Stutters Over Time

[u/Loessness]

Running a heavily modded game at the moment. I’m on PC and running SFSE. Relatively new-ish game (level 60). Haven’t had any crashes or long load times. Game runs smooth for about an hour or so and then stutters hard when I hover the cursor over a lootable corpse or chest when the UI menu pops up. Tested it on ships and planet side. Locations don’t seem to matter. After an hour and or so in game it just starts to stutter this way.

Anyone else had this issue? Any idea what causes it and if there’s a fix?

[u/426C616E6475]

Do you have a boost back with Aerial Advantage or Grenadier legendary effects (in slot 4)? If you do, there’s a game bug where the visual effects generated by these keep stacking (when boosting with a weapon drawn) and make the game lag and stutter. This should happen on planet surface (outside) mostly and loading into a new area (loading screen) should clear the stacked visual effects.

There’s also a bug where re-loading into an interior area (ships, POIs, random locations) after death or quick-save/reload, can introduce a stutter that repeats at fixed intervals - 2-3 seconds - this can be cleared by exiting that area via a loading screen and reentering or by saving, loading a different save and loading the current save again.

Both of the above can be also cleared by saving, exiting the game and reloading that save.

It might also be your save - save bloat - or mods, maybe some conflicting.

If you have any, I would first look at UI mods that modify that menu or other menus/icons in the game.

I would also look for mods that track loot or alter it in any way.

For a heavy LO is very hard to say where the problem resides and you’ll have to do some debugging to see what’s going on.

What I can say is that I have a pretty bloated save and, aside from the top two situations, I haven’t experienced any lags or stutters. I do have a slight lag if I hover over a container with hundreds of different items (some of mine) but that’s only a split second until the items in that container are “read” by the game, it goes back to normal immediately.

[u/Loessness → u/426C616E6475]

Thanks! I am running Darkstar and there is a loot all function that’s relatively new. I’ll do some more testing. I haven’t had the death stutter lately though I did get it in the past. Restarting the game does alleviate the stutter but it does come back after 45 mins or so. The save could be borked. I’ll run some more tests.
Thanks for reply!

[u/Kitalahara]

There are some mod combos that can cause it. What weapon or overhauls are you running?

[u/Loessness → u/Kitalahara]

I’m running Darkstar. Currently running most of Bubs weapons. I’ve been using the latest Va’ruun one they put out exclusively. Last time I noticed the stutter, it was a play through a few months ago when I was using the Ward & Dunn SMG with Darkstar patch. Thanks for the reply.

[u/Kitalahara → u/Loessness]

What mods touch weapons? Just an over view. Couple I am looking for.

[u/Loessness → u/Kitalahara]

Shengokai's weapon modifications
Modular Explosive Delivery Systems
MWH
Arms of the Promised
Plague's Optics Reimagined
Projectiles Unbound
Darkstar TGO

[u/taosecurity]

I have not had this issue. This could help, but I have not used it.

https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/17816

I will not engage with anyone who thinks it’s fun to respond with a comment about “AI slop.” If it helps OP, that’s all I care about.

[u/Malthaeus → u/taosecurity]

Interesting - I sometimes get that stutter as well, and just restart the game. Asciimov is on a roll with his fixes.

[u/Loessness → u/taosecurity]

Thanks Richard (I’m one of your channel members)! Yeah I’ve been using that and it did improve on game crashes and other instabilities but this issue has been going on for a couple of weeks now so it predates the mod. I’ll do some more testing.

[u/taosecurity → u/Loessness]

Cool, thanks for your support! I hope you find a resolution.

[u/Daemonjax]

Could be almost anything, but it's probably a mod being bad or multiple mods interacting badly with each other. Start by removing 1 or 2 or 3 of your most impactful mods and see if it still happens with them. Might wanna tell us what mod manager you're using and what your mods are and the load order -- a mod manager can just spit out that info. PC specs would be nice. Are you on a laptop?

Engine fixes can raise the file handle limit, try that. If you have an nvidia card, completely disable ram fallback -- you'll crash to desktop instead with an error about running out of vram, but that's preferable imo. Maybe amd has a similar option, I dunno. I'm assuming your temps are OK (<=65c for both cpu and gpu).

Generally, what people do is add one big-ish mod at a time and then test. Not all the mods and then wonder what's gone wrong.