After stripping down and utilizing every trick I could find, I managed to get my bloated as hell FCOM installation down to a crash once or twice an hour or so. Which is manageable and fine for the most part, but as I was working through everything (I did a fresh install to get rid of my previous bloated useless configuration), I realized that OOO probably comes with enough content that OOO+MMM would easily satisfy me without adding in all the other junk (the only thing I can think I'd truly miss is whatever "named bosses" get imported from Frans). However, after spending more than a day and a half downloading/pyffi'ing many mobs, I really don't want to go through it again. (Although I made OMODs, wish I had went the BAIN route, out of almost everything so I don't have to re-download/pyffi everything)

So the question boils down, does OOO+MMM offer significantly more stability than just FCOM? Obviously I imagine I've got quite a few problems from other mods I've added in as well, but has anyone tried a relatively similar install of the two and found it to be more stable with just OOO+MMM? If that's true, I'll go through it all again. Regardless of how "manageable" it is for me, twice an hour crashes drives me up the wall, but I can't stand the thought of the standard scaling system and if I'm not likely to see an improvement by downgrading, I'll just stick with what is working right now.

Yup, you should have followed my guide...Just kidding. OOO is the core of FCOM, so going the OOO+MMM route takes care of a lot of it. You should be able to manage a more stable setup than the one you have, but if you want to try the MMM+OOO route until you feel like upgrading again, I recently walked someone through the MMM+OOO setup (with BAIN): http://sites.google.com/site/oblivionpoinfo/walkthroughs/baininstallguide. <--The thread is linked at the bottom. If you decide to try FCOM again, I recommend that guide. I am working on a restructured version of the site, which should also improve that guide a great deal. Right now, however, I have spent the last two hours righting up part of one section on the new "Installing Mods" page, so it will take a while...the rewrite...

Edit: From a pure performance perspective, MMM+OOO should be less taxing on your CPU, so it should be more stable overall with the same setup.

In my experience there is crashing and there is CRASHING. Oblivion crash prevention system stops a bunch of those. The 4gp patch is usefull for stopping crashes when Oblivion reaches the 1.8GB limit.

I've been plaing Oblivion from the day it was released. Vanilla, vanilla+000, vanilla+000+MMM, then some other mods, and there were always crashes. Finally FCOM where I would crash at least as often.

However, there has been great improvement over the past year to make the game more stable, specifically mod cleaning and mesh optimization. There are enough success stories and guides (like Blade Of Mercy's 50 steps to crash free FCOM) which prove that if you put in the work up front you can have a stable game.

Question I ask myself is what mods do I really need to achieve the environment I want to play in. I only use FCOM because of the cool Warcry stuff and the OOO quests. I could do without the others but I figure 'in for a penny, in for a pound'.

I will just add in that the 4GB patch is not recommended (because is not completely safe) for 32-bit operating systems.

Important to note that while the crash prevention OBSE plugin does prevent a slew of crashes it can also be a hindrance to debugging what might have caused those crashes and whether you can prevent them yourself through better install management.

That is why I always throw in that extra bit about WeOCPS. Do not use it until you are positive you need it. Ask here first.

Thanks for the advice. I may just go back through and re-install from scratch, getting rid of some things I found weren't worth it in the long run. I wasn't have performance problems in terms of FPS (aside from having a beefy system, I did go through everything I could on reducing system impact), just the damn crashing. I had more the one sound mod, more than one environment mod (all covering different things, but I imagine I can find one to cover most of them, and really all I was after was weather and improved textures), Unique Landscapes with lots of Quest/Content mods (I imagine there is a conflict or two in there, I just love MORE though and couldn't stop adding), so on and so forth. I actually used Blade's guide for most of it, but I suspect my branching and adding at the end probably caused problems.

Although with that in mind I knew I wasn't going to get rid of my problems entirely. I'm too much of a pack rat and content-[censored] not to have plenty of problems. I was just wondering if anyone had compared OOO+MMM and FCOM to see if they had more success one way or another.

You both may be right, I just know what has made a difference for me. Crash prevention cut my CTD in half, the 4gb pach I have not played enough but have reached memory usage of 2.5GB and smooth game. But then I have a 64 bit system.

My take on whether something may be buggy is either everyone or no one. If it happens to some then I will not give up on it, especially if I see improvement for me. Just because some players experience problems and report this, it should not be a blanket warning that it may be buggy. If we followed that rule EVERY mods is causing a problem for someone Best thing is to give it a try and see how it works for you.

Best thing about this is that someone is ALWAYS around on these forums who can offer help and advice.

My site is about improving stability and creating a clean setup, not just boosting FPS. What do you mean by success? OOO+MMM simply has less load order issues to be concerned with. Getting two overhauls to work together is not nearly as difficult, especially as those two do not overlap as much as a full FCOM setup. I used to consider MMM simply a huge creature and diversity adding mods, but it is more overhaul-ish now. However, it is really up to the user to make it that way since MMM is so modular. OOO full is more all-in-one. There are not too many options. It is more of an "as is" overhaul, so its problems are more contained. Overall, those two mods together is a less complicated mess, not to mention MMM's new readme is fantastic. Almost of of the "shoulds" and "should nots" are explicitly found in the ReadMe for the MMM+OOO setup. That is much harder to do with FCOM because it is also modular and covers a lot more ground with more mods that overlap with each other (and used different systems.) Dev_akm could not predict every possible configuration. That is part of the reason why it would be preferable for a user fairly comfortable with mods, especially overhauls, to attempt its installation. That user should have more insight with which to figure out what should be loaded give a certain choice of configuration.

Once again MMMforOOO is pretty much a lighter version of FCOM itself. Has they both the same to be exact with a few changes here and there for fcom itself.

MMMforOOO is going to be lighter on resources than fcom will be. And does not require bash has much either. Bash is still recommended, but, only for compatiblity between other mods.

But the issue of ctd happening is still going to happen, hopefully I have fixed that in the next MMM Release. 2 1/2 to 3 Hourse of gameplay for some with our current UFCOM that we are testing. If the crash does not happen in first 30 minutes that is..

Success means a fairly stable game (a CTD maybe once in a 2 hour game which I achieved by using crash prevention and 4gb patch, down from 1 CTD within every hour). All my FCOM setups only focused on the 4 major mods, Frans, OOO, Warcry, and MMM. I stayed away from the other addins as they were more cosmetic, so never had an issue with FCOM load order. For me Oblivion is about puzzles, quests, sneaking and working for loot, gathering trophies, and of course the fantastic visuals. So mods outside of FCOM are about making the game more immersive and realistic.

What your guide and some others are good for is steps to REALLY put in a good number of mods which can make the game stable and SPECTACULAR, with yours being very well suited for those who don't want to know too much about what is under the hood, just give them the keys and let them drive.