What's the mod limit and how do I know how many mods do I have?

[The Gat]

I've heard the limit is about 200-250 mods, but how do I know if that amount of files also includes plug-ins or other things?
I've been installing mods for the game for a good while now but I never really bothered to check this, I use FOMM but I can't really tell what's the number I should be looking for.

[Vex Hilarius]

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/271909-what-is-the-mod-limit/
https://www.reddit.com/r/FalloutMods/comments/6zh5i5/fnv_mod_plugin_limit/

Apparently its around 250 but most would say not to go over 135 since the game could have issues with the amount of plugins.

In FOMM click on Load Order on the top and click Copy to Clipboard. Then paste it somewhere it'll list the amount. Keep in mind some mods may not be found in your load order, mainly replacer mods. Those don't count towards load orders since they, well, replace.

[talgaby]

The mathematical is 254, including the official files. The real one is around 127 for New Vegas.

The engine uses two IDs for the files. One is the load order number you see, starting from 00 and going to FF—this would indicate 255 total plug-ins.

However, there is also the plug-in internal ID, which is also a two-byte number. Every single ESP and ESM file in the data folder receives one, whether it is in the existing load order or not. It also starts at 00, but that one is for the game's EXE, and 01 is for the master ESM.
This is the part where Obsidian messed up since the internal ID of the main ESM is not 01 but somewhere around 7A to 7F. Every other plug-in starts its number after this one, which translates to around 125-ish numbers you have left until you hit FF and the engine stops acknowledging the existence of plug-ins.
The critical bit is that this number is for all plug-ins.

[The Gat]

Thank you both. I also know mods can be merged to make the load order smaller, but can this be done with active mods?

[Washell]

Originally posted by Poloski:

Thank you both. I also know mods can be merged to make the load order smaller, but can this be done with active mods?

All ID's within a mod are tied to the ID the mod gets from the load order. You will break your savegame if you merge active mods, because that changes the ID's. Which means the ID's in the mod no longer line up with the ID's in your savegame.

[Silver the Shark]

Originally posted by Washell:

Originally posted by Poloski:

Thank you both. I also know mods can be merged to make the load order smaller, but can this be done with active mods?

All ID's within a mod are tied to the ID the mod gets from the load order. You will break your savegame if you merge active mods, because that changes the ID's. Which means the ID's in the mod no longer line up with the ID's in your savegame.

It won't break it per se. Rather anything contained within the merged plugins will begin anew. Any weapons you had from the original files for example would vanish, and any quests from them would be lost. You would have to reacquire everything.

[Washell]

Originally posted by Silver Cloud:

It won't break it per se. Rather anything contained within the merged plugins will begin anew. Any weapons you had from the original files for example would vanish, and any quests from them would be lost. You would have to reacquire everything.

With TTW, one playthrough of mine took 200 hours. Would have really sucked to merge plugins on hour 20 to and run into (increasing) problems at hour 120.

I strongly recommend against changing the mod loadout during a playthrough, either abandon or finish it, while taking notes of what you want different, and then make a fresh mod loadout you can start from scratch.

[The Gat]

Originally posted by Washell:

Originally posted by Poloski:

Thank you both. I also know mods can be merged to make the load order smaller, but can this be done with active mods?

All ID's within a mod are tied to the ID the mod gets from the load order. You will break your savegame if you merge active mods, because that changes the ID's. Which means the ID's in the mod no longer line up with the ID's in your savegame.

Oh damn, I have to many mods already active, probably over 100

[The Gat]

Ok so I finally got home, and checked my load order the way ED-E told me to, and I got this
Total active plugins: 114
Total plugins: 115

How ok is that? Close to become unstable? The latests mods I've installed have increased the amount of crashes quite noticeably, I'd describe it from almost never crashing to rarely doing it, especially with some of Xilandro's mods and NVB

[Washell]

As talgaby explained, the hard limit is 127 plugins. As for being unstable, that's only loosely correlated with the number of plugins. If I add 127 plugins that each do nothing more than adding a single weapon, item or armor each, the stability isn't affected at all. If I add just 2 plugins that both completely overhaul the game and end up fighting with each other, it's New Crash City.

The two you mentioned both do heavy scripting, which is the achilles heel of the engine, and prone to bugs from typos and such.

[Silver the Shark]

Originally posted by Washell:

As talgaby explained, the hard limit is 127 plugins. As for being unstable, that's only loosely correlated with the number of plugins. If I add 127 plugins that each do nothing more than adding a single weapon, item or armor each, the stability isn't affected at all. If I add just 2 plugins that both completely overhaul the game and end up fighting with each other, it's New Crash City.

The two you mentioned both do heavy scripting, which is the achilles heel of the engine, and prone to bugs from typos and such.

Actually I'm pretty sure it's 137, not 127. The limit is due to the hexidecimal plugin ID's. Which stops counting up at 137. If you have more active plugins than that, the game doesn't know what to do with the extra plugins that exceed it. This ♥♥♥♥♥ up the game majorly.

Right now I have 135 active plugins and my game is functioning without issue.

[The Gat]

Originally posted by Silver Cloud:

Originally posted by Washell:

As talgaby explained, the hard limit is 127 plugins. As for being unstable, that's only loosely correlated with the number of plugins. If I add 127 plugins that each do nothing more than adding a single weapon, item or armor each, the stability isn't affected at all. If I add just 2 plugins that both completely overhaul the game and end up fighting with each other, it's New Crash City.

The two you mentioned both do heavy scripting, which is the achilles heel of the engine, and prone to bugs from typos and such.

Actually I'm pretty sure it's 137, not 127. The limit is due to the hexidecimal plugin ID's. Which stops counting up at 137. If you have more active plugins than that, the game doesn't know what to do with the extra plugins that exceed it. This ♥♥♥♥♥ up the game majorly.

Right now I have 135 active plugins and my game is functioning without issue.

Damn, I wish I could say the same thing. As I stated before I'm close to the limit yet my save file degradated or something

[Silver the Shark]

Originally posted by Poloski:

Originally posted by Silver Cloud:

Actually I'm pretty sure it's 137, not 127. The limit is due to the hexidecimal plugin ID's. Which stops counting up at 137. If you have more active plugins than that, the game doesn't know what to do with the extra plugins that exceed it. This ♥♥♥♥♥ up the game majorly.

Right now I have 135 active plugins and my game is functioning without issue.

Damn, I wish I could say the same thing. As I stated before I'm close to the limit yet my save file degradated or something

The limit is technically 137, but no matter what, the more mods you have, the less stable the game becomes. Especially mods made by people that don't take the time to polish, or very large ones. The only reason my game is running smoothly with so many is because I've spent a very long time going through each plugin and cleaning up problems and sorted out compatibility issues manually. For the average user though. I would try and keep the plugin count below 100, and merge your smaller and simpler mods (like weapon and armor mods) together.

[The Gat]

Originally posted by Silver Cloud:

Originally posted by Poloski:

Damn, I wish I could say the same thing. As I stated before I'm close to the limit yet my save file degradated or something

The limit is technically 137, but no matter what, the more mods you have, the less stable the game becomes. Especially mods made by people that don't take the time to polish, or very large ones. The only reason my game is running smoothly with so many is because I've spent a very long time going through each plugin and cleaning up problems and sorted out compatibility issues manually. For the average user though. I would try and keep the plugin count below 100, and merge your smaller and simpler mods (like weapon and armor mods) together.

I've heard you can lose items if you merge weapon/armor mods, is that true? I want to take precautions before doing that, as it's the last thing I can think of

[Silver the Shark]

Only during a game in progress, and only the items affected by the merged mods. But it's not as big an issue as people make it out to be. Fallout New Vegas is pretty lenient with changing mod loadouts, unlike most other Bethesda titles. Just enter a calm interior (victors shack, jean skydiving) and make a save. Quit the game then untick the mods you wish to merge. Reboot the game and make another save. Quit again then merge your desired mods and tick your merge file as active. When you start the game again use the geck or FNVEdit to look up all the ID's of the items you lost and add them through the console. I would make a note in a notepad or txt file of the exact count of items like ammo if necessary.

[The Gat]

Originally posted by Silver Cloud:

Only during a game in progress, and only the items affected by the merged mods. But it's not as big an issue as people make it out to be. Fallout New Vegas is pretty lenient with changing mod loadouts, unlike most other Bethesda titles. Just enter a calm interior (victors shack, jean skydiving) and make a save. Quit the game then untick the mods you wish to merge. Reboot the game and make another save. Quit again then merge your desired mods and tick your merge file as active. When you start the game again use the geck or FNVEdit to look up all the ID's of the items you lost and add them through the console. I would make a note in a notepad or txt file of the exact count of items like ammo if necessary.

Alright, thank you, gonna try that.