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Ideas to increase companion melee range?


vkz89q

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Hi everyone.

 

I'm working on a follower mod with lot of customization. One of the options is to change combat styles on the fly. I have hit a problem with melee only styles. My melee only style has equipment scores of 10 for melee and 0 for ranged. That means she never shoots everyone. Works like I want.

 

I have this problem with range. I use quest to put quest marker on my companion, and I noticed that if companion is more than 18-20 in game compass units from player, she will not fight melee anymore. Instead she will run "backwards" and taunt enemies until player steps to around range 18-20 units from companion.

 

Ranged styles do not have this problem, she can shoot even when player is 30-40+ units away from companion.

 

I have tried everything I can think of, I made a script that gets her combat target and then force start combat with the target, but that does nothing, she will taunt and run until player steps closer.

 

I have tried tweaking follower follow distance but that doesn't seem to matter if she is in combat. I have also tried changing every game setting related to distance + follower, teammate, etc. Nothing has effect.

 

Only way that I seem to get to work is this: have a script that silenty dismisses her when combat starts and recruits her when combat ends, but seems bit "dirty" way to do it. For example you lose all Inspirational perk bonuses(I could make new one that works in this mode I guess) and can't command or trade with her, not a huge problem in combat but still, there has to be better way.

 

At this point I'm starting to wonder if the distance is hard coded in the engine. I have checked companion scripts, game settings, ai packages, global variables, but can't find a way to change it.

 

Anyone has ANY idea where this distance could be tweaked?

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huh. that's interesting. the player distance thing.

 

So, have you tried messing with her combat style? Off the top of my head I don't remember there being anything in there about distance from player, just distance and other things about the enemies themselves. But there are lots of settigs for melee v ranged.

 

I know you say you looked at packages, but you might also be able to do something in the combat packages themselves if you set them up to override the vanilla combat stuff. Or maybe you've already tried that and it failed. But if you haven't you might check the vanilla combat packages the companions use to see if the problem is there/solvable there. It's been such a long time since I looked at them I can't remember what they do.

 

Can't think of anything else right now, but if it's a distance to player thing during combat it may be hardcoded. But even so, if you can use the combat packages in a way that solves that distance issue (say you set the distance from player or whatever) the package change on combat start/stop could theoretically solve the problem. I like using package changes and the evp that goes with them to force behavior on a companion actor.

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Thanks for your reply.

 

I just re-tested everything. I tried every melee setting in the combat style. Avoid threats from 0-1. No effect. Defensive multi 0 or 1, no effect. Close range dueling, flanking and charging. No effect. Tried settings like fallback multi from 0 to 1 and no effect. I tried "long range" tab too and tested everything from 0 to 1 and no difference.

 

Well, I can see them work. Flanking vs dueling is very different,high defensive multi=she blocks almost every incoming hit, just when I step 20 units away from her, combat stops lol. I tried messing settings with follower follow package too, min/max distance, dynamic goal on/off, no effect. I can see the following radius increase outside of combat, but still = no combat unless player is 20 units or less.

 

I tried even combat style that allows her to shoot things, but took away her weapon and only gave her melee weapon. Same thing, runs away if too far away from player. If i give her weapon that can shoot, she starts murdering things.

 

I guess it's rip dream of melee only combat style. Its just so meh, when she steps 21 units away from player and starts running away from enemies, usually getting shot in the process.

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Thanks for your reply.

 

I just re-tested everything. I tried every melee setting in the combat style. Avoid threats from 0-1. No effect. Defensive multi 0 or 1, no effect. Close range dueling, flanking and charging. No effect. Tried settings like fallback multi from 0 to 1 and no effect. I tried "long range" tab too and tested everything from 0 to 1 and no difference.

 

Well, I can see them work. Flanking vs dueling is very different,high defensive multi=she blocks almost every incoming hit, just when I step 20 units away from her, combat stops lol. I tried messing settings with follower follow package too, min/max distance, dynamic goal on/off, no effect. I can see the following radius increase outside of combat, but still = no combat unless player is 20 units or less.

 

I tried even combat style that allows her to shoot things, but took away her weapon and only gave her melee weapon. Same thing, runs away if too far away from player. If i give her weapon that can shoot, she starts murdering things.

 

I guess it's rip dream of melee only combat style. Its just so meh, when she steps 21 units away from player and starts running away from enemies, usually getting shot in the process.

 

And this all holds true for you own unique combat override packages where you put your own combat style, etc?

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Yes, I'm using holotape to switch combat styles. I have quite few in there and I can see them work differently. I have one melee only, one ranged only, several melee/ranged(pulls melee weapon in close range) with different offensive and defensive styles to cover more etc.. only just this melee doesn't work quite right.

 

I took a look at melee vanilla combat styles, but none of them are only melee, meaning they have a bit of ranged multi too in equipment score, which means they will pick and switch to gun if target is too far away to melee. Maybe it's just not intented to do melee only on companions.

 

Another way to "force" melee is take all weapons out of companion and press T to equip melee weapon, but still flees if too far away from player(even with ranged or vanilla combat style). Actually, I think they might try get closer to player even with ranged weapons, it's just harder to notice since they can walk backwards and shoot at same time.

 

I guess I need to test on vanilla companion next and see what they do and manually equip them with melee weapon.

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Okay, so I am asking specifically about using combat override packages, but you keep answering me about using different combat styles. Are those different styles implemented in combat override packages that are in a form list and attached to the companion (NPC record or an alias) in the combat override packages list? Or are you implementing the combat styles on your following pkgs?

 

I'm trying to be very clear about this because those are two different ways to implement changes to combat and behavior.

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I just re-read your message, tried doing empty package with nothing but my combat style, put that in "FollowersCompanionCombatOverrideList" as first entry and guess what, It's WORKING! She happily melees enemies while my map marker shows 40+ units.

 

I guess I got confused since normally followerscompanionoverridelist only has hold postion packages, which are not used until you toggle them and I played with the distances on followers normal package. Yes, now I understand what they do, override normal packages in combat. I'm just wondering why using hotkeys to change companion following distance from close,medium,far has no effect on combat?

 

But anyway, THANKS a lot, this really made me happy to see it working. Now I just need to make proper Override list for my companion :smile:

Edited by vkz89q
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Okay, made proper package and list and put them on a quest thats 1 priority higher than Followers quest. Everything works perfect and I already made several follower packages for my companion, thanks again :smile:

 

Glad it worked! The override stuff is awesome. When I saw it in the CK I was all over it.

 

Can I ask you a question?:

I assumed that the changes would only happen (in override combat pkgs) if the quest that ran them was higher than the followers (I also put it at 91). Did you try it at a lower priority and did it work or did you have to go up higher?

 

Edit:

 

Re: why follow distance doesn't do anything

 

So this is what I think is happening. The game has a bunch of stuff it does during combat that we can't see. It's putting the NPCs on "packages" or however they do it and those are combat related. The companions aren't following at that point via their normal follow packages, so when you change the distance on those packages it does indeed change the distances, but since the companions aren't using that package it has no effect.

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Okay, so I tried different scenarios:

 

Putting my quest which holds the override package to priority 10 -> everything still works.

 

Stopping the quest and put the override package straight to my companion actor -> everything still works.

 

I also tried messing with flag "Treat as player companion" in package, no effect, everything still works.

 

It's something in the vanilla package that's overriding the distance, and it get's override by any Combat override package. The vanilla follower combat override packages don't seem to be in effect normally, since they have conditions that you need to manually toggle by ordering companion to stand still. So it must be something in the normal follower package, maybe it's travel target radius that has been set to player and 0. Well, whatever it is, I'm happy I can get my packages to work without touching vanilla packages.

 

Maybe they indeed have some hidden normal combat package that gets override by anything if you use any other in combat override list.

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