loads

there are three ways a room can load:

proximity loads were added in echoes and don't exist in prime 1. they automatically load the room that you're closest to (or something like that, I'm not sure) and automatically unload other rooms, running no risk of crashing the game. in most situations, proximity loads are the fastest and easiest way to load rooms and luckily most rooms have them.

load triggers are zones in the room that are each connected to a specific door. touching a load trigger will automatically load the room beyond that door and unload other rooms, also running no risk of crashing the game (unless you're playing on gamecube. then furnace can crash the game).

the third way is by force loading the room. if you shoot any door and get near it, the game gets forced into loading the room beyond that door. this does NOT automatically unload the other rooms and does run the risk of crashing the game.

you can reduce the likelihood of a crash by making the other rooms invisible. if you shoot a door and get near it, it will open and close and then the room will be invisible and the game will be less likely to crash if you try to force load another room.

this is purely conjecture, but in echoes it feels like a room either crashes every time, will crash if a room is visible and won't otherwise, or never crashes. with prime 1 it feels probabilistic. furnace for example sometimes crashes and sometimes doesn't. I don't really know why.

if a room has proximity loads then you don't need to worry about anything. if it doesn't, then whether or not you want to touch the load trigger or force load is situational and depends on the exact room and door. some rooms, like central hive east transport, have the load trigger entirely inbounds and unless you want to fps, your only option is to force load. other rooms, like central area transport west, refuse to let you force load them, even if connected rooms are invisible. then some rooms have accessible load triggers and don't crash if you try to force load them, and in that case the best strat is usually just whichever one is faster.