You should be able to just install this framework like any other mod. MO2 will want to put it all the way at the top in the same place it puts mods such as Workshop Framework and the Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch.
I’m trying to reduce overhead by removing redundant mods to resolve CTDs that I think are related to loading new cells.
I like SKK Combat Stalkers (reduced frequency of spawns to 10-15mins, Patrols only) and SKK Random Encounter Manager (default, vanilla encounters enabled) to spice up the Commonwealth. Not by much, just enough to keep me on my toes.
I’m also currently stacking several other mods that do similar things, like NPCs Travel, Commonwealth Encounters, You and What Army 2, Gun for Hire, Gunner Hit Squads, Less Vertibirds etc - probably half of those listed on the patch list for Random Encounter Framework.
I suspect for the sake of stability that SKK and NPCs Travel should be dropped as everything else integrates into REF. Would you agree with this or is it safe to stack all of these together?
The main issue is I’m seeing NPC pathing crashes in Buffout crash logs that may or may not be related to random encounters.
This has happened right out of Sanctuary with just Dogmeat on the team and I only take at most one more companion using Everyone’s Best Friend.
The NPC path crash is sporadic, but has happened at Red Rocket with the first molerat encounter, which isn’t random. No random NPCs were loaded into the zone.
I was under the impression that NPC pathing crashes were tied to navmeshing, but I'll admit I never really looked into it all that much. I can tell you that any mod with makes NPCs more commonly encountered (such as many of SKK's mods and NPCs Travel) will also increase the risk of NPC-related encounters.
This mod doesn't actually make NPCs more or less frequently encountered and is instead just a compatibility framework for a system that was not designed with modding compatibility in mind.
How would you debug the issue? I don’t think it’s REF at all, but it might be related to additional enemy spawns from SKK Combat Stalkers.
I guess the best thing to do is to disable SKK mods and see if it resolves, but that doesn’t explain the Red Rocket molerat crash, other than maybe another group of NPCs were loaded elsewhere in the cell.
Not your problem, just thinking more NPCs equals higher risk of NPC path crashes and Combat Stalkers makes the most sense for navmeshing to the player (hence patrols only), but it’s not a reported bug.
Back to the original question - is it safe to stack so many random encounter mods together? I suspect using only those patched into REF would be the best approach to minimise conflicts.
I’m just aiming for stability at this point, so maybe just enabling REF (may not even be needed) with Commonwealth Encounters and YAWA2 is the safest option for that little bit of extra combat I’m looking for between quests.
This is the type of issue that can be very difficult to debug. You can spend ages testing every mod individually and together only to find out that it was your save tile. You can also find out that it was a mod that has nothing to do with NPCs in any way.
What I would start with is creating a persistent test case where I can reliably trigger the bug. Then I would disable half of my mods and try to trigger the bug. If it still triggers, one of the mods I didn't disable may be involved. If it goes away, one of the mods I disabled may be the cause. I would then repeat with each increasingly small group of mods until I either narrow down the (potential) cause or run out of mods to test.
I did some poking around old Posts for the various encounter mods I'm trying to shoe-horn together. There are about a dozen reports of NPC path CTDs using NPCs Travel with SKK Combat Stalkers &/or SKK Random Encounter Manager. So it does look like I'll need to use one or the other.
Is there any way to patch NPCs Travel into REF? If not, no biggie, I'll just disable it.
NPCs travel uses a fundamentally different approach, unfortunately. I'd need to tear that mod to pieces and then rebuild it from the ground up in order to hook it into the random encounter system.
I have a question does this mod require new game? installed it shortly after i started a save with the encounter pack and few of the mods list it as requirement but so far i havent really seen much encounters even the vanilla ones have decreased
This mod will work fine, but you may not see it in action because the unofficial patch resolves several bugs that cause random encounter points to stop spawning new encounters. From a new game, all encounter points work just fine, but without the unofficial patch, every time you find a random encounter there's a high chance that it will break the encounter point that spawned it and prevent new encounters from spawning later.
My mod does not specifically make that mod obsolete (there's even a patch for it in my patch hub). As for fixing random encounters, no. This is purely a framework that reorganizes the data the game uses to pick which encounter to run, in order to better allow mods to add new random encounters without conflicting with each other or making rarity dependent on load order. I consider editing the encounters themselves to be outside the scope of this mod, as a framework should be purpose built and limit its changes to that purpose.
That said, I do occasionally fix random encounters. When that happens, I typically post the fixes as mods while also submitting them to the unofficial patch so that my standalone fixes will eventually become unnecessary.
Alright, good to know. The reason I asked about the second question was because I had been talking with LarannKair a little while ago and learned from them about a random encounter that's in a similar vein to the one revolving around a group of settlers getting harassed by Raiders, only this one involves scavengers and Synths. I've been playing Fallout 4 since the day it was released and I've never once seen that encounter, and I'm wondering if the encounter is bugged out for me.
Gotta be out in the rural section of The Commonwealth and kicked out of The Institute for the encounter to trigger you say? That might explain why I've never seen this random encounter before. I'm still on good terms with The Institute on my current playthrough. Planning on breaking ties with them soon, though, so good to know what I might need to do to get the random encounter to trigger.
On that note, is that encounter, and the Raider/Settler version, a one-time thing, or can they happen multiple times?
Either way, thanks for the information. I'll keep what you explained in mind going forward.
One more thing, on the topic of bug fixes, is there any chance you could take a look at the quest, or script, that handles the bounty boards in Diamond City? There seems to be a long-standing issue where the three bounty boards in town can only generate a few bounty notices before bugging out and breaking entirely, and I seem to have recently run into the problem.
Can this possibly cause some of the permanent object encounters such as the rad barrels (the slew of them, not the one with a few barrels and the irradiated critter) to vanish? Had some of the barrels by the river near Oberland vanish after an in-game day or so after encountering them for the first time. Dunno if it's Bethesda being Bethesda of if I goofed on something. Or alternatively, can I get a new one to respawn if the other encounter vanished into the aether? That or the super mutants across the river at the water plant nabbed them.
Nothing I did here can do that, no. The only thing this mod touches is the system the game uses to pick a new random encounter. And with how the quests for object encounters are meant to be set up, those shouldn't be able to vanish in the first place. From a technical perspective, things spawned by most encounters vanish because they are marked as temporary and get cleaned up with the quest. Objects spawned by object encounters are not temporary, and thus stick around even when the quest is no longer running.
The encounter point next to Oberland Station that you mentioned is definitely a random object encounter point, and the encounter you described is REObjectSC04. Which is, unfortunately, not built properly. I'll post a bugfix for it sometime soon. That encounter has temporary barrels and permanent radiation hazards.
Anyway, as far as resetting it goes, the following two console commands should do it if run in this specific order while you're at oberland: prid 00240BAE callfunction ReArmTrigger
Mind, this won't get rid of the invisible rad hazard. If you can select those via console you should be fine disabling them, but I'm not sure that's actually possible.
That's the weird part. There wasn't any radiation hazard in that area even after the barrels vanished. It was as if the entire encounter never happened in the first place. In any case, I did the command codes you mentioned and everything is fixed. Got the fridge encounter as a test to experiment on and that's staying now (with the previous rad barrels, the encounter vanished as soon as I loaded a save outside that cell). Much obliged for your help!
Odd, you're right about the radiation hazard. Apparently quest aliases don't handle those properly and they delete themselves immediately on unload. I'm looking into a way to prevent that. As it stands, it looks like the issue with radiation hazards is why the barrels are also marked temporary and thus allowed to despawn.
This is a framework that rearranges Bethesda's random encounter system internally to allow for mods to add to it without conflicting with each other. It is meant to be used as a dependency by other mods rather than doing something purely on its own.
SKK's mod hijacks the original random encounter spawnpoints in order to place enemies from leveled lists. They can be used together so long as you don't turn off base game random encounters in SKK's settings.
Probably a stupid question here. This being a framework, is it for use by other mod creators, or can this be useful for anyone to reduce the automotron encounters? I always delay and sometimes avoid entirely the first encounter with Ada just because the DLC seems to muck up my entire game once started, despite the storyline being one of the better ones.
A little of both. It is intended to be a compatibility framework to allow for more easily adding random encounters, but as a side effect of how the framework is set up, it creates a moderate change in the rarity of some encounters (especially the Automatron ones). That side effect will still happen even if you don't install anything that uses the framework.
112 comments
Where should I put The REFramework to make it work?
I like SKK Combat Stalkers (reduced frequency of spawns to 10-15mins, Patrols only) and SKK Random Encounter Manager (default, vanilla encounters enabled) to spice up the Commonwealth. Not by much, just enough to keep me on my toes.
I’m also currently stacking several other mods that do similar things, like NPCs Travel, Commonwealth Encounters, You and What Army 2, Gun for Hire, Gunner Hit Squads, Less Vertibirds etc - probably half of those listed on the patch list for Random Encounter Framework.
I suspect for the sake of stability that SKK and NPCs Travel should be dropped as everything else integrates into REF. Would you agree with this or is it safe to stack all of these together?
The main issue is I’m seeing NPC pathing crashes in Buffout crash logs that may or may not be related to random encounters.
This has happened right out of Sanctuary with just Dogmeat on the team and I only take at most one more companion using Everyone’s Best Friend.
The NPC path crash is sporadic, but has happened at Red Rocket with the first molerat encounter, which isn’t random. No random NPCs were loaded into the zone.
This mod doesn't actually make NPCs more or less frequently encountered and is instead just a compatibility framework for a system that was not designed with modding compatibility in mind.
I guess the best thing to do is to disable SKK mods and see if it resolves, but that doesn’t explain the Red Rocket molerat crash, other than maybe another group of NPCs were loaded elsewhere in the cell.
Not your problem, just thinking more NPCs equals higher risk of NPC path crashes and Combat Stalkers makes the most sense for navmeshing to the player (hence patrols only), but it’s not a reported bug.
Back to the original question - is it safe to stack so many random encounter mods together? I suspect using only those patched into REF would be the best approach to minimise conflicts.
I’m just aiming for stability at this point, so maybe just enabling REF (may not even be needed) with Commonwealth Encounters and YAWA2 is the safest option for that little bit of extra combat I’m looking for between quests.
What I would start with is creating a persistent test case where I can reliably trigger the bug. Then I would disable half of my mods and try to trigger the bug. If it still triggers, one of the mods I didn't disable may be involved. If it goes away, one of the mods I disabled may be the cause. I would then repeat with each increasingly small group of mods until I either narrow down the (potential) cause or run out of mods to test.
New saves every time, never progressed further than the triangle of death to find the cause of the crash.
Thanks for your help, much appreciated.
Is there any way to patch NPCs Travel into REF? If not, no biggie, I'll just disable it.
All good, I'll keep it simple and use the mods that have already been patched for REF and ditch the rest. Thanks!
Edit: If you want more information on the bugs I'm referring to, Sclerocephalus was pretty vocal about them while digging into and fixing the random encounter scripts.
That said, I do occasionally fix random encounters. When that happens, I typically post the fixes as mods while also submitting them to the unofficial patch so that my standalone fixes will eventually become unnecessary.
On that note, is that encounter, and the Raider/Settler version, a one-time thing, or can they happen multiple times?
One more thing, on the topic of bug fixes, is there any chance you could take a look at the quest, or script, that handles the bounty boards in Diamond City? There seems to be a long-standing issue where the three bounty boards in town can only generate a few bounty notices before bugging out and breaking entirely, and I seem to have recently run into the problem.
Dunno if it's Bethesda being Bethesda of if I goofed on something.
Or alternatively, can I get a new one to respawn if the other encounter vanished into the aether? That or the super mutants across the river at the water plant nabbed them.
The encounter point next to Oberland Station that you mentioned is definitely a random object encounter point, and the encounter you described is REObjectSC04. Which is, unfortunately, not built properly. I'll post a bugfix for it sometime soon. That encounter has temporary barrels and permanent radiation hazards.
Anyway, as far as resetting it goes, the following two console commands should do it if run in this specific order while you're at oberland:
prid 00240BAE
callfunction ReArmTrigger
Mind, this won't get rid of the invisible rad hazard. If you can select those via console you should be fine disabling them, but I'm not sure that's actually possible.
In any case, I did the command codes you mentioned and everything is fixed. Got the fridge encounter as a test to experiment on and that's staying now (with the previous rad barrels, the encounter vanished as soon as I loaded a save outside that cell).
Much obliged for your help!
SKK's mod hijacks the original random encounter spawnpoints in order to place enemies from leveled lists. They can be used together so long as you don't turn off base game random encounters in SKK's settings.
Edit: As of SS3 CH3 v3.2.2, they are still compatible with each other. You should be good to go.