What mod(s) could be causing problems with Old World Blues?

[MeanJim]

Are there any mods that are known to cause problems with the Giant Robo-scorpion battle at the end of Old World Bues?


I'm playing with a lot of mods installed, but I haven't run into any major problems until now. I'm near the end of OWB, but when I enter the Forbidden Zone where the X42 Giant Robo-scorpion is, I die almost immediately. At first I thought this was because I was was not wearing the Stealth Suit Mk II. I didn't use the suit after getting it and running it through the tests. I was curious if it was required to be worn for the final battle, so I assumed this was why I was dying. I ran back to get the Stealth Suit, equipped it and went back in, but I still die.

I turned god mode on just to be sure I wasn't dying because of some other reason. It looks like I'm dying because the giant robo-scorpion immediately fires at me when I enter, and it's firing at an extremely fast rate and kills me instantly. It's been a long time since I last played OWB, but I thought the robo-scorpion didn't fire at you until Dr. Mobius finished his speech and the lights come on, and I don't remember it shooting so fast.

The scorpion doesn't seem to have any visual or sounds effects when it fires either. I only hear a squish sound when it fires and hear the splat as whatever it is firing hits my body, and there is no explosion sound either. It even seems to be hitting me when I move behind a wall or other objects. Then after a few seconds, it spontaneously blows up without me doing anything to it.

It has to be one or more mods causing the problems. This is my mod list[docs.google.com] exported from Mod Organizer. I probably won't have time to play again until Friday night, so hopefully someone might know what's causing this and save me a lot of time troubleshooting mods. I'm suspecting EVE or Project Nevada. The settings I'm using for PN ramp up the damage, especially from explosives, so maybe it's doing so much damage that it's killing itself, and EVE is the only mod that would be effecting its visuals. I don't know why either of those would be causing it to fire immediately instead of waiting for Mobius to finish his speech and turn on the lights though.

One other thing I noticed. For the short time I wore the Stealth Suit Mk II, it didn't auto inject stimpaks or Med-X when I got injured or crippled limbs.

[talgaby]

It can happen even in vanilla, some weird random bug, just like when it is totally unresponsive for some reason. Just use godmode when you enter and wait until it kills itself.

[MeanJim]

I found out the cause today. I spent a while digging through stuff with FNVEdit this afternoon, and it turns out YUP is causing it. I don't know if this change was by accident, it wasn't in older versions of the mod, but it modifies two values in the Giant Robo-scorpion's attack package, which essentially removes it's weapon and replaces it with a generic ranged weapon value. Not having its weapon was causing it to have this magical ranged attack that hits you through walls and cover, but I don't know why it caused the robo-scorpion to spontaneously explode. I don't fully understand why it causes the robo-scorpion to attack immediately since there is a script which is supposed to prevent it from attacking until after Mobius' speech and the lights turn on.

I reverted those two values back to the original and it doesn't immediately attack, it restores its weapon effects, it no longer can see and fire through walls, and it doesn't spontaneously explode. However, now it's practically blind. It doesn't detect me until I get very close to it, and if I can step back fast enough before it fires, it loses sight and drops out of combat.

I literally examined every entry in the OldWorldBlues.esm with FNVEdit looking for conflicts with other mods, and I can't find a reason why it now has such a limited detection range. The only mods that directly overwrite anything from OWB are YUP, Interior Lighting Overhaul, FNV Realistic Wasteland Lighting, and EVE. I ran the game with all of those mods disabled and the robo-scorpion was still blind. I remember this encounter being pretty tough in previous play throughs.

[talgaby]

Like this?

While entering the Forbidden Zone, the X-42 giant robo-scorpion may not attack unless it is approached. This will remain the case even when attacking the X-42 giant robo-scorpion.

It is an ancient bug and there is no apparent reason why and when it pops up, but it is persistent through a certain character, so not even loading pre-OWB saves seemed to work.

[MeanJim]

That's from the wiki? I guess I got lucky before. I suppose YUP was trying to fix that. Technically you could say it did, but getting killed because it immediately because it now shoots you with a magical, wall penetrating weapon is a bit overboard. I already submitted a bug report on the YUP mod page. I was planning to do some more poking around and see if I can fix it.

[Paragon]

Its funny i literally just played OWB for the first time and stopped at this part because of the scorpion meleeing me immediately and through walls and them exploding immediately. I went ahead and put a comment post on the Nexus mod page for YUP. I hadnt seen that you have also done this until after I reported it myself though xD

[MeanJim]

More reports means it will probably get looked at sooner. I wonder if it was a recent change in YUP, since there are no mentions of it on the YUP page or other forums. I thought about downloading older versions to see when it was changed.

FNVEdit is pretty easy to learn and use. I find it essential when using a lot of mods. It makes finding and fixing conflicts easy. If you want, I uploaded the fix to my Google drive[drive.google.com]. Load it last in your load order. After you're done with the X-42 encounter, you can disable and delete it.

I'm going to try and find out why the scorpion doesn't attack, but I don't know if or when I can do that. It might be something simple that I'll spot and fix tonight or I might not figure it out at all and have to wait and hope the YUP team comes up with something.