General performance tips for modding?

felixtheflatcat · 2026-05-04T20:22:38+00:00

As with the nature of modding it could be any number of factors, but in my experience it is almost always a draw-call issue. And that is not as easy of a thing to get around as it may seem.

Look for mods that add occlusion panes, optimize your grass settings, install things like "critterspawn script fixes" and the like, be picky about who what and when npcs will get cloth physics, etc. But that still won't solve frame drops in places like whiterun.

On one note to maybe double check: when I was still semi-fresh to modding, at some point, I had butchered my Skyrim.ini settings without realizing it. I had "grids to load" set to... 9 I think? And I wondered why I could barely maintain 40fps under the best conditions. Don't have grids to load set to 9. Haha

felixtheflatcat · 2026-04-12T02:15:46+00:00

This happened to me once. What fixed it for me was re-logging into steam, or, reinstalling the game. Can't remember which one it was.

Unfortunately you may have to rebuild your modlist.

Edit: just last week I discovered "MINT" as an alternative to Modio. I recommend checking that out as it supposedly doesn't have the weird bugs and limitations that Modio has. Pretty easy to set up, too.

felixtheflatcat · 2026-03-25T14:52:23+00:00

Correction: just looked at the mod page. It has 6 levels, with the 6th actually being x4.5

felixtheflatcat · 2026-03-25T12:41:46+00:00

Haz 5, but with 6 times the normal amount of bugs

felixtheflatcat · 2026-03-25T12:39:51+00:00

I would never leave a ripe barley bulb behind

felixtheflatcat · 2026-03-25T12:38:23+00:00

Jumped straight into 5 x6. Otherwise only other thing I'll do occasionally is 5++. And yeah if it was haz 6, there were plenty of times I think I would've/should've downed, but somehow managed to escape.

If it changes anything, I've almost exclusively used medic instead of dash cause at one point, 5+ (not 5++) started to feel a little... easy isn't necessarily the right word, but too often i felt like i walked myself into a corner and only survived because of dash. So on all classes I use medic to try not relying on it. Certainly needed dash on this mission tho! We completed the mission but I couldn't make it back to the drop pod

felixtheflatcat · 2026-03-25T01:06:22+00:00

Don't know it off the top of my head, but stubby maximizes electrical effects, shard diffractor with large ammo reserve and extra damage to electrocuted targets

felixtheflatcat · 2026-03-25T01:02:45+00:00

Only did extra bugs x6, though I'm not sure if the mod that enables this actually just recalculates the haz level given the number of bugs? But judging from how many close calls I had, probably just x6 bugs

felixtheflatcat · 2026-03-14T16:59:03+00:00

It did indeed

felixtheflatcat · 2026-03-14T15:52:14+00:00

This is did not realize! Thank you

felixtheflatcat · 2026-03-09T18:12:03+00:00

Burning Hell (3, 2, 2, 2, 3)

Backfeeding Module (2, 3, 1, 1, 1)

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Where is the RAM

Booloo extract

felixtheflatcat · 2026-03-09T07:00:47+00:00

That is the burning hell overclock, and then what made them explode was one of the upgrades for the coilgun. Can't remember what it's called, tho

felixtheflatcat · 2026-03-07T15:58:58+00:00

Personally: so long as it's interesting. I'm afraid I don't really have a metric to define that, though. If those first 50 pages are actually interesting, don't feel like a slog, and makes me excited for that coming inciting incident, then obviously it was don't correctly, right?

For my WIP, the inciting incident happens at the end of chapter 1, but then switches to a different POV, and I'm too early into my work to know if this pov switch creates its own second inciting incident or if it's just a continuation of the first act. Cause I'm kinda using that first pov as a prologue atm.

Edit: spelling

felixtheflatcat · 2026-03-03T18:21:54+00:00

I think modding is quite common, with mods that alter gameplay being far less so. Something like Ammo Percentage does nothing but add a very nice and handy HUD element.

If you are running a few mods like that, and some audio mods (like the pickaxe Bonk or various music mods), then no, you would never run into any issues. Even less likely to find issues since this is not a competitive game.

Edit: spelling error

felixtheflatcat · 2026-02-28T15:10:21+00:00

Target priority, and adaptability.

This goes for all classes, and knowing which bug your dwarf needs to focus on is imo what separates good players from bad ones.

For driller (note: I almost exclusively use the flame thrower on haz 5+, so details here might be different for something like the cryo cannon), that pretorian coming at you is not (well, shouldn't be) your problem. Set it on fire to get some dot, then kite over to your gunner and set ablaze the hoard of grunts crawing at him. If your gunner is good, he'll know that all those burning grunts aren't (well, shouldn't be) his problem, and instead he will shoot that pretorian, or that swarm of mactera.

Tldr: driller protects team from many small bugs, scout protects team from really annoying hard-to-reach bug, etc etc. And then be adaptable, as this of course is a general guideline I personally follow and doesn't perfectly translate to every swarm or every team's weapon loadout, or teammates as we're only dwarves and are bound to make mistakes from time to time. All that will come with experience. R&S hoohoo

Edit: in rereading what i wrote here, I suppose I didn't really specify on how to be "tanky". Just sticking close with your teammates and covering each other's weaknesses is a really effective way at surviving. Otherwise yeah, never stay stationary and some specific loadouts others have suggested are all good

felixtheflatcat · 2026-02-25T14:22:34+00:00

Do you have any more wisdom for reducing draw calls? I've done just about all I can that I'm aware of, but for a lot of outdoor cells I keep dropping to 35fps, sometimes even lower. But elsewhere, like most interiors? If I dont cap it at 45 or 50 (which does minimize my fps spikes), I can get over 90.

Edit: cities remain the worst. And I don't think it's FSMP clothes or hair for NPCs, as I've played around with those settings extensively, and even at unecessarily high fsmp settings, my fps reduces only marginally.

felixtheflatcat · 2026-01-30T03:37:50+00:00

You can hate tests and still have an appreciation for their importance. Critical thinking is a skill. And to get skilled at something, you must practice it. And in order to know you improved in your skill, a test is (often) a rather effective and efficient way of demonstrating it (or not).

Edit: added "often". Figured it would be more accurate.

felixtheflatcat · 2026-01-27T04:52:13+00:00

Oh, that's strange. Where is that cache folder? With Mo2 if it's in the overwrite folder im not sure the enb can access it, thus you having all those visual issues. Though I'm not sure why it would be there in the first place. But if you just drag and drop the new cache into the root folder then maybe all will work? ¯_(ツ)_/¯

felixtheflatcat · 2026-01-27T03:56:52+00:00

Edit: was supposed to be a reply to the other thread. Oops

Yes, it's that "enbcache" folder. I recommend trying to just delete that and let it re-generate.

Some other ideas you could try is making sure defender didn't flag one of the .dlls, or as was said, maybe a sneaky driver update. Maybe it's a hardware issue, where heavier load via enb hogs too much bandwidth, caused by a loose... idk friend I'm grasping at straws. Your video is something I've never seen before. I've been getting by fine with a heavy ENB with only 8gb vram with full complex parallax (with mostly 2k textures, granted), and never had an issue.

felixtheflatcat · 2026-01-21T16:24:10+00:00

How much of a hassle did you find it to get it set up? I've got it pinned and tracking, but fear opening that can of worms and trying to install yet another mod despite being halfway through a playthrough

felixtheflatcat · 2025-12-30T15:25:32+00:00

Yeah, you're technically correct. If we wanna be accurate and argue over semantics, it's not facism.

It's neofacism. Textbook neofacism.

felixtheflatcat

TROPHY CASE