What is a 'actor'?

[BeeBop Huckleberry]

What is a actor and what mods use them? I'm pretty sure any mod that adds new characters like travelers or wenches create more actors. But, does increasing the number of birds, bugs, fish, and livestock also increase actors? What about non-living things like adding more lightning or rain or AI overhauls?

I've basically fixed EVERY bug I've noticed by increasing the actor limit to 500 and modifying a few lines in the .ini, but I need to learn more about actors because I still occasionally find a stuck or floating NPC and I'm beginning to suspect the addons that add animal life might be the cause because I've removed all travellers and wenches (which I believed to be the actor problem) but still see the occasional bugged person/animal.

[Vlad 254]

Yes, increasing the number of birds for example have an impact on that particular area.

[smr1957]

Everything - literally - that the game needs to load or save or keep track of has an impact - items in chests, random loot, discarded items - you name it, the game needs to track it. The greater the total number of items, the more the game needs to track, the larger the save, and the greater the impact on performance. If the game has to keep track of too much, it will lag, freeze, or CTD.

[BeeBop Huckleberry]

Originally posted by smr1957:

Everything - literally - that the game needs to load or save or keep track of has an impact - items in chests, random loot, discarded items - you name it, the game needs to track it. The greater the total number of items, the more the game needs to track, the larger the save, and the greater the impact on performance. If the game has to keep track of too much, it will lag, freeze, or CTD.

Understood. I was afraid of that. Can I simply increase the actor limit to 1000 to solve those issues?

[smr1957]

No - that would only make issues worse, increasing the actor limit. If anything, you would want to decrease the number of things the game needs to keep track of, by making a build with mods that do not add as many NPCs, or creatures, or too many hi-res graphics. Increasing the limit is like throwing gasoline on a fire to try and put it out.

[MysticMalevolence]

Any NPC is an actor. This includes humanoid races, enemies, animals, and mannequins.

Increasing the actor limit in the ini may not actually fix everything. That limit could be there for a reason, because of engine-level issues with handling that many actors.
I would suggest using Actor Limit Fix by meh321, to start: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/32349
(Which has some requirements and may not necessarily solve all of your problems either)
And then I'd recommend removing any bird mods you have (you mentioned birds specifically and bird mods are surprisingly hefty).

[BeeBop Huckleberry]

Originally posted by MysticMalevolence:

Any NPC is an actor. This includes humanoid races, enemies, animals, and mannequins.

Increasing the actor limit in the ini may not actually fix everything. That limit could be there for a reason, because of engine-level issues with handling that many actors.
I would suggest using Actor Limit Fix by meh321, to start: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/32349
(Which has some requirements and may not necessarily solve all of your problems either)
And then I'd recommend removing any bird mods you have (you mentioned birds specifically and bird mods are surprisingly hefty).

I'm currently using Actor Limit Fix. It helped the issue a lot. It also helped a lot when I disabled all the mods that add birds, fish, livestock, insects, critters, and other animals. I also disabled mods that had wandering NPC's like wenches and travellers. Basically, anymod that added anytype of animal life has been disabled...

It's much better now. I think I still have a few tweaks left like disabling some flora... but everything seems to be running smooth and the NPC's have been speaking and moving correctly.

After one hour I did finally see one person floating. I may have to disable some more flora.

[smr1957]

And you are rolling back to a save made before you installed those removed mods - I believe you said that you are doing so in your other thread, so just confirm that so that the people who look at this thread don't mention that as an issue.

Also, as to floating NPCs or NPCs who are moving strangely, make sure that you have your FPS locked to 60 (it should be by default), as exceeding 60 FPS can cause some funky issues.

[smr1957]

One last thing - you have several threads - it is a better idea not to open a new thread for each problem that you encounter with the same build. By posting all your questions in one thread, it is easier for people to cross reference the various issues and to see what has already been suggested (such as the not using the same save issue when removing mods that I mentioned, above) - and thus do a better job of helping you.

[BeeBop Huckleberry]

Sounds good. Thanks again.

Anyone else reading this don't forget to roll back to clean saves.

[BeeBop Huckleberry]

I found the main culprit behind floating NPC's, lips not moving, etc...

It was SKYBIRDS!!! It was SkyBirds all along!!!

I reduced the number of birds via the console command and Voilà! Everything was working great (with exception to the bugs that are inherent with SSE)!

I'm totally thrilled.

If anyone else has SkyBirds I strongly l suggest using one of these console commands...
"set _APB_MaxBirds to 20" <----less bugs
or
"set _APB_MaxBirds to 30" <----best balance

Personally I like 30 better than 20 or default (default is 60). 30 has a nice balance of birdlife and fixes all bugs (I did encounter 1 NPC who's mouth would not move... if you encounter this then try a max of 20).

The author swears their mod can't cause issues... but I experienced it first hand and so have MANY other people. It's a great mod, but I think the author should make a lite version.

I have a 7700k oc'd to 5.0GHz... I could only imagine the kind of horror SkyBirds will cause with a potato.