I am running 135 after my stint with 180 mods broke spectacularly after a while. And even then I sometimes get weird glitches when Fast Traveling, like, textures going crazy and then getting fixed when Fast traveling to another location that is just a few meters away.
A lot of the mods are compatibility patches. I could merge a few of the weapon and armor mods into one plugin, but it runs good enough for me not to bother...yet. I think many problems with mods are compatibility related. Sometimes it's as easy as opening FNVedit and finding what is interfering with what. Actually I think my mod manager is counting that many mods because of a huge armor pack that came in 30 separate updates that were combined into one, but loaded into the manager as separate. Eh. Anyway.
I'm hoping Fallout 4 isn't
too much more advanced graphically than Skyrim so my pc can run it with a shit load of mods.
I'm interested as to why people feel that modding can save a game?
If you add roaming armies in a world that was not designed with them in mind, it will always feel out of place. The world will not react to them in a logical manner. Even the combat/difficulty modifications almost always have some strange artefacts that are very obvious. Like some enemy that was enhanced by the modders, to make the combat more interesting. But then he goes in an area where he kills off stuff he shouldn't kill, because the world was not developed with thse new enhanced abilities in mind.
When I add mods I'm fairly discriminating about the things that you just mentioned. You can work within the boundaries of the vanilla game world without having a mods creatures/NPC's randomly murdering Trudy as she walks to her house. The truth is if you mod the game to your liking you get what you want, unless you have serious grievances with a large portion of the game. I managed to get a few extra hours out of Fallout 3 due to mods and even enjoy it in the process. Did it disappoint? Yeah a bit, but mods made it hurt less. That is why I harp on about it so much.
I guess if you expect the developers to produce your dream Fallout game that is nice and all, but every Fallout game has needed mods to truly shine, even the old ones. Take for example, your example, of buffing NPC's artificially due to a mod attempting to add challenge. My fix for that is to go into the GECK and alter that NPC to be more reasonable, something closer to vanilla maybe slightly harder. So modding a mod basically. I've found that with all my mods running the NCR and Legion fight a lot more, there is no collateral damage, as in NPC's dying who shouldn't, and the game is much more to my liking.
Skyrim modders managed to make a hypothermia mod among a great many other things. Might we see something like that in Fallout 4? Hardcore mode in New Vegas was created by Fallout 3 modders so it isn't without precedent. New settlements can be added into a game without shattering lore. Sure, having Enclave troops drop in via Vertibird does change the game world, but those mods aren't for you. Take New Vegas Bounties 1 and 2 for instance. There isn't anything lore shattering there. It's a well done mod that increases the replay value, without artificially buffing the difficulty.
