesda's recent update. Don't make it harder on yourself by making this good-intentioned mistake like I did.

Thank you Kvinden and good luck to anyone who stumbles here.

- bb-user4444

[Kvinden]

I am glad to read you solved the issue. Others can benefit of your experience and explainations.