Game not "Progressing" - read more inside!

[HAMBERLYNN SNEED]

OK, I got a real doozy of a bug for you all. I hope someone can help.

I say "bug", but that is probably inaccurate as the following is likely my fault.

Summary
My game seems to stopped progressing. Ronnie Shaw isn't showing up. Radio Freedom has stated that everything has been fine for ages. Worst of all, I haven't seen any new settlers for a very long time...

Scenario
I've got a Survival save game with plenty of hours on it. Lots of places discovered, quests done, etc. I've just finished all of Far Harbor and am now ready to get the Courser Chip analysed.

I'm running these mods:

CBBE
Homemaker
Armorsmith Extended
OCDecorator
Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch
Scrap Everything
Armor and Weapon Keyworks Community Resource
Busy Settlers
Place Everywhere
See-Through-Scopes
Companions Go Home - Option 1 - Activator Version
Def_ui
Take Cover 1.3 BETA
Settlement Management Software
Housekeeping
Invisible Furniture
Increased Build Limit Enhanced 4K
Radium Rifle - No Radar Dish
Do It Yourshelf
Radium Rifle - Audio Overhaul
Settlement Markers
CREAtive Clutter
Mod Configuration Menu
Unlimited Survival Mode - F4SE
WD_Hunting_Rifle_1.2_VD
Floating Damage
Snap'n Build 2.0

Those mods that are strikethrough'd are those that I'm almost certain aren't at fault, or I had installed before the symptoms (see below) started showing. But, if you know more than me, don't disregard them if there is any chance that they're responsible.


Symptoms

• "Old Guns" (minuteman quest) is not starting.
  
• Ronnie Shaw isn't showing up.
  
• The Castle isn't being cleaned up or repaired after clearing out the Mirelurks and their eggs. The corpse of the Mirelurk Queen is still there after my very long vacation to Far Harbor.
  
• No new settlers have appeared anywhere. And this includes the Far Harbor settlements.
  
• I haven't seen a Rust Devil for ages.
  
• Tessa, the gunner from Quincy, is still lying in the street after I shot her in the face, a IRL week or two ago. In fact, this applies TO EVERYWHERE. Corpses of enemies that I killed IRL weeks ago are still there. Sometimes their loot respawns (the gunners outside Hallucigen Inc. do this regularly), but if I stripped the corpse originally, their clothes respawn but aren't equipped on the corpse.
  
• Radio Freedom is stating everything is fine, however Preston did have at least 3 MM radiant quests queued up for me, which were given to me one by one. After Preston said "I'll let you know if any Settlements need our help", Radio Freedom sent me to Warwick Homestead, so maybe this is still functioning. I will play a little more and update.
  
• I haven't come across any random encounters since my game crapped up. Who is Art, and his synth double, Art?
  
• Locations that are [CLEARED] are not repopulating with enemies. I cleared Weston Water more than 80 days ago (which is the survival difficulty cell reset/update time).
  
• Curie, one day, has her affinity reset, and reverts to her default outfit.
  
• My character doesn't appear to naturally get hungry or thirsty, except when I take chems/meds etc. Also beds are giving me a "Well Rested" bonus when they shouldn't be (not sleeping long enough, bed not in a settlement). My character is getting tired, but it seems to take a long time. Also after sleeping for an hour (just to save), my character will rarely jump straight to "Weary".
  
• And some other stuff that I'm not entirely sure about. I will update here when I've tested more.

Now, it seems to me that the common denominator with all of these symptoms is "the passage of time", or rather, outside of scripted events that are triggered by your character being close by (e.g. Kid in a Fridge), that the game isn't progressing things that are dependent on the passage of time.

Why This is Probably My Fault
I can think of at least 3 contributory factors, that are potentially either singly or jointly responsible for this mess:

- The Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch; I've read one or two "No New Settlers" bug threads that were solved by uninstalling the unofficial patch, but only because it interfered with another mod that had something to do with settlers.

- Unlimited Survival Mode - F4SE; Danse glitched out after stopping all the ghouls at Cambridge Police Station. He couldn't be talked to because he kept acting as if more ghouls were incoming. So, I needed access to the console to fix this.
I implemented this mod, and switched on "Can Re-enable Survival Mode" (I thought this was necessary), and restarted my game, loading the exitsave.
Upon loading the game, all my Survival saves disappeared from the list. All that remained were the saves from when you leave Vault 111 and confirm your character appearance (so if I didn't find a bed soon I would have lost everything!)

- Me Messing with "Set Timescale" in the Console - After getting access to the console back, I tried setting timescale to 0 to keep the sunny weather for building purposes. (BTW don't ever do this!). Sleeping in a bed while forgetting to reset the timescale to 20 (default) caused all textures to NOT load when I woke up. This included, weirdly, the loading screen models as well. So I woke up to a completely black world. This was also a bug that, terrifyingly, carried over to older saves. Luckily I was able to fix it using instructions on some website somewhere (I'll try and find it).
This is probably the root cause of everything, but I'm certain that I've fixed it. using "Get Timescale" shows 20.0000, which is the default.



Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction to fix my save game and get things moving again. Let me know if more info is needed.

[HAMBERLYNN SNEED]

Disabled all mods and loaded a save in Far Harbor. Travelled back to Commonwealth, walked to The Slog, and slept+saved. Then walked around some more, waited at some places, and slept+saved at Taffington Boathouse.

Restarted Fallout and loaded the save. Nothing seems to be fixed. I can still fast travel between settlements (a behaviour implemented by the mod "Journey - Survival Fast Travel" which I had previously), Railroad HQ, and Home plate.

No new settlers anywhere I can see. The Castle is still not cleaned up. It must be my savefile.

[Snine]

Originally posted by BULLY HUNTER_77:

Scrap Everything

This is going to be a source of a lot of your issues with settlements and other places.

Originally posted by BULLY HUNTER_77:

Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch

This will also be another source of issues. (It created more issues for me than it fixed back when I only used this mod AND cheat terminal.)

[HAMBERLYNN SNEED]

Originally posted by SnowGodz:

Originally posted by BULLY HUNTER_77:

Scrap Everything

This is going to be a source of a lot of your issues with settlements and other places.

Originally posted by BULLY HUNTER_77:

Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch

This will also be another source of issues. (It created more issues for me than it fixed back when I only used this mod AND cheat terminal.)

Understandable. But I did have both of these running with no issues for the first half of this game. I'm beginning to think it's definitely something to do with the fact that I messed around with the Timescale setting.

[Jouchebag]

If UFO4P is causing problems it's because your load order is wrong. It's supposed to load at the top, below only official plugins, so that other mods can freely overwrite it's changes if necessary.

If the mod still has compatibility issues with UFO4P, it probably wasn't made very well.

In the case of Cheat Terminal, it has needed constant updates to deal with it's constant problems. It's only stable because the author(s) keeps pounding out updates and even then that's probably not a good sign for a mod that was originally made years ago to still need constant updates. Also, you can do literally all of it's functions with console commands.

Scrapper mods are notoriously buggy.

Never assume "because it worked before" that those mods aren't the problem. If you add a new mod that conflicts with one you already had then boom. Your mod manager does not know all conflicts and incompatibilities.

[=EGC= kansasterry]

Originally posted by BULLY HUNTER_77:

Scrap Everything

The scrap everything mod can allow the scrapping of needed things and has to be used with caution it also requires the optional building ground fix from the mods page or you will find that you can not build on certain areas you could without it for example inside certain buildings or the castle. Note if you scrap the armory door used in the quest you mentioned at the castle before completing that quest it can break things.

Originally posted by BULLY HUNTER_77:

Disabled all mods and loaded a save in Far Harbor. Travelled back to Commonwealth, walked to The Slog, and slept+saved. Then walked around some more, waited at some places, and slept+saved at Taffington Boathouse.

Restarted Fallout and loaded the save. Nothing seems to be fixed. I can still fast travel between settlements (a behaviour implemented by the mod "Journey - Survival Fast Travel" which I had previously), Railroad HQ, and Home plate.

No new settlers anywhere I can see. The Castle is still not cleaned up. It must be my savefile.

The problem here is that even when mods are disabled some script and variable changes have become a permanent part of the save game and will always be there.

What could be causing it is something that has caused certain scripts to stop there is also a console command that will actually pause things and one that even changes the flow of time.

ToggleGamePause or tgp – Puts the game in a frozen state

SetGlobalTimeMultiplier <multiplier> or sgtm <multiplier> – Sets multiplier on in-game time. example, 1.0 is standard time, 0.5 is slow mo, and 0.25 is even slower.


more Info can be found at the site https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_4_console_commands

[Chef]

It sounds like your scripts got locked up. And it could have something to do with the changes you made to the timescale, setting it to 0 could have definitely caused some issues. Also, I agree with Jouche regarding his statements on UFO4P.

One thing you can do it download Fallrim Tools and see whats going on. You are looking for the numbers following Active Scripts, Suspended Stacks 1, Suspended Stacks 2. DO NOT CLEAN ANYTHING!! Just looking to see whats going on with the scripts.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/5031

You should look at adding Workshop Plus. I think you may enjoy what you can do with that mod.
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/35005

[Bored Peon]

Ronnie Shaw is supposed to show up over the Freedom Radio while you are away from The Castle.

As for your settler recruiting issue it could be a number of things.
1. Chance to recruit is like 25% +1/2 your happiness.
2. Recruitment stops if you have four unassigned settlers (and you have visited for them to receive the flag.)
3. You messed with the timescale (something you should never do.)

Scrapping the armory door wouldnt prevent the starting of Old Guns. Many of those people who used it got stuck after it started.

You are also confusing Radio Freedom and Preston's roles.

Preston will ALWAYS give you a radiant quest (whether help is need or not), and can give multiples if you have multiple unowned settlements, settlements with a defense less than 12, and THEN a normal radiant is tossed on top, if no settlements need actual help.

Radio Freedom is designed to be able to check if any settlements need actual help. Settlements have a chance every day that is REALLY low to generate their own radiant. Preston and Radio Freedom were provided to avoid you having to go visit all the settlements to see if any needs help.

I got away from using Scrap Everything and I just use the Place Everywhere mod which has some of those same major items in the library to scrap. It also does this without breaking precombined meshes.

[HAMBERLYNN SNEED]

Originally posted by =EGC= kansasterry:

The problem here is that even when mods are disabled some script and variable changes have become a permanent part of the save game and will always be there.

What could be causing it is something that has caused certain scripts to stop there is also a console command that will actually pause things and one that even changes the flow of time.

ToggleGamePause or tgp – Puts the game in a frozen state

SetGlobalTimeMultiplier <multiplier> or sgtm <multiplier> – Sets multiplier on in-game time. example, 1.0 is standard time, 0.5 is slow mo, and 0.25 is even slower.


more Info can be found at the site https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_4_console_commands

Thanks for this. I wasn't aware that these commands existed.

Unfortunately, from testing them I don't feel these have anything to do with the problems I'm having. I did think, seeing "TPG" in your post, that at one point I might have entered this into the console and never switched it off - causing the background world of the game to "pause" and not progress.

But TGP doesn't do that. It freezes everything, without the possibility of making any character progress (because you literally can't move lol). So I don't think I've ever used this command. I would have remembered, and needed to switch it off to continue playing.

I think when I fixed this:

Originally posted by me:

- Me Messing with "Set Timescale" in the Console - After getting access to the console back, I tried setting timescale to 0 to keep the sunny weather for building purposes. (BTW don't ever do this!). Sleeping in a bed while forgetting to reset the timescale to 20 (default) caused all textures to NOT load when I woke up. This included, weirdly, the loading screen models as well. So I woke up to a completely black world. This was also a bug that, terrifyingly, carried over to older saves. Luckily I was able to fix it using instructions on some website somewhere (I'll try and find it).
This is probably the root cause of everything, but I'm certain that I've fixed it. using "Get Timescale" shows 20.0000, which is the default.

I somehow "baked" the 0 Timescale into my savefile. Is there anyway to dig into a savefile and check?

[Jouchebag]

If it was as simple as timescale being the problem then you could just open the console and reset it yourself any time with the command:

set timescale to 20

Afterwards you may need to sleep/wait for a long (month maybe?) while to see the changes start up.

However, I'm thinking there's deeper problems related to script issues and it's not as simple as getting the time moving again.

That said, I've never actually tried to set timescale to 0 and save it so who ****in' knows.


It just sounds like you've made a number of mistakes installing and uninstalling mods on the same save and playing with console commands. It's about time for a New Game while holding closely what you have learned from the previous screw up. Welcome to modding.

[=EGC= kansasterry]

Originally posted by BULLY HUNTER_77:

Originally posted by =EGC= kansasterry:

The problem here is that even when mods are disabled some script and variable changes have become a permanent part of the save game and will always be there.

What could be causing it is something that has caused certain scripts to stop there is also a console command that will actually pause things and one that even changes the flow of time.

ToggleGamePause or tgp – Puts the game in a frozen state

SetGlobalTimeMultiplier <multiplier> or sgtm <multiplier> – Sets multiplier on in-game time. example, 1.0 is standard time, 0.5 is slow mo, and 0.25 is even slower.


more Info can be found at the site https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Fallout_4_console_commands

Thanks for this. I wasn't aware that these commands existed.

Unfortunately, from testing them I don't feel these have anything to do with the problems I'm having. I did think, seeing "TPG" in your post, that at one point I might have entered this into the console and never switched it off - causing the background world of the game to "pause" and not progress.

But TGP doesn't do that. It freezes everything, without the possibility of making any character progress (because you literally can't move lol). So I don't think I've ever used this command. I would have remembered, and needed to switch it off to continue playing.

I think when I fixed this:

Originally posted by me:

- Me Messing with "Set Timescale" in the Console - After getting access to the console back, I tried setting timescale to 0 to keep the sunny weather for building purposes. (BTW don't ever do this!). Sleeping in a bed while forgetting to reset the timescale to 20 (default) caused all textures to NOT load when I woke up. This included, weirdly, the loading screen models as well. So I woke up to a completely black world. This was also a bug that, terrifyingly, carried over to older saves. Luckily I was able to fix it using instructions on some website somewhere (I'll try and find it).
This is probably the root cause of everything, but I'm certain that I've fixed it. using "Get Timescale" shows 20.0000, which is the default.

I somehow "baked" the 0 Timescale into my savefile. Is there anyway to dig into a savefile and check?

You might try using one of the "safe" range numbers mentioned at the linked page to speed up the timescale multiplier then sleep to see if it resets whatever stopped due to the zero timescale setting.

What we may find is that some scripts that took into account or used the passage of time to set variables etc. have stalled or frozen an earlier post mentioned a way to check on this.

If this is the case I am not certain how to wake up or restart such a script outside of disable enabling the npc or stopping then starting the quest they are attached to however this could cause even more problems concerning quest variables and quest aliases resetting or clearing.

[HAMBERLYNN SNEED]

Reddit just suggested using "sqv min03" in the console to find out what the timer (which should set off "Old Guns") is currently showing.

"Old Guns" should trigger 70 hours after "Taking Independence" is completed.

sqv min03 shows the timer is currently at 69.98 hours.

After waiting for 48 hours; the timer is still at 69.98.

So I have messed up some sort of... global setting to do with, like, the time that runs in the background? I say global because whatever this is is responsible for more stuff than just "Old Guns" not starting.

Regarding general mod stuff: I appreciate the advice on mods, and will keep it all in mind. However, I don't think I've done anything to mess it up. I've only ever installed mods, not uninstalled them, during this playthrough. There was also a definite point in time where everything was fine, with all those mods, and then it wasn't. It's only taken me this long to realise that something was wrong. I've even completed all of Far Harbor with no issues (apart from settlers).

All my mods have run with no issues and have caused no issues either. I'm 99% it's because I messed with the timescale that one time (which is running at 20, the default, causing the datetime in the Pipboy to run fine, just not anything in the background.) Also, I've not scrapped anything that is essential to the game, like the Castle's armory door. Just a few bushes here and there around Sanctuary and Longfellow's cabin.

What I need to do now is to prove or disprove my theory, so, any hints? Once I know for sure, I can see if there is a way to fix it, or just restart my game from the very beginning.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by BULLY HUNTER_77:

Reddit just suggested using "sqv min03" in the console to find out what the timer (which should set off "Old Guns") is currently showing.

"Old Guns" should trigger 70 hours after "Taking Independence" is completed.

sqv min03 shows the timer is currently at 69.98 hours.

After waiting for 48 hours; the timer is still at 69.98.

The problem is the game has two times. Sleeping/waiting time and actual play time. You mostly see it in production form settlements (why you cant wait a day for crops and water to regrow.)

Try going afk for like 20 minutes or so and see if it finishes the last .02 remaining. That last .02 might not be able to be counted down by sleep/wait time.