Even before I had discovered mods, upon saving a game I'd look below the recent save and see that the saves were increasing in number, no matter how many times I'd autosave or replace 'Save 2'. I'm up to 'Save 30' now and increasing. I read that eventually my saves will crash. My question is, how do I prevent the saves from increasing?

That is just the naming convention for save games. Nothing to worry about.

I usually try and restrict the number of saves in my folder to under 200. (not by the Save-XXX number, but, by the physical number of files in the folder.)

Hey, I think you helped me on another topic, haven't you? You are really nice, thanks.

So is it ok to manually delete some saves? That won't affect anything, will it?

Nope. Won't hurt a thing. I do so on a regular basis. Just make sure you don't delete the save that you want..... (don't ask......)

And: Thanks.

I normally cut and paste save games from the default storage location to a back up location rather than performing an outright deletion, just in case. The A-Bomb bug, which you may be refering to, that some experience after a certain number of game play hours is a different story but can be fixed using a program like the OAF to reset the hex bit and resolve secondary animation slowdowns. I was hit with this recently and was able to continue on with the game after using http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5127. The A-Bomb bug is described in detail http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/813915-slowfrozen-doors-fire-spell-etc-animations-thread-8-of-jittering-doorseffectsobjects/.