Sim Settlement problem

[EllaJane]

Hello, not sure if this is the right place to post this but wondering if anyone can help me with an issue I am having regarding the Sim Settlement Mod.

I have been using the mod (downloaded on PC, through the Bethesda in-game menu as I thought it would be simpler for me, not through nexus mods) and some of its expansions (Junktown addon for example) for a while now. It has been working great for me so far but this morning when I hopped on to play I thought I might download some more addons. I found some (Industrial Revolution/Bad Neighbour or something) but when I downloaded the mods the game told me that it didn't have the required files in order to run them. I was confused because it said I needed the Sim Settlement Mod, which I have, and have been using since I started the new save. I had a look in my load order and saw that the Sim Settlement base mod was not on my list, although it had been there just the night before and I know I did NOT manually delete it.

Weirdly though, I could see it in the mod search menu and it says that it can be downloaded. Before, however, it would show up and have those two little symbols at the bottom to say you had already downloaded this mod and you are currently using it. When I proceed to try and redownload it, it tells me the operation could not be completed.

So I think, fine, I won't use Sim Settlement or it's expansion at all. But now when I go to my old settlements there are a lot of wires and lights hanging in the air supposed to be attached to the old buildings from the Sim Settlements mods which have now disappeared and when I try to scrap them it crashes my game. This is the first time my game has really crashed at all, but everytime I try to scrap those items it continues to happen.

I noticed in my load order that some of the files (Sim Settlement.esm, Junktown etc) appear in my load out, at the very bottom, greyed out, with no image or destription and that they cannot be deleted. When I select to delete it, which it apparently goes through the process of doing, it continues to show up at the bottom.

This is super frustrating. I don't really want to start a new game as I was heaps into this run but I'm either looking at doing that or just playing and never going back to those settlements that I made and put so much effort into :P

If someone could maybe talk me through what might be going on and offer some help I would really appreciate it.

[Astasia]

Sim Settlements had an update today. I don't know how the Bethesda site works, maybe it downloads updates automatically and perhaps you tried to play while it was in the process of downloading/updating the mod.

Don't ever remove a mod from a save and try to keep playing, it's going to break things. There are very few exceptions to this, so as a general rule just never do it. Get Sim Settlements working again and load an earlier save where it was still installed and everything was fine. Otherwise your save is borked, you can try to keep playing and avoid the corruption, but it's probably effecting more than you can see and might eventually become unplayable.

[Bored Peon]

The crash is caused by loading a game that used mods and the mods are no longer present.

It also sounds like your issues started when you tried to use an additional addon requiring Sim Settlements to run it. You have to be VERY wary with these type of mods especially if they do not have the same creator.

The issue could also be that both your old mod Junktown and Bad Neighborhood are conflicting mods. usually the newer updated one may tell you to nto use other specific mods with it.

The other thing to do is double check the mod instructions and make sure you follow any load order instructions.

Worse comes to worse if you cna get the game to load at all without the mods would be open the console and use the scrapall command. Since the mods were settlement related it technically should clear out any conflicting objects causing your crashes.

[EllaJane]

Thanks for both of those suggestions, I will try both of these.

Like I said in my OP I did not manually remove the base mod and the first thing I have done before playing each time has been to check and update the mods I am using. I think it's probably because I tried to add those Sim Settlement addons because once I did that the problems started. I will test out these solutions so see if they help (:

[Astasia]

Industrial Revolution should be perfectly fine, it's an official addon for Sim Settlements.

Bad Neighbors was discontinued, it hasn't been updated for several months and the mod author has shut down comments on the Nexus so I couldn't even check to see what kind of problems people are having with it.

I don't think that caused your specific problem, turning on one mod isn't going to disable a different mod AFAIK, but again I don't know how the Bethesda system works.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Astasia:

I don't think that caused your specific problem, turning on one mod isn't going to disable a different mod AFAIK, but again I don't know how the Bethesda system works.

Yeah honestly I think you are better off using NMM for mods simply because it keeps better track of the mods it installs. Not to mention I think the NMM community takes better care of their ♥♥♥♥ than Bugthesda does. Bugthesda tends to put ♥♥♥♥ out then abandon it very quickly. At e;ast some people in the NMM community will let you know "hey this stopped working" by placing comments on the mods pages themself.

[ⒸⒶⓁⒸⒾⓊⓂ]

think it's time for you to depend on nexus mods manager from now on. also I guess you'll need to do it the hard way, which is abandoning your saves. I've abandoned my saves twice or thrice now, the first time was just like your issue, second was due to me switching to male character and started fresh, third was starting fresh due to me buying the season pass. around cumulative of 100 hours were spent on those 3 separated saves.

[Bored Peon]

I would also start the practice of making a save BEFORE trying out a new mod so you have a better fallback point should something go wrong with it.

[EllaJane]

Thanks for the replies guys. I ended up having to just get rid of the save and also re install the whole game. I'm still not sure what ended up happening.
Updated my NVIDIA driver and got a new monitor and then started having a whole other bunch of issues - motion lag, screen tearing and just started running crap but that's another problem for another day and I've been working to get it running normal again lol

Not using many mods anymore and am using NMM instead. Again, thanks for the help!