How can you make NPC's Travel throughout Skyrim?

[Shubal]

I've been doing this in a small way in game with the mods AFT and My Home is Your Home. You can have 64 followers registered with AFT and with MHYH you can assign up to 100 followers with housing anywhere. Within MHYH you assign them a place to sleep, a place to work between 8am and 5pm or a place to guard at night between 10 and 6am. They can live in Riverview and work in Whiterun and make the trip there and back everyday. No reason they couldn't live in Whiterun and walk to Solitude and back to "work" during the day or do the trip at night to "guard" an area assigned in Solitude. The result is a well armed patrol of your followers not currently following you doing what are essentially patrols. So MHYHs file structure sounds like what you want.

[DrNewcenstein]

That's what's weird about it - when I was using PatrolIdle markers (the blue ones with the I in it), the leader would run off the road varying distances - 30 yards at one,, 50 or more at another - but the follower would stay on the road and wait, or maybe run about 10 yards along the road and wait.

 

Once I started using XMarkerHeadings, the follower would take off into the bushes and then come back.

 

If you go into Navmesh mode in the Worldspace, you see these green "pipes" for lack of a better term - I think they were following these.

 

For the original mod, I could set PreferredPathing in the Travel package, but for some reason I can't in the one I'm using now.

[JobVanDam]

So basically there's not much you can do about either the leader or the follower sorta veering off course.

Guess it's not that bad considering my patrol is bandits, after following them for a bit there hated by everyone and they hate everyone. All while hiding I had to kill 2 guards, 3 sabrecats, and an imperial patrol for them.

[DrNewcenstein]

Yeah, mine got lost a couple of times - missed a Thalmor patrol by a mile. Part of the reason I set them to Run was so they could encounter them more often, as a new one generates when one is wiped out. In one test, they caught 4 different patrols, in another, they made the loop without seeing one. The game may also be throwing the patrols out so they're on opposite sides of the patrol, just to have them "complete".

 

 

Might have them separate at one point and retrace each other's steps to counter that.

 

 

However, Excessive Wolves (aka Immersive Creatures) adds Goblins to every patrol, so it's risky for just one.

 

[DrNewcenstein]

However, another point to consider is that these packages, unless viewed in-action by the player, only run "in theory" - if you're not there to watch, for example, an encounter between Hansel and Gretel and a Thalmor Patrol, it's left up to the game to decide the outcome, or if the encounter happens at all.

 

A few times I ran the route in reverse, to see if I could meet them coming. We separated at the road that turns up towards Fort Sungard Oubliette, and I met them just outside of Rorikstead. This patrol takes them to Kolskeggr, and has only 2 places where they stop (to let Hansel catch up with Gretel, since he seems to lag behind more often than not) - one for 20 seconds, and one for 25 seconds - yet I met up with them before Broken Tower Redoubt. Since there were unavoidable encounters for me, we should have met at the turnoff for Karthwasten, or at Blind Cliff Cave, at least, assuming they didn't try to clear out Broken Tower.

 

When I follow them, there's a 70/30 chance they'll enter Broken Tower, so it's not likely they did go in (at least "in theory").

 

What's needed is a reporting system. I keep expecting a Courier to deliver a letter of inheritance reporting their deaths :lol:

 

There should be some way to track their results, or at least their movements. I'm thinking something like the Moon Amulet or Caravan Skooma quests, where once you acquire it, you get an arrow that tracks them.

[JobVanDam]

Excessive Wolves, hahaha! Why is Immersive Creatures taking a hit in our discussion? Talk about an innocent bystander.

 

I have a theory on when patrols are out of the player's sight.

There is a small option with every placed NPC that allows it to be a persistent reference or, if unchecked, a temporary reference.

What I think this option does is keep that specific NPC constantly in memory and the game is constantly tracking it via it's packages.

I remember once I was speaking to someone in Markarth to complete a quest and to complete the quest they had to talk to someone else. But this other person was in Solitude. The initial person walked all the way from Markarth to Solitude and I was able to track him via the map.

Despite walking past a Word Wall with a dragon and 2-3 forsworn camps the arrow never stopped moving.

 

With persistent references out of sight of the player it never fights anyone or gets stuck because of bad navmesh but based on the main roads it will steadily go towards it's target.

Temporary references are the opposite, they are never tracked and only loaded when the game needs them.

It would also explain why when making packages you can't refer to a temporary NPC only persistent ones.

 

With my patrols I make the leader persistent and the followers temporary.

In theory I'm thinking the game will track the leaders to their destinations but if I happen to be in the same cell as a leader NPC it will then load the 2 followers whose packages say it should be following this leader.

 

As for tracking the NPC's check out this mod.

[DrNewcenstein]

What's needed here is a tracking system, similar to the Skooma Caravan quest where you get an arrow showing where they are. I keep expecting the Courier to bring me a letter of inheritance for them :lol:

[DrNewcenstein]

Crazy laptop crashed. Sorry for the double post. When I came back, my last reply wasn't shown. Stoopit compyooder :lol:

 

Might check out the tracking mod, and the references setting you mentioned. Thanks :D

[DrNewcenstein]

But yeah, Excessive Wolves is what my brother calls it - every 10 yards he runs across at least a dozen wolves. It's almost Final Fantasy-ish :lol:

 

I had 25 Frostbite Spiders at once, though. Took out two Mammoths with ease. It was epic. Then my followers - who can all Shout - got involved. I gotta upload the video one day.

 

 

As for keeping your peeps on the path, all I can suggest is baby-stepping PatrolIdle or the little red X markers (instead of XMarkerHeading markers). I tried Duplicating the XMarkerHeading in the Object window and renaming it GretelMarker so it'd be easier to spot in the CellView, but that deleted the Patrol Data tab. I found that out after placing 84 of them :doh:

 

This is my 3-day weekend off work, so I'm going to do some major tweaking and experimenting with Hansel and Gretel's patrol route. Might even add a few more NPCs to the party so it's more like an organized lynch mob hell-bent on running the Thalmor out of Skyrim.

[JobVanDam]

I got Immersive Creatures and never seen that many before. You must got your settings jacked.

 

If you learn anything else notable while tinkering with the packages and patrolling let me know yeah?