Anyone tried Expanded Galaxy Mod for ME3?

I'll have to try this after I finish my "vanilla" run of ME3 soon. Especially now that mod allows me to use extra squaddies for some maps. Always wanted to have Jack or either Miranda for the last Cerberus base.

Installed it yesterday and did a new run.

After N7 extraction assignment in Rio, I went to see the port cargo deck. Laughed at a Demolisher doing pull-ups with James. Wish Shepard could join them.

I can pick and choose features like this, right? Not sure I want to intrude too much on the main story.. like going to Earth.

I want to install it! Does it include some other mods? Or do I need to install things separately? Like the Varren from ME2 on the Normandy?

This sounds like an awesome mod but I just can't get it to work. I've installed it to the right place and I tried running AutoTOC in ME3Explorer.
I still get this when I start the game:
"The following downloadable content cannot be used, as a required patch is missing.
Please install the latest patch and try again.
EGM Add_On
Expanded Galaxy Mod"

Any ideas?

Hey all. I think real life has taken over for Kinkojiro right now which is why things are locked down on the EGM nexus site. Unfortunately, I do not have ME3 installed right now and real life is messing up my modding and "tech support" time. But here's one idea.

If you go to...shoot, from memory I think it's %Mass Effect 3 install dir%\Binaries\Win32, and in there, make sure you have both binkw32.dll and binkw23.dll. You probably both do but just make sure that they're in there.

If that's the case...shoot. I'm not sure yet. As I have more time I'll take a look into it.

Dang, that is odd. EGM is an automatic installer, right? If so...I can't figure out how on earth it could put EGM in the DLC folder and the binkw32 stuff and still not authorize. This should not be necessary and don't do this if your internet connection isn't really fast, but you could uninstall ME3. Install, install EGM, see if it works. Then, go forward and install other mods and make sure it's still working. Then do textures last and hopefully it works.

I know I've had some bizarre issues when modding where I had to vanilla everything and that has happened to me more than once. But, again, if your internet isn't fast enough, don't do that because if I'm wrong you'll spend a lot of time for no good reason.

That's a really good question. I don't know all mods. But, sometimes there are issues. For example. In CEM Alpha, if a player backs up an auto-save during the party, that will not work if they remove CEM later. Not a huge deal. But, the concept is true.

I don't know enough about EGM or other mods to know for sure, but there's always a slight risk of trouble. The good news is that any big mod out there seems to set the mod up as not required by the save file. So, you can remove the mod but at least the save file will load, unllike traditional DLC which requires the DLC to be there or you have to "gib the save file" to remove that requirement.

Slight risk and I would personally always opt to do an entire play through with whatever mods I have installed. Just uninstall for trouble shooting purposes would be my method. Even today I load up previous saves to make sure all mods work before I forge ahead.

Definitely worth noting since EGM and Urz would both mess with the same files to get either Urz or the robo dog walking around on the shuttle deck.

The only way I know of that a mod can break a save is if it's calling for conditionals. For example, I'm trying to offer an option to not make a player use the "ultimate party" for a new release of CEM. But it turns out it's getting really complicated to do this. Some of the conditionals are screwing around with the game despite no other files being in there from CEM.

Anyway, all that is to say, if you see a "mod as DLC" with no Conditional_DLC_EXP(orCON)_<modname>.cnd in the mod folder, then odds are decent you'll be fine. Granted, the Startup_modname stuff could come into play as well. But mods that don't use those should be completely safe.

And even mods that do may not break stuff. This is the first release of CEM where if it's not present a few autosaves from the party won't work without the mod. But otherwise CEM has never broken save files from what I've seen.

Hopefully that answers a little bit about how DLCs work.

1. Files are only called for when needed. The way a DLC mod works is just like regular DLC. If I have it right, it does like this.
- Game fires up and can see which DLCs are valid and the files they have.
- When a file is called for to stream in, it looks at all the files available. If there's more than one of the same name, the DLC with the highest mount value will be the one loaded for pcc files, and, well, almost anything.
So all that should be happening is the modded file is loading and something about it is not jiving with other things in the game. This is very easy to have happen and I have done this in testing a fair amount. It's still surprising you're having the issue. EDIT: It should not be all the DLCs loading into memory. Just the one file getting called with the highest mount value for its DLC. /EDIT

2. Probably. Files will be streaming in during that dream sequence and I know EGM (and others) touch a bunch of the core game files, like BioD_Nor, etc. While Kinkojiro and giftfish have worked really hard to get their mods to work, other things could be going on. I'm on vacation but I'll check later (maybe this evening) at what you have so far.

3. For sure. PM me if you want.

EDIT2: OK, I'm looking at the thread overall and I had a thing on the CEM thread on Nexus, which ultimately had nothing to do with CEM in the end. It seems like the ALOT or perhaps just one or certain texture mods "might" be screwing EGM up. It sounded like the person who asked for help on Nexus tried it with no textures and then EGM worked. But, I know there are a lot of questions going on here and that is probably too simplistic. Sound off people and let me know/remind me what's up. Not sure if I can fix it though. /EDIT2