How can you make NPC's Travel throughout Skyrim?

[Aurawhisperer]

Thank you for all the advice guys! I for sure thought this thread was dead, but i'm going to read through everyones response and take notes on what needs to be done!

 

My puzzled confused question is this though. Respawns. Do they really work? Been over 10 days and my modded enemies haven't spawn nor has the updated bandits that I made to respawn, like at the Valh Keep or Halted Stream.

[DrNewcenstein]

I think that's also dependent on the Cell Respawn setting. I have been doing more testing than actual play, so I haven't run it long enough for them to die and see if they respawn.

 

Thalmor patrols respawn, obviously, but I'm not certain of their settings.

[JobVanDam]

Another thing I found out is everytime you start your game the game respawns the patrolling NPC's at their original location and then sets them off.

It doesn't store where they were when you last saved your game.

 

Makes sense, why store information like that in the savefile?

[DrNewcenstein]

I'm expanding it into a group of people who hunt Thalmor. Found a PatrolAndHunt package where you can specify a specific item to be retrieved, so I added a particular item to a modded List attached to a Justiciar. Need to establish the patrol route before I can see if it works. I'll let you know how it goes.

[JobVanDam]

So your giving your own Thalmor patrols a specific item and you want your good guy patrol to go towards that item and... retrieve it I guess?

Sounds cool, kinda like a moving X Marker.

 

Hmmm thinking about it I'm not sure it would work. You have to reference a refID you can't reference a baseID. What if you told the patrol to go after a vanilla Green Apple? What if there was more than one apple in the world map? Which one has priority? The universe would collapse in on itself.

[DrNewcenstein]

Was finally able to test it (between work and sleep lol ) and the Acquire package (which is where you set the "Green Apple") doesn't seem to be working. I'm sure I've done something wrong, though.

 

The PatrolAndHunt package is for NPCs placed in the Worldspace (exterior), as they didn't leave the house when it was time. I'm sure I jacked the settings in that as well, but I changed it to a Patrol package like I had before. First Thalmor encounter, I checked dude's inventory and the item wasn't listed, nor was it on the Justiciar.

 

Again, it could be a problem with the settings I chose. I'll dig into it deeper and see.

[JobVanDam]

More documentation to add to the noodle database in regards to packages.

 

I was finally able to create 10 patrols yet only have 2 NPC's, 3 packages and 1 keyword. The secret? Linked References.

I was mucking around my Immersive Patrols mod and noticed all Stormcloaks have the same package regardless of where they are placed from Solitude to Riften so I figured at some point some information is passed that says go here, go there.

 

When you place an NPC in a cell there's an option called Linked References. The package gets ahold of this linked reference (a RefID) and you can do whatever you want with it: sandbox around it, follow it etc using a package template.

 

Drop a follower NPC in a cell, under Linked References specify a new Keyword and the REfID that is the linked reference. For me it was the leader of the patrol. Make a package that says instead of following a specific reference follow a linked reference then specify the keyword used and that's it.

 

Same Leader NPC used 10 times over but his package is random.

Same Follower NPC used 20 times over, same package, but the linked reference is different for every 2 so every 2 follows a different leader NPC.

It's so clean and robust yet so small.

 

 

Another thing I found but luckily I learned something new while trying to fix it.

When I put some conditions on some packages pointing to the linked ref it just would not work. Whenever a linked ref was used in a condition the condition would always prove false regardless. For some reason in the condition when specifying you want to use a linked ref you can't provide the keyword. I'm thinking that's the problem.

I had a package that stated if the leader dies just head back to your editor location and sandbox there. I realize it's very rare considering there bandits, what are the odds of one bandit dieing and the rest living?

Anyway I couldn't put a condition on the leader cause it was now a linked ref so I removed that package then tested. While testing I decided to just console "kill" the leader to see what they did. Without skipping a beat they just kept on walking, I assume, to the leader's destination. They weren't really a patrol anymore as one seemed to walk faster than another but the trailing one didn't care. I couldn't see where they wanted to go cause they both turned into a town and got murdered by the guards though.

It seems the Follow template keeps running even though the initial follow reference isDead(). The new reference for the followers becomes the leader's old reference.

 

I also wanted the followers to sandbox when the leader had reached their destination, it would be really good for immersion.

I couldn't put conditions in that said if the leader is in X cell because I cant use linked ref's in conditions so the conditions check if the follower NPC is in X cell to sandbox around the leader.

I'm hoping they will sandbox for as long as the leader is there but once he decides to leave the cell to continue sandboxing around him they will also have to leave the cell and once out of the cell the follow package will take over.

I couldn't test this cause the X markers for the leaders are the four corners of the map so this is something I will have to test while playing and hope I see a patrol nearing it's destination.

[DrNewcenstein]

Interesting. Thanks. I'll have to look at those suggestions more closely, as I'm still trying to work out how to get them to loot the specific corpse and retrieve the specific item. I really don't care if they TakeAll, as even that would be an improvement over not even checking them.

 

Over the past 2 days I've been trying various Package edits - reading a tut at CK.com let me know that if you change the Package Template to None that you can add statements to the Public Package Data tree, as well as expand the Procedures. All of those concepts are still new to me, so it's a lot of trial and error, changing and testing. As well, the game isn't exactly throwing out Thalmor patrols by the dozen. In one test, we hit 4 patrols in one patrol loop (2 hour gametime). In most, we hit one or 2. Even then, the one I need them to loot gets shot off a cliff and into the river, or otherwise well outside the NearSelf radius to search for the given item. Thalmor patrols are leveled, so I can't LinkRef the one character, and the item in question is in the DeathItem list, so I can't linkref to it since it only appears at death.

[DrNewcenstein]

Still not making any progress on this :(

 

They do everything I need them to do *except* loot the item. I've given it a value of 5000 Gold to see if that would help, but it didn't. I even dropped the item on the ground and waited for them to come along, but they ignored it.

 

I've tried replicating Ralof's GetDoorKey package (and tested that in a New Game - he does in fact loot the key, and it's not a script that I can tell other than the package). I changed what variables I needed to change in it, and still nothing.

I've even added my people to the WE32 and WERoad03 Quests, referenced the specific Aliases of the targets (Captor1), given the item I want them to loot to the Base Actor that all the targets use, set it as a Death Item and a regular inventory item, and still they ignore it.

 

They may have hardwired this ability out of the realm of possibilities, given the issue with the one NPC in Oblivion who was hoarding all the good stuff on his own.

 

I did find out that there are two things you don't want to combine: Default Speed = Run and Maintain Speed At Goal. My people hit the first Marker and took off like lightning in a straight line for Rorikstead. Seriously, I was sprinting and couldn't keep up. Once they hit a distraction, however, they'd run at normal speed. Still, they were halfway to Rorikstead before they turned around.

[DrNewcenstein]

Another method one could use is to give them several Travel packages that link to a given marker, such as Whiterun Exterior to Rorikstead Exterior, then Rorikstead Exterior to Markarth Exterior, then Markarth Exterior to wherever. If you set it up for a Schedule, you may find they don't actually get to where they're going in time (Commander Maro has this problem if you follow him).

 

You may even have to build a Package List, so that each Package can have the Must Complete flag checked. This way, they'll get to where they're going regardless of the time it takes. By putting "Do this" Packages between the "Go Here" Packages, you ensure they do whatever they need to do before the next "Go Here" Packages starts.

 

Theoretically, of course. Haven't tried it myself yet, as the idea just occurred to me.