Since the end of last year I have been working on refining the ballistics and damage in the game to bring it close to realistic levels. It adds bleeding and explosive concussion. It models gravity and bullet drop and uses a milling reticle to allow for relatively realistic range finding and shot adjustment. The mod also changes most of the weapons models and aligns them to allow use of Ironsights.

I have been tweaking the damn thing for ages and I have just about got it where I want it, but through trial and error, I have come to realize that it is the cause of most of my recent CTDs.
:shakehead:

Crashes seem to occur when shooting, especially in darkness.
I have run a conflict check with FO3Edit and it's clean.

Any suggestions on how I might determine what the problem is?
There is no way I can go back to playing the stock game. If I cant get this sorted, I think I may take this as a sign to just pack it in.

Problem solved!

I believe I have hit upon the cause of my instability.
I was almost at my wits end, the crashes seemed almost random. It was rare to manage 15 minutes without a CTD.
But before saying 'to hell with it' and wiping the game off the drive, I made on final sweep through all the changes I had made.

I've changed and tweaked a lot of weapon models, and while looking at a hand axe I had bashed together, I realized that I had added a branch but left it unnamed!
:facepalm:
I gave it a name, saved and booted the game...
Then proceded to play for a couple of flawless hours.
It seems that this has solved the problem!
http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff292/VonGrantoven/HandAxe.jpg

If any of you are having stability issues, it may be worth having a look at any models you have installed.

How did you determine it was the axe (you said initially the bug occured when shooting and in darkness), presume it was an NPC wielding it?

As an aside, MMM still has the odd instability issue and I've wondered for some time if they may be model realted (mainly because I've been over the code with a nano-scale fine-tooth comb and I'm out of ideas for any possible causes), but I don't have time to go through all the models and find out if any have issues like you describe.

Anyone willing to do so will get a mention in the credits, even if no issue are found Don't suppose you'd be interested gurachn seeing as you seem to know your way around nifskope?

I can't actually remember the game crashing when I was fighting an axe-wielder, but it is certainly possible as I use the axe as a replacement for the switchblade(a particularly weak weapon for a bad-a$$ wastelander), so axes are commonly found on my raiders.
Actually the crashes also happened even when not in combat. Maybe somewhere in the cell a raider was trying to axe-up some molerat?
In any case, I grabbed an axe off a dead guy, but had a crash when I tried to pull it out.
So that lead me to check.
Since I fixed it, the game seems stable, even with MMM!

I am most comfortable with playing around with NiTriStrips for weapons. Monsters are mainly NiNodes, which I am not that familiar with, so I don't know if I would be able to recognize potential problems with those.
Still, I would be happy to have a check through and look to see if there are any unnamed elements.
It could take me a while though, as I have a few other things to take care of over the next week.