Duke Patrick's Combat - Physics Question

[Joehtosis]

I've been grinning and bearing it for the better part of several years but it's really starting to wear me down now.

You all know it, the random occurrence of an enemy just shooting off in some random direction for about 50 or so "feet" after being hit, sometimes getting lost completely if the hit was a kill.

Seemingly random, it occurs most often when landing a blow on the enemy's front-side, and normally only after health has dropped below a quarter.

Needless to say this is mind-numbingly frustrating when said enemy has been a bastard of a kill to land, and all of their wonderful loot just launches into a field of deep grass and bush, at the bottom of a lake, submerged in lava, or better yet, completely through a wall or floor in a dungeon and into the endless void.

 

I've known it's Duke Patrick's mod for some time now (isolated it on a vanilla install), and I've tried the recommended physics mod spookyfx (Duke Patrick) recommends, Realistic Physics & Force Package with Increased Friction & More Rigid Body skeletons. The problem still bounces about, and I've seen spookyfx reference it as a common issue with the pushactoraway script. This was back in his v2 beta, but the problem persists in 5.9, at least on my install, and ol' Duke hasn't been active in these parts for what seems to be years.

 

My question is primarily this: is there anything I can do to fix or hamper this issue (such as disabling his mod's use -or the game's, I'm not fully aware of how the vanilla engine processes combat- of pushactoraway)?

If not, I suppose I'm just going to give up the years old ghost and just try out VCE.

[Maskar]

PushActorAway is a simple script function to make actors fly away from their target. It can also be used to pull them, or make them fall on the floor. Look for the script(s) it's used in and either change the force, or simply completely remove the function.

[Striker879]

I've also found that a similar situation occurs when using the later versions of Universal Skeleton Nif (and any skeleton.nif that is derived from it such as killermonkey99's BBB Ragdoll Breast Physics skeleton). The other hallmark is the floating weapon after death/while paralyzed situation.

 

I use Elz - No Floating Weapon for the later issue (and it works with only a few exceptions when an NPC is knocked down) and have found that by using a tweaked INI version of Realistic Fatigue plus Basic Physical Activities the flying through the air on death is avoided (the key is before they die the NPC's fatigue reaches the threshold I've set in the INIs and they collapse ... very satisfying to watch).

[Joehtosis]

Hey guys,

Thanks for the replies, they're much appreciated!

 

Maskar: I imagine that's probably something I'd have to do with TES4Edit to mess with Duke's .esp, but to be frank I don't think I'm confident enough to go rooting through his work like that without breaking the mod out-right. I imagine it wouldn't be horribly time consuming with back-ups, but still, I feel I might find myself out of my depth. I'm looking for a quick-and-dirty solution, I don't often find myself with the luxury of enough time to mod these days.

Love your overhaul btw, and thanks for the taking the time to address this.

 

Striker879: I actually already have Realistic Fatigue installed myself, I never thought of using it in that way to solve this. With a bit of testing, I've set the .ini file to 1.3 for health's impact on fatigue drain, and that seems to produce the most consistent results. Anything lower tends to still see higher-health enemies like Ogre's flying off, anything higher seems extremely unbalanced.

 

:: Snippet of the ini ::

 

 

;This is the multiplier for fatigue drained by low health. Setting this
; slightly higher than 1.0 means actors will collapse just before they die.
; fatigueHealthDrain = healthDrainGain * healthLevel^2 * fatigueMax
set aaRealisticFatigue.healthDrainGain to 1.3 ; recommended = 1.05

My main concern is this may be a bit unbalancing for certain fights, as I'm essentially removing 1/3 of everyone's health (characters aren't not much of an enemy or ally once they've crumpled to the floor). 1/3 is a pretty big chunk to take out of the fight. I imagine there'd be other ways to balance this with Duke's mod though in adjusting damage in the .ini, so I suppose that'll be my next issue to fiddle around with.

My other concern is this still leads to some fairly wonky "death" animations where near-death mobs start doing the electric boogaloo on their way to the ground, they don't seem to fall in the way Realistic Physics & Force Package intends, it's effectively the same as Vanilla. Not as bad as them launching out of orbit I suppose.

 

Just out of curiosity, what settings do you find give you the best results in your .ini file for Realistic Fatigue?

I also wasn't entirely sure what portions of Basic Physical Activities (I also use this) would help in addressing this.

 

Thanks again to both of you for responding, I believe I have a reasonable way of approaching this now should I stick with Duke's Melee Combat.

Edited May 24, 2016 by Joehtosis

[Striker879]

Now that I look at the BPA and RF INIs I see that all that I've coordinated between them is jump_min and jump_max along with walk_min and walk_max (down near the bottom of each INI ... mine are 64 and 164 for the jump and 105 and 150 for the walk variables ... I think the key here is to make sure you have the same for each of those variables in both mods).

 

In RF I have aaRealisticFatigue.mode to 1 in the Simple Fatigue Settings section (but I believe that only affects the player) and set aaRealisticFatigue.healthDrainGain to 1.07 (so that health is very close to death before the NPC collapses ... other than creating custom vanilla spells I don't use any insane weapons/spells).

 

Fatigue drains and damage become an important tool for either poisons, spells or enchantments and I've also had good success with damage strength + damage endurance poisons (neither of those regenerate, and NPCs don't have spells or potions to restore either). I "soften" them up with a couple of spell hits with custom weakness to magic 100% (weakness to magic hits stack so if you put in a long enough timer that would mean 200% weakness to magic) and then follow that up before the timer runs out with a custom weakness to poison 100% (I don't think it stacks, and in any case with the first two hits anything more would be even more overkill). A single poisoned arrow or blade strike and within seconds they are down and stay down with hardly any health loss.

 

You'll need to have fairly high alchemy skills to make a single poison for damage both strength and endurance ... two separate poisons delivered before the spell timers run out will be just as effective (and available at lower alchemy levels, just less convenient to deliver). You could also do it without the "softening up" but I don't want to spend all my time running around picking ingredients to make tons of poisons.

 

You don't really need to be Mages Guild to make your own spells. There is either Frostcrag or what I mostly use ... Emma's Leyawiin Lake House (or you could opt for Red Rose Manor for something more conveniently located). Until my destruction skill gets high enough I use less that 100% weakness to keep the timer high enough for the weakness to magic to stack and still allow time for the next spell/poison delivery.