LE Horse Travel - Immersive and Gameplay orientated fast travel.

[BLARGARGY]

I know there are many mods that disable fast travel, and even a mod that adds teleporting wayshrines to the game (skyrim wayshrines by pharros), which helps in making the game more immersive and captivating. You get to experience more of the world, and for players that play with survival mods, half of the fun is having to endure dangers and keep up with your needs. My favorite of these is a mod that requires you to own a horse and actually be mounted in order to fast travel (travel mounts by manaflow). Basically, my request is an extension of this concept.

I've found that, with less and less time to play the game, it can be very redundant getting from point A to B without being able to Fast Travel. But, like many, I dislike how "easy" it is to simply fast travel to my destination, as though there's never any point to actually do any exploring. I appreciate the Carriages in the game and use them often, but it's not particularly immersive to rely on Carriages when you are the Dovahkiin and you own your own horse. So, I've been trying to think of a healthy balance between ease of access and immersive gameplay... I think I've got a decent idea, and it's simple enough in theory (probably not in execution).

Essentially, first and foremost, you must own a horse, and you should be required to be mounted on it in order to fast travel. "Travel Mounts" by Manaflow appears to achieve this. However, I still think it's too easy and "cheap" to just pay a one time fee and have infinite fast-traveling luxury. I want it to be a bit more dynamic, and require a bit more...

So, the solution? Hay, or carrots... Or some other kind of Horse Food.

 

Basically, it should be required that every time you fast travel, you have some horse food on you. With each time you fast travel on your Horse, your Horse consumes the the food resource on the journey.

 

With carrots being an obvious choice for a food source for the horse, the reason I suggested hay is because: A) model for "straw" exists in game already from Hearthfire so hay could just use this model, and B) It could be added with a unique cost and weight and to specific NPC's to add to the immersion, gameplay and dynamism of the mod. I use a mod that makes carriages more expensive, but I know that vanilla cost is 20-50 gold. So, I suggest that a sack of Hay, or whatever, be at least 20 Gold. Maybe less. The cost isn't too important.. I'll explain why in a bit.

The point is to not necessarily make Fast Travel a hindrance, but something that requires a bit more effort and resources than simply opening up your map and clicking your destination. Using this formula, you'd first need a Horse, and then horse food for your Horse, and then you need to mount your Horse, and then once a destination is chosen, the horse food (carrots/hay) is consumed by the Horse.

Obviously, you'd be inclined to purchase a lot of Hay to be able to fast travel freely, right? Well, that's why I think it's important that the Hay weigh a fair amount. Maybe 10-20? I mean, certainly, the weight wouldn't stop people from buying tonnes of hay, but they certainly wouldn't be able to carry it all on them. It'd look silly. So the weight offsets that capability. Instead, they might have some barrels or chests in their home full of hay. That's fine. It still means there's that layer of game play depth that requires you to make sure you have access to your Hay stock, or that you must instead purchase more hay. It'd also give a reason to visit towns and cities more if the store owners sold hay.

 

An obvious (but far more easily accessible) alternative to hay is of course carrots, so there's also that if hay is found to be too difficult to implement properly, as Carrots are already readily available in the game.

 

On the surface this whole concept probably seems like a hindrance to many people, but for those that like that extra little challenge or immersion or just want to feel a bit less guilty using fast travel, I think this could be a nice alternative... I'd appreciate any feedback anyway.