Underwater combat

[lgpmichael]

Has anyone ever licked the problems with underwater combat? As soon as the enemies go into combat mode, they stop moving around, and just swim in place. Creatures can be kindof fixed, but NPC's (argonians obviously) just swim in place and go nowhere. Their AI is to 'allow swimming' (but of course they ignore standard AI if they are in combat). Makes it really easy to kill them, just hover out of range...

[David Brasher]

I have not had that experience in my game. I use a pretty wild level scaling removal mod, and my Argonian had to go hide in water a lot when he was young and weak. Certain enemies don't follow into the water, but others do. I had lots of trouble with bandits and necromancers and people like that. I could stay down in the deep water and cast my healing spells. They would ceaselessly try to attack me. They would beat me up until they ran out of air, then they would have to swim to the surface. I would get a short rest before they dived and attacked me again.

 

Now slaughterfish are a different story. They just have really stupid programming. They wouldn't even bite you if you stuck your hand in their mouth. You can stand there and tease them and they often won't attack. I miss the Morrowind slaughterfish. They had excellent combat AI and made it so you had to think twice about swimming.

[lgpmichael]

I have not had that experience in my game. I use a pretty wild level scaling removal mod, and my Argonian had to go hide in water a lot when he was young and weak. Certain enemies don't follow into the water, but others do. I had lots of trouble with bandits and necromancers and people like that. I could stay down in the deep water and cast my healing spells. They would ceaselessly try to attack me. They would beat me up until they ran out of air, then they would have to swim to the surface. I would get a short rest before they dived and attacked me again.

 

Now slaughterfish are a different story. They just have really stupid programming. They wouldn't even bite you if you stuck your hand in their mouth. You can stand there and tease them and they often won't attack. I miss the Morrowind slaughterfish. They had excellent combat AI and made it so you had to think twice about swimming.

 

Ive found they are fine on the surface, this is in an area underwater entirely, their editor location is underwater too. Their current AI is always being set to 'Surface' (which I see little documentation for, but I assume means tey think they need to go up for air) even though they are Argonian and so can waterbreathe... hrm, OK, the more I think about it, the more I find this very weird. An NPC helper will follow the PC through the water deep underwater in the ocean but an Argonian bandit won't in a cave... even though it is just another NPC. Maybe I've missed something stupid, maybe its because it is interior. I need to investigate this a little more, I think. Job for tomorrow.

[DrakeTheDragon]

That's weird. I regularly go play-testing into Weyond Cave (Argonian hideout full of them). Where best to play-test Argonian mods as where there are a bunch of them wearing almost nothing at all all the time? Nothing beats this place for checking out new skin textures' seamlessness! But whenever I went down into there without cheating I had a hard time to survive. Those guys under water are like white sharks. You stand little to no chance against them in their element. It's weird it's different for you. I definitely haven't encountered fighting Argonians in a state as you described in my game, yet.

[MichikoUnknownFox]

I remember underwater combat to be working fine for me too. Bandits sometimes would follow you into the water. I noticed this especially with the pirates in IC Waterfront, just a few days ago. When the guys fell into the water, I jumped in to finish the fight. We were under the ship lol. They kept trying to go up for air though. But yeah they were definitely moving around properly.