Thanks again Worm, I think I meant to put a decimal point there but it was 5am, that'll teach me.

I always run a lot of mods and never have issues with them that weren't created by me.

On a side-note, I'm curious to see what mods I will even deem necessary for this game. The settlement and weapon building was added so that people can essentially "mod" within the game itself. For me, this will likely present enough variation to not bother with any weapon's or house mods. Moreover, the textures and meshes of the game already look pretty good, and the lighting looks awesome. So we'll see.

From my personal experience, I've never seen a mod irreparably damage the game installation or pre-existing saves. If you don't want to "risk" using mods, then don't do so.

Pretty sure from the leaks that there is no "hardcoe mode" (like in New Vegas), but since New Vegas wasn't a Bethesda developed game, there was never any real indication it would be in Fallout 4. The removal of the repair system is a design choice that some players may not like, but I'm willing to give the game a chance without it and then look to mods to add the feature if I feel it's warranted.

In Skyrim and previous games, scripts are stored in the save game, so when you remove from load order or even delete certain mod files from your Data folder, it can result in instability unless you create a brand new character or go back to a save that was made before you installed the mod.

None of us knows yet what differences there might be in terms of stability handling issues that cause mod-related CTD in previous games. Fallout 4 is 64-bit, fortunately, so it can utilize more system memory, and hopefully there will be some sort of new utility features that help manage load order for mods are published on console platform.

In my experience some of the mods with scripting bring so much value to the game that they are well worth it.