LE Improved immersive economy and schedules

[stebbinsd]

I always thought that the "Radiant AI," where people have real-time schedules - wait up in the morning, eat their breakfast, leave the house, lock the front door, go to work, visit the pub in the evening, before heading home to sleep for the night - seemed a little half-assed. There were a few NPCs who didn't adhere to this schedule, and if you looked any deeper than what a common adventurer would look, you'll realize that it's a pretty shallow attempt at making the world feel alive.

 

Innkeepers, for instance, stay behind the counter, night and day, 24/7/365. Never eating, never sleeping.

 

Shopkeepers never actually fill their own stock. Their merchant chests just ... magically respawn every couple of days. You never see a blacksmith get a shipment of ore from a nearby mine, or a supply of leather from hunters. Inns never get a giant carriage full of food or mead from nearby farms or meaderies. The mines, hunters, farms, and meaderies are out there, but they never actually do anything!

 

And then there's the "rich" people. What exactly makes them so rich? Does anyone of the Battle-Born clan even have jobs? Olfrid parades around Whiterun rubbing in everyone's face about how he's the patriarch of Whiterun's most influential family line, but he does absolutely NOTHING to earn his keep! Hell, I actually have a little more respect for Maven Black-Briar! Because as obnoxious as she is, she actually DOES SOMETHING to earn the wealth that she flaunts!

 

Except, she would ... if she actually shipped her mead to the inns and food stores of Skyrim, instead of it just magically appearing in their underground merchant chests.

 

I'd like to see a mod that gives some actual radiance to the radiant AI.

 

- Farms and Meaderies have helpers who actually pick the crops out of the ground, add it to their inventories (can be pickpocketed and everything), walk over to a carriage containing about ten sideways barrels (arranged like bowling pins), and add those crops to the barrels, before retiring to the inns that they live at to sleep.

 

- At the end of every day, somebody actually pulls the carts, containing the sideways barrels, to the inns, where the innkeeper takes some gold - let's say, about 5,000 gold - out of their inventory and gives it to the suppliers, and the suppliers transfer the contents of the ten sideways barrels into the merchant's chest. Two identical slips of paper are added to the NPCs inventories, documenting the transaction, which are placed in a box titled "transaction papers" or something to that effect, at the NPC's next opportunity.

 

- Innkeepers themselves actually have shifts. 12-hour shifts, 3-4 days per week, to be exact. Four innkeepers per inn, with an "inn manager" overseeing their activities (and who have an office at the top floor) and some inns are owned by the same parent company. In fact, maybe that can be the Battle-Born Clan's livelihood, since they obviously so desperately need one: They have inns in nearly every city, competing with the inns that are already in the vanilla game. They have the most influence in Whiterun because that's where "Battle-Born Inns, Inc." are headquartered.

 

- There are actually dozens of freelance hunters and fisherman who travel all of Skyrim (instead of just sitting in the same spot). Whenever they get a decent amount of stuff in their inventory, they would approach innkeepers and food stores in order to sell their fish, and blacksmiths and tailors to sell their pelts. Complete with the aforementioned money-paid-and-identical-papers-given transaction.

 

- Taxes have to be paid to the Jarl. Stormcloak-controlled holds will have smaller taxes than Imperial-controlled holds, since they aren't also collecting taxes on behalf of the Empire. About once every three months, couriers are sent out, giving notices of how much land taxes they owe. Land-owners then visit the Steward, give them a hefty purse full of septims, and the Steward gives them a receipt.

- The Steward then ensures that all the government officials get paid. The Housecarl gets the biggest slice of the budge to work with, so (s)he, being the military general, has to make sure the guards get paid five gold per day, and also, keep the barracks stocked (since they can't live off 5 gold per day, so the government has to make up for that by furnishing their living expenses), and also, pay local blacksmiths for new weapons and armor.

 

- On the roads, the aforementioned shipments can be intercepted and robbed, if you want to play as a bandit. Enormous payouts are available if you manage to hijack the shipments. About ten or twelve merchants' chests worth of goods (because they make about 10-12 stops in their rounds). But be warned: These shipments are heavily guarded by about fifty guards. If you can defeat all but about one or two of them, those guards might flee. Think you'll let them go? Think again! They'll run in the direction of the capital of the hold that you're in, and if they meet a guard, they'll put a bounty on yo ass! They don't even have to make it to the city; they just need to find a guard, is all. For example, if you're in the Rift, they may meet a guard at the watchtowers on the way to the city, and put a bounty on your head, that way.

 

And just about anything else you can think of.

 

Any takers?

[DrNewcenstein]

Sounds nice.

 

However, the problem with the game handling these schedules is the player - specifically, a lot of this stuff doesn't happen unless you're there to see it, which is why when you fast-travel to a city and arrive at 10PM, for example, you see the blacksmith still toiling, then jump up to try to get to their scheduled marker. If you've ever followed Maro for the DB after reading his schedule, you'll know that unless it's his Solitude Day, he'll get halfway to where he's going and turn around because it's tomorrow, and he has to be somewhere else that day. It takes forever and a day for his loop to match his current location, especially when he stops to fight or scratch his ass.

 

Another potential problem is the "50 guards". Put that many people in a scene, and expect nothing else to happen. Ever. If you don't CTD, you'll wish you had. 5 guards that are 15+ levels above the player is more likely, so that if you do want to rob them, you're going up against Perk-laden guards. And don't forget the hired Assassin that follows behind the merchant/guard caravan sniping you in the head.

 

Then you have the 5000 gold, which ain't gonna happen. Merchants might have it, but they won't pay it. 500 tops, I'd think, or whatever the total value of goods they're buying.

 

That said, I believe it's do-able. There's already a mod that lets carriages move about the roads beside the intro, so that part's solved. Whatsisface in Whiterun with the meat stall allegedly goes hunting, but never leaves the city, even during the DB quest where they tell you to try to get him when he's out hunting. Whether that's fixed by the Unofficial patches I can't say, as I don't use them. That can be fixed by the mod, though.

 

I've had some success with having NPCs follow a set of waypoints, but not actually do anything at each of them. I had one that was supposed to go to an Inn for 8 hours and then travel on, but decided he liked the Inn so much that he stayed in it for 42 days before I deleted the mod, so there might be some issues with them crossing cells. However, there's Irilieth, who will leave Dragonsreach, then leave the city, then return to the city, then return to Dragonsreach. What makes her so special, I don't know. Same with the Companions, to some degree.

 

It's definitely something I'd be interested in helping with, though.

[RuubixObsidian]

This is very much in line with what I would like to do for a mod. I think allowing for a more immersive exchange of goods and services is something I really wish I saw more of. It might even be better to use some spawning formulas so at a given time of day they will be in a certain place, or randomization, so that if in the wilds of skyrim you may or may not run across certain NPCs/Traders (taking into account local resources, farms, towns, demand, or others). This could help alleviate schedules and also give relieve to users of more modest hardware.

 

I'm working on learning a lot of tools and will keep you all posted once I start tinkering. But an immersive trading mod is what I'd like to make.