Realistic and balanced combat

[Zjosh86]

Edit: I've found a selection of mods and will work putting them in here. I'd like to know if these mods are fully compatible. More so double checking then anything.

 

I'm trying to balance the combat. I cannot remember every mod I've tried, it has been several months since I've played. I'm in preparation for broadwell and maxwell. I'm working to create a base game to go with. I've got most of my mods picked out and setup nicely.

 

My current goal now is to find the selection of mods to balance combat (and the world) and make it feel more realistic. I want dragons to be scary and have more challenge than just one shot fires and a lot of HP (what most mods seem to do). I want NPC to be more dangerous in numbers, but far less on their own. I'm Dragonborn with unique, rare, and powerful gear there is no reason for a mere city guard to be able to kill me. I don't care what they are wielding. Obviously higher ranking NPC should be more dangerous. So, obviously I need to find that which creates balance in power and defenses. Then I need to find that which creates realism, challenge, and balance in the combat itself.

 

If you've got any ideas I am interested. I'd even love a set of mods that will allow me to tweak each item specifically to set things up for this balance. However, obviously such a mod would require a lot of tweaking and it would be great for any suggested tweaks you have applied.

 

 

Edit: I love putting together an army of follows and taking over a city as my own. Mods that support this creation of an army and taking over a city would be great. Perhaps a modded version of the city take over quest? Where I can actually prepare for and fight a city with a true and tried army? Even go around hiring people to be a part of the army. Coming up with the required gold for the equipment and mechanics.

I'd be surprised if Something like this didn't exist by now. I'm sure everyone would love a mod on such a huge scale for war. Something that has a huge level of replay-ability. Based on the gold you spend. (more gold spent increases the difficulty, obviously the rich will be fighting a very large army. Don't mistake though your army will too be a force for reckoning.)

 

Obviously I don't expect that specific. But, the idea behind it. Starting to put my own personal ideas into that lol.

Edited June 9, 2014 by Zjosh86

[ArtMurder]

Requiem is an interesting mod you should look into, it makes combat more balanced and realistic, but it unlevels enemies, so it is MUCH more challenging. By the time you are level 5~10 you can take out bandit camps no problem, but a troll will still give you trouble, by the time you are level 20 trolls are no longer a problem, and you can slaughter a bandit camp like they are nothing! Undead are a total nightmare though, it makes dungeons utterly terrifying, it even includes an option for skeletons to resurrect from the dead when killed!

Also, Revenge of the Enemies is a mod worth looking into, works well with the one above, and it makes enemies more lively and actually try to survive!

 

Locational Damage goes well with both of those, making where you hit an enemy matter. A well placed arrow to the head is insta death, but a shot in the ankle will just cripple your enemies ability to run.

 

Amazing Follower Tweaks lets you have an entire "platoon" of followers, and costumize them quite a bit, including setting up how they act in combat in detail, and what weapons/magic they use.

 

Also, try a "darker dungeons" mod as well as a sweetFX or ENB to make things darker, this will aid quite a bit in making dungeons feel creepy!

[BlackRoseOfThorns]

You definitely want Dragon Combat Overhaul and Realistic Ragdolls and Force, Faster Get Up

 

 

For mele I can recommend Duel - Combat Realism and for mages/archers Ultimate Combat. If you could tweak damage then compilation of both + locational damage would be perfect. Hopefully your cpu can handle it :tongue:

[Zjosh86]

So, far I'm going to test with SkyRe with ASIS on top and using BYOG for further personal adjustments. I read requiem would be a bit over the top hardcore. I think SkyRE covers the un-leveling feature making certain areas harder. This will definitely help a lot.

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37216/?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37216/?

 

I found using these 2 would give me features similar to Warzone unrest. Which was a nice mod just very buggy.

 

Will http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32597/?

 

and my other combat mods all work together?

 

I'm still trying to figure how to get Automatic variants to work in MO. It's being a pain.

 

Looking for Follower mods now as well that work with custom followers. Looking at either EFF or AFT. Probably going with EFF.

 

Anyone have experience using Reproccer and Sum within MO?

 

 

Rig: i5-2500k Oc'd 4.8Ghz 8GB 18600mhz CAS 7 GTX 560 Ti Samsung 840 Pro Evo

 

I'm upgrading into a 6 or 8 core (more cores in prep for steam streaming) Broadwell with a GTX 880 when they arrive. For now I'm testing and tweaking don't expect great performance. As most of this I expect to put together fresh when I get the new stuff. Almost another year though -_-

 

 

I am considering adding in both of those combat mods as well: Ultimate Combat and Duel - Combat Realism. I'll start the tweaking process soon hopefully find the sweet spot.

 

If anyone has already done this I'd loveee some input or recommended tweaks!

Edited June 10, 2014 by Zjosh86

[ArtMurder]

SkyRe does not unlevel the game at all... it says it makes the gamer harder, but it doesn't really. It makes enemies harder by tacking on some extra health and damage, and increasing armor and weapon ratings, but it adds in so many over powered abilities within about 10 hours of playing you over power every enemy in the game... if you are looking for added challenge, SkyRe will not help. It makes gameplay more varied and fun, but you need to add on a ton of more challenging mods to make it actually difficult. If you play intelligently, and aren't able to stop yourself from 'abusing' the over powered skill trees, I would say SkyRe is in fact easier then vanilla. I combine it with ESRO options that do not clash with SkyRe and the Populated series, along with SiC, SkyMoMo, and OBIS to add in more challenging enemies to counterbalance the more powerful abilities added, combining it with Revenge of the Enemies and Locational Damage does make the game feel more difficult then vanilla, putting it on legendary will result in quite the challenge. But out of the box, no SkyRe does not unlevel the game, and does not make it any more difficult. It simply shifts the difficulty around, making the enemies tougher, but also making your character much, much tougher.

 

Even then, SkyRe is not balanced at all, it is easily abusable, and can easily be "broken" allowing you to create very overpowered characters. it's also not very realistic. IT IS however the best "role playing" mod on the site in a way, being that you can make a character based on ANYTHING and make it a viable, playable, fun character, there is basicly no limits to the amounts of different character builds possible with SkyRe. It's almost impossible to screw up your character. it's very fun and interesting, but not realistic or challenging. As I said though, with enough effort, you can add mods to it to make it both realistic and challenging, just as you can with vanilla skyrim.

 

 

Requiem is very "hard core", but many of it's options can be turned off, and the overall difficulty can be customized in great detail, allowing you to change the weapon damage multiplier, damage output, damage input, enemy arrow accuracy, as well as turning on/off about two dozens of it's features. A lot of it's core features revolving around how health and stamina work can can not be disabled or edited though, so if the idea of having no passive health regen or stamina not regenerating while jogging is a deal breaker, then requiem might not be for you.

 

I personally use one install based around requiem that is difficult, realistic, immersive, balanced, and over all very intense and "hard core" and another based around SkyRe, that is still very difficult, but more fun, unbalanced, and "crazy" allowing for tons of fun, interesting mods I normally would not or could not use with requiem or realistic based installs. I wouldn't say one is better then the other, it all comes down to what you are wanting. Fun, interesting, and varied, or challenging, realistic, and immersive?

 

 

Also, as of right now, it's important to note, reproccer is basically broken. It forces you to run BOSS, which is outdated, and basically abandoned in favor of the MUCH more efficient LOOT. I also suggest using Wrye Bash over MO, but that's purely based on my personal experience with MO, I personally dislike "dictator" programs like it an NMM that try and control everything you do with skyrim and get angry and start screwing stuff up when you try and do anything yourself. WryeBash also has the Bashed Patch feature, which is probably the single easiest and most handy way of getting mods that add in content to work nicely together with a click of a single button. SiC, OBIS, SkyMoMo, Populated Series, all add in enemies and clash with one another for editing the same leveled lists, Bashed Patch will fuse them all together flawlessly with one click.

 

I also suggest the mod I mentioned a minute ago, "revenge of the enemies" as a combat mod, it can be used in addition to any other combat mod, including the ones you mentioned, and basically enhanced the AI of enemies so they actually use the content they have access to, so enemies who have potions and spells in their inventory will not just ignore them, enemy orcs will use berserk rage as a quick simple example. Should go well with ASIS, which will add in new spells to those enemies. It basically just makes enemies more lively, and try harder to stay alive. it can be used with SkyRe or Requiem just fine as well.

[BlackRoseOfThorns]

 

Rig: i5-2500k Oc'd 4.8Ghz 8GB 18600mhz CAS 7 GTX 560 Ti Samsung 840 Pro Evo

 

I'm upgrading into a 6 or 8 core (more cores in prep for steam streaming) Broadwell with a GTX 880 when they arrive. For now I'm testing and tweaking don't expect great performance. As most of this I expect to put together fresh when I get the new stuff. Almost another year though -_-

 

 

I hope you realize that cpu model featuring real 20mb L3 cache will be clocked at 3.0ghz and cost 999$. I don't see price dropping much even in 1 year (25% cut at best).

 

http://wccftech.com/intel-haswelle-core-i7-5960x-core-i7-5930k-core-i7-5820k-specifications-unveiled-flagship-8-core-boost-33-ghz/

 

The new platforms comes with new longer ram slots to accommodate DDR4. Every time the new DDR type is released it costs arm and leg. If you don't have such budget maybe it's better to invest in new gpu and wait 2 years for price drop?

 

Speculated x99 motherboard price range this year $299 – $399 US.

 

http://wccftech.com/evga-x99-motherboard-prototype-shown-computex-2014-features-massive-lga-20113-socket/

 

 

Maxwell gtx 880 rumors:

http://www.kdramastars.com/articles/24370/20140609/gtx-800-series-news.htm

Edited June 10, 2014 by BlackRoseOfThorns

[Zjosh86]

I can use Wrye bash within MO and I do. I also have LOOT. But, I don't use it as it has screwed up my load order when I did. For now Boss is working for me for the most part.

 

I'll switch out ASIS for Reqiuem and SkyRE. With enough tweaking on both of those mods. I cannot imagine a reason for me to not have the balanced and fun combat. I've got a lot of time until I'll really be playing much. Right now is mostly tweak time.

 

I'd like to have fun with the game. I'm not in any means a hardcore combat person. I want to do my quests with some sense of realism to the combat and the creatures AI. I don't want things to be too easy or too hard. But, right there in that middle point. So, I can have fun. If I crave a real challenge I can adjust for that.

[ArtMurder]

hmm, weird, for me BOSS mutilates my load order, loading files before their masters and such, and LOOT always manages to make it work well! BOSS is quite outdated, so it's not really the 'suggest' program to use for sorting your load order.

 

and Requiem and SkyRe can not be used together sadly. I was actually working on an insanely complex patch to get the two to work together a while back, but it was to much for me to do alone sadly, and I could never find anyone willing to help.

 

However, this mod here is kind of like "requiem lite"

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/53745/?

 

To my knowledge this MIGHT work with SkyRe, and should offer one two punch for the kind of thing you are looking for, in my opinion, and you can still shift the difficulty up and down through skyrim's normal difficulty slider (which requiem disabled)

[Zjosh86]

As far as the hardware goes. I won't even see the socket version of Broadwell right away. I'm not that worried. Also, Broadwell is supposed to have DDR3 compatibility and (Skylake?) that which comes after it has DDR4 CONSUMER LEVEL (server models will likely have the new ram first). I'm most interested in broadwell because they are making an effort to change the stuff that may have reduced Haswells overclocking functionality. They think the voltage regulator was causing it and are moving that back to motherboards. I'm not interested in anything current right now. My i5 is plenty. My next upgrade will be a 6 or 8 core and the cost will be worth it to me. Being able to stream (games) to any computer in my home. Yeah, definitely. Then I can let others play some games and not have to worry about them on my expensive computer.

 

The computer I'm building will cost around $4,000. I've already picked out models and have an idea of each parts cost.

 

There are thousands of rumors surrounding Maxwell series GPU. The reason I'm getting one of those is for the higher Vram. They're supposed to be the big supporting GPU for 4k resolutions whith 6-12GB of Vram. I'd expect no less either given how long 4k has been out.

Also, I'm just all around more interested in being patient to see them arrive.

But, everyone expects Maxwell to be big on pure power level. I do not. I know Maxwell has the goal to consume less power. So, it's power upgrade won't be nearly what everyone expects. However, down the line the new architecture will open some doors for more raw power and less consumed power.

Edited June 10, 2014 by Zjosh86

[Zjosh86]

hmm, weird, for me BOSS mutilates my load order, loading files before their masters and such, and LOOT always manages to make it work well! BOSS is quite outdated, so it's not really the 'suggest' program to use for sorting your load order.

 

and Requiem and SkyRe can not be used together sadly. I was actually working on an insanely complex patch to get the two to work together a while back, but it was to much for me to do alone sadly, and I could never find anyone willing to help.

 

However, this mod here is kind of like "requiem lite"

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/53745/?

 

To my knowledge this MIGHT work with SkyRe, and should offer one two punch for the kind of thing you are looking for, in my opinion, and you can still shift the difficulty up and down through skyrim's normal difficulty slider (which requiem disabled)

 

 

 

I'll keep digging into the combat mod choices. I'll have to test them each to really find what I like. That's why i LOVE MO. You take the time to learn it. You can do Anything. I just made reproccer use LOOT from within MO. Why? Because it's awesome. With MO I can have different profiles with different sets of mods. Not conflicting each other and perfect for testing. It saves me the trouble of having a cluttered game and having to re install if I screw something up. With my SSD It works soo smoothly too.

Req and SkyRE can work together. I found a forum of someone who did it. But, I'll have to dig into my bookmarks for the link.

For now I am testing...

SkyRE, Duel- combat realism HC, Asis, Dodge mod, DW parry, Immersive patrols, Civil war overhaul, Dragon combat overhaul, deadly dragons, and more to come...

I'm looking into armor and weapon mods while doing this as well.

Edited June 10, 2014 by Zjosh86