Why can't NPCs understand the flag "off limits?"

[inggrish]

Hi, for my mod, I have a secret "vault" type location, that only the owner of the castle is supposed to know about. This has emergency teleports top every city's castle and also main guild HQs. I have flagged the cell as off limits, yet NPCs still love to use my vault as a through route. They sometimes even come from outside of the castle, walk right through the castle to the vault and siapear through one of the teleporters!

I have made all the teleports as player owned and miminal use, and the cell itself is uspposedly off limits. How do I stop the NPCs from getting into my vault without resorting to locking doors and portals???

 

 

Please help, cheers

 

Matt (Inggrish)

[LoginToDownload]

The first way that comes to mind is to script the portals to move the player around instead of just making them load doors, but that might pose problems for companions trying to follow you. That could be mitigated by using AoE spell effects or GetFirstRef/GetNextRef to check for people following the player, but you can't do away with the problem entirely. The Off Limits flag is just for determining NPC behavior toward trespassers.

 

Another problem with making them Load Doors is that they mess up quest markers something fierce, since it always points you into the portal room as the shortest route from Point A to Point B.

[exanimis]

I had the same problem in a mod of mine. NPC's continually used my caves as shortcuts between cities. Even locking the doors didn't keep them from coming into my mod. I have a lake in the center of the room and some of the NPC's would drown. It was a real problem and after searching for and asking for help, I found the only solution was to move my entrances. NPC's will always take the shortest route and your mod has given them a new shortcut.

[furzball]

Dont know if I should call them smart for taking the shortest route, being a new mod. Or call them stupid for ignoring the signs. But then rules are meant to be broken :P

[Vagrant0]

Try setting the cell ownership to some exclusive faction, and flagging the doors as hidden. If that doesn't work, try scripting a solution which disables the path nodes within that room when the desired party isn't present in that room.

 

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index...inkedPathPoints

 

Have an activator somewhere in that cell to which all the path nodes are linked (requires turning off, and back on pathgrids after every linking). Make that activator persistant and name it. Then in a quest script, specify the conditions when you want those points enabled, and have it disabled for every other condition. For example;

scn examplepathnodedisablingquestscriptthatsomeonewants

begin gamemode
if <refname>.getincell <cellname> == 1
<activatorref>.enablelinkedpathpoints
else
<activatorref>.disablelinkedpathpoints
endif
end

Then, since the paths are not connected through that cell unless that NPC is in that cell, NPCs won't use the portals or path through the castles.