I have a game that seems to be loading TONS of BoS Soldiers at the front gates of the Citadel.
I have no idea what could be causing the issue, but I'll try to explain...

This is a little hard to describe...

When my lvl 26 character gets near (I don't know how near) The Citadel, F3 slows to a crawl. I drop to 1-2 FPS and have a slide show.
If I let the game sit and do its thing, it will never fix itself and crashes the computer after 3-4 min. Yes. Crash the computer. Locks up F3 and F3 refuses to release back to Windows XP. Majorly annoying.

When the area is loaded, regardless of savegame or fast travel, F3 slows to a serious crawl and crashes.

I have all DLC installed and I'm thinking this is an issue with BS DLC and possibly a conflict with MMM and/or load order....

Through experimentation and a suggestion from Tarrant, I discovered that the problem appears to be LOTS AND LOTS of Brotherhood of Steel soldiers being generated at (on top of) the Citadel front gate. Due to the nature of the problem, I could not get any good screens, except one.

Tarrant suggested I console "killall" once I entered the area to see if that fixed the problem. It did not. ;P

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/4443/fallout3200909221749594.jpg Whyy they are unclothed, I don't know...

In each of the 2 corners above the gate, there are what "should" be single BoS soldiers. They are mass producing in my game and since they are "dead" via "killall", their bodies are tumbling over the rail and piling up outside. A bit hard to see in the pic...

Anyways, without using killall, if I can manage to get my character close enough to the gates, I can see tons of fully armored BoS standing up on top of the gate at the corners. It appears that they are being mass generated on top of each other.

I'm asking for 3 things:
1. What is the optimum load order for all DLC.
2. Has anyone heard of this problem?
3. What is the fix?

In the meantime, I'll peruse the MMM thread, try to find some answers, keep futzing around with it and deactivating plug-ins.
I'm not posting my load order yet to save a little initial time. I'll get it up there in another post.

Thanks and I hope you enjoyed the read if nothing else.

Well, I am in agreement with MMM being the culprit. I don't use it anymore after it messed up my last game. I also have encountered huge mass spawns of creatures. Mind posting your load order?

:lmao:

But anyhows, no MMM wouldn't cause something like this under normal circumstances. Please do post your load order.

Does MMM even touch the BOS soldiers?

wow .....

Hmmmm.. Have you tried using FO3Edit MasterUpdate option (MUM) ?

If not, I recommend trying that if you can't figure this out. MasterUpdate has a tendency to fix Alot of crash problems in my mod list (150+), and I couldn't play crash-free without it anymore.

There is a section on how to setup MasterUpdate and MasterRestore in the FO3Edit manual if you have any questions.

Luck!

Miax

Here are some things I would try to do at this point.

There's a console command "tai". It's a toggle. See if that helps calm the game down at all.

Try to get so you can somehow get close enough to a body to where you can be in console mode and click it? I know I may be asking the impossible here, but yeah.

If the number on the corpse starts with "FF", then it corresponds with what one would expect to see from an MMM spawned doo-hickey.

If it somehow does not start with FF, and if the first 2 digits of it are not 00, grab the first 2 digits of it, and then examine your load order closely. Those 2 digits will match the load position of the .esm or .esp that it is defined in. For example if its broken steel defined and broken steel was loaded right after fallout3.esm, the corpse's ID will start with 01 (fallout3.esm being 00).

See what that brings...

I have this thing open in the GECK right now and it makes your screenshot make more sense. These are two MQ11-named BOS guard spawnpoints which, looking at your screenshot, looks like they are pouring NPCs out. I cannot imagine that MMM would intentionally touch those. However, when you trace out their base object all the way, it goes back to EncBrotherhoodOfSteelGun as the base object. So, i'm not sure.

However, this is getting weird...

I have Broken Steel and Fallout3.esm loaded. I see code where these refs are disabled twice - once in MQ11 quest stage 30, and then they get disabled again by the big script that helps manage the Liberty Prime walk. However, I cannot find the code where they are enabled. Anywhere. Either its not there, or the GECK's text search is not finding it for me.

Additionally, the refs are not initially disabled and do not have an enable parent. That's atypical for anything involved with MQ11. I know because I've gone over MQ11 in the past, looking at exactly this stuff.

I unloaded Broken Steel and everything looks the same with these guards. I don't think Broken Steel messes with them.

I don't know why the guards are like that, I can't know what was intended with them, but it just looks strange.

I'd like you to try this:

Do not go to the cell. Type in console:

prid 0008de16
disable
prid 0008de17
disable

3) go to the cell. see what's going on.

If it doesn't stop the problem, try doing the commands in the cell while the rapidspawning is happening.

If it stops the problem, reload the bad save, then travel to the cell, do a killall, then do the other console commands. Then, walk up to one of the corpses (if there are any), go into console, and click it, and see if its number starts with "FF"

This isn't necessarily a permanent fix, if it even does anything .... it may restart again when the cell resets, or at some point in the future. But good news is, I think I can make an .esp in like, 60 seconds, that should stop this permanently. We need to see if disabling them at console settles it for the time being, though.

This is likely to be MMM causing this, and likely due to not following the upgrade instructions for a clean-save at the top of the MMM thread. Any form of additive spawning is usually a result of upgrading from MMM RC 3.X to 4.X and not following the clean-save instructions (that's why they're there). This process won't be necessary for future updates, but is necessary when moving to RC 4.X.

If it persists after doing the above, I'd be very interested to know.

EDIT: why they're naked is definitely not related to MMM What else are you loading?

Thanks for everyones help on this.

@Martigen: It worked! I almost feel like an idiot... almost.

Before I had this problem, I followed the instructions and did the clean save method when I upgraded from MMM 3.x to 4.1, BUT...
Apparently I did something wrong or forgot one of the modules. This time I included the plug-in Foes Reworked NG "Mart's Muntant Mod MMF4 - Foes Reworked NG.esp". Not sure if it would effect my issue, but I included it this time.

@Tarrant: Great instructions and amazing insight one can get from "behind the scenes". These troubleshooting tips for figuring out the problem are great stuff.

Closed per OP request.