LE The only reasonable way to achieve truly realistic combat...

[Fallerent]

Before you read- note that until the orange text this may be confusing for people who have never used the Deadly Combat mod.

As someone seeking combat as close to games like Chivalry: Medieval Warfare as possible, the first thing about Skyrim that bothers me is that an NPC or player can get sliced twenty times and not die. Simple enough, I got the deadly combat mod and now NPC's and I die in a small number of hits, sometimes a single hit, due to damage scaling which is vastly more realistic. What I did not anticipate, is that I have a bit of an ultimatum. When I scaled damage up to a level that was realistic, low level enemies were great. Tons of fun, used up around five potions of healing every fight. However, when I faced leveled enemies, they killed me in a single hit after I dug my sword into them ten times and they took little damage.

This can be fixed too, however, with deadly combats settings; I can scale damage at level zero and at level 100 respectively and I can therefore make low level and high level enemies have the same amount of power, their only true power coming in weapons, armor, and allies! This is quite realistic, and results in all enemies being a challenge (especially in numbers) rather than only high level enemies being a challenge.

 

Seems like there's no problem, right?

Almost. The ONLY problem with this is that this makes leveling my combat skills and acquiring the majority of combat perks completely pointless. Why increase my level in one handed if I wont do any increased damage as a result? I am quite certain as well that this would make perks (armsman: increase one handed attack damage by 20%, etc.) not function. Its an utter waste.

 

Which led me honestly not to a direct fix for this predicament, but an idea that would make true combat experience valuable and make leveling in certain skills completely obsolete in light of how unrealistic they are.

 

Give leveled enemies not increased health, stamina, etc. but give them an improved AI and truly better combat skills realistically (and of course give them better gear as they are by lore more powerful and dominant).

Whereas the shitty n00b banditos in the wilds will have poor AI, if they are indeed shitty banditos, and will be more susceptible to taking damage.

High level enemies will block well, bash often, dodge attacks, and strike with speed and skill. Low level enemies will not block well, will attack when your block is raised, and will be more easily killed due to lack of experience.

Obviously a seasoned warrior may have more stamina than a milk-drinking newblood, but the fact that they can, in regular Skyrim, take ten times as many hits with the same weapon to kill? Unless "leveled" means "just-took-a-f*#@load-of-PCP" this is unrealistic.

 

I'm sure I am not the first to think of this. It wouldn't be easy though, or so I would think. I am way too inexperienced with modding to make AI. I haven't even tried to learn it so I guess I really don't know, but forget it that's not the point-

Any takers? You would revolutionize Skyrim combat. I would encourage you to work with some of the bigger names out there, such as the maker of Deadly Combat, if you want to make this mod. Not that he will necessarily be interested in working with you, I don't know. Seems like a good head-start.

[Serithi]

I have no idea if it's possible to make scaled AI packages, but if it is, that would be definitely be awesome to see done.

[Fallerent]

I do not believe that scaled AI is possible. However, it is possible to simulate. If I am not mistaken different "classes" of NPC fight differently, most obvious would be Mercer Frey in comparison to a guard, for example. Different AI fighting styles can be created and assigned to different NPC's. It may be a lot of work, modifying each NPC, although some respective NPC's are used many times in game. My point, I believe that NPC's can receive individual combat styles. This would require, however, removing the existing "level-with-player" system and having certain parameters set so that NPC's spawn with the proper AI package, a separate instance for every leveled version of what may otherwise be one NPC that levels with the player. It would be very complicated:) I would be willing to assign these combat styles, personally, and duplicate/create multiple level instances of NPC's personally, I just have no idea how to make AI behavior.

[h1zchan]

Regarding your complaint about high level NPCs having massive health pool, you can easily tone it down in the creation kit.

 

In Skyrim, an NPC's HP consists of 3 components. For the sake of simplicity I'll write it out as

HP = base health and racial bonus + level scaling bonus + 'NPC health level bonus'

 

By default the base HP value of each playable humanoid character in Skyrim is 50 at level 1. On top of that there's also a racial bonus which by default is 50 for every single playable humanoid race in Skyrim. This makes most characters including the player start at 100 HP (50+50) at level 1. You can edit these attributes in the Creation Kit under the category 'Races'.

 

Like the player, NPCs get hp increases as they 'level up'. While the player gets to arbitrarily choose between magicka, health or stamina to give 10 points bonus to at each Level Up event, for NPCs the distribution of the 10 points per level among the 3 attributes is governed by a class system not accessible to the player. (think TES4 Oblivion) You should be able to edit the leveling stats of these classes in the Creation Kit under the 'Classes' category.

 

However unlike the player, the NPCs also get an additional health bonus governed by the variable fNPCHealthLevelBonus which by default is set to 5. This means at level 20, an NPC would get a 'Health Level Bonus' of 5x(20-1)=95 on top of the normal level scaling described in the previous paragraph. You can easily find this variable in the Creation Kit by clicking Gameplay --> Settings and searching for the keyword NPC. In case you have trouble finding it, the Gameplay menu is located on the top edge of the CK window alongside Character and Help. It took me a while to find it the first time I tried.

 

In case you're not familiar with the CK, to start modding in CK you need to go to Files --> Data and double click to select Skyrim and all the DLCs you've got. Make sure you get a cross symbol infront of every one of them or else your mod might not take effect on DLC content. It will give you loads of error notifications when all the contents are loaded up. Don't worry that's normal. Depending on how good your PC is the loading process might take a minute or two. When you finish modding in CK, remember to save as its own esp file. The next time you want to open up this esp in your CK, you can open it up in Files --> Data and double click to select it like with every other mod. Remember to Set As Active File, or your changes won't be recorded in this esp and will just be lost when you close CK. And lastly don't forget to tick the esp in Skyrim's launch data list when you start your game to see the effect in game.

 

Good luck modding. I wish I had time to play with these settings myself but I don't

Edited December 27, 2014 by h1zchan

[h1zchan]

I forgot to mention in the previous post, there are also many other variables in the settings panel under the Gameplay menu in the CK. You might want to try tweaking them and see what effects they have in game. Keep in mind though, many of these variables were carried over from previous generations of TES games and are no longer being used in Skyrim's game engine. Some of these disused variables and their effects can be found on this TES4 Construction Set wiki page: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/index.php/Category:Settings

Edited December 27, 2014 by h1zchan

[OpenWorldAddict]

I think the solution to your problem is ASIS. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/18436/? or Skyrim NPC Overhaul http://erkeilmods.altervista.org/skyrim/skyrim-npc-overhaul/

 

You see the biggest problem is that NPC's don't use perks like you do, they just get bonuses to attributes. These mods change that making npc's use perks based upon their class. At higher levels, they'll have more perks at their disposal, so they will fight even better than those at lower levels.

 

I hope one of these mods helps you resolve this issue.