Stainless Steel stable?

[Trias]

Hi there,

I want to go for a new play through in MTW2.

Last time I played Stainless Steel, probably 10 years ago or so, it crashed after 100+ turns, which made me quite sad because I was really having fun in that campaign.

Is that normal, that campaigns in mods like StSt crash sooner or later or was that just bad luck? What's your experience? Maybe the mod is also more stable now?

[Slaytaninc]

Unfortunately by mod standards a single crash after 100 turns is really good, unless you mean there were a bunch of crashes at that point. Do you know how to post logs?

[Trias]

When I say crash, I mean a complete crash so the campaign was unplayable from turn X onward, every time I would end my turn the game would crash. It's many years back, but I don't remember a lot of crashes before that big one that effectively ended my campaign.

So that's normal for most mods?

I don't know how to post logs and this last campaign was on an old computer, so I don't have the safe game anymore.

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

Odd bugs and restarts are all part of the trade but invariably there comes a time in any campaign when it reaches hundreds of turns when it is much more sensitive to failure. This failure is a scenario, generally not possible to predict which confuses the game and results in a fairly consistent crash. It can sometimes though not always be avoided by going back a few turns and changing how you do things so the same circumstance doesn't appear again and you can continue. A new one might happen but, that is the way it goes in time. I do think stainless steel campaigns are a little more sensitive than vanilla, as are all mods which are especially ambitious in nature. Though I've had heavily modded saves run in the 200s-300s.

This mod has literally not changed in over 10 years, but you may have interest in the separate bugfix compilation which may improve general stability. I haven't given it a full run but if it's up your alley, SSHIP is actively in development and generally stable in its releases.

[Trias]

Thanks for explaining. My vanilla campaigns in all TW games I have played so far have been stable: RTW, MTW2, ETW, RTW2. In fact, ETW is the only game where I lost a campaign and in all games I had multiple play throughs where I conquered like 75% of the world before I got bored to finish the last 25%, so all of them in the hundreds.

If the average stainless steel campaign is only a bit more sensitive, I'd give it another go, but if it's rather sure that I won't reach south america, mongols or timurids because the campaign will go down before that, I think I'll be too disappointed and rather go for vanilla.

With that being said: Is there any other mods that kinda keeps the MTW2 principles and enhances them at the same time like StSt that is less likely for me to lose my campaign?

[Kataphractos]

You can get around the End Turn crash by changing the state of the game before hitting the button. Such as moving a unit or two, clearing the recruitment or building queue of a settlement, that kind of thing. I've not reached a point where a game becomes literally unplayable, but I have noticed that crashes do happen more frequently the longer the game goes on, even with the bugfix compilation, so save often and keep a backup save or two.

[Col Poutting]

Hello.
After 15 years or so of not playing SS, greatest MOD of all, ALL HAIL KING KONG!! (wherever his mightiness might be), I downloaded it and started playing again today.
Few things bog me down hard. My game keeps crashing every turn, or every 2nd turn. Once in a while, it says graphical settings are set too high... I promise, my system can handle it lol.
So everything i do important, i make a manual save before and after... turn 10 and already 15 crashes or so lol.
Secondly, I made a new keyboard profile and saved it. is it normal that i have to load the settings everytime i start the game? aka after each crash?
thanks for help, I'd love to crush some peasants again.
ps is there a way to set run as standard?

[Bones4491]

I encounter a lot of graphical related crashes too, which my PC is more than happy handling. Currently reinstalled and applied the Meloo fix mega bundle - including the 4GB RAM patcher.

As I am using Windows 10 I believe there is a requirement to run as administrator and compatibility for Windows 7?

[Used2BRoz]

Stainless Steel is many years old, the base game even older.
Designed to run on PCs with (by today's standards) very basic hardware. Sadly addig more memory or a better graphics card won't necesarily solve any of the inherent limitations.
As it is, Stainless Steel pretty much maxed every parameter - number of units, number of provinces and so forth so it eats up memory faster than the base game.
Applying the 4GB fix helps but doesn't totally solve the problems. (But is defeinitely worth doing.)
Note you'll need to apply the fix every time you install the game or verify the base game on steam. (keep a fixed version in the game folder with different name )
Beyond that save the game every four or five games so you can recoer from a crash.