LE Skyrim Civilization and Struggles

[KillerHappyFace]

Something that always gets me about Skyrim is the lack of people in its settlements. It seems 3 people constitute a village, while a dozen makes a city.

Civilization

I would like to request that someone adds to the settlements and NPCs of Skyrim, but leaves all of the current quest NPCs intact. From what I can tell, every city except possibly Solitude and Windhelm have enough space around them to at least double, or even triple in size. Here's a rough outline of changes that I think are necessary for immersive civilization in Skyrim:

 

- Cities that can believably hold 100 people, using generic NPC Citizens. Villages that consist of around 1-2 dozen. EDIT: For clarification, this will likely involve adding many new buildings to each settlement and extending walls to encompass them where necessary.

- Additional voicework for all races and professions. It seems that every NPC has one of about 5 voices!

- Additional trade/misc establishments. A few more stores/inns for variety and new features like actual slums, news boards, refugee camps (for people displaced by dragons and war) outside the walls, and maybe brothels (or else this mod would never generate enough interest to be made)

- Refurbish the non-quest forts, making them posts for Stormcloaks or Imperials instead of generic bandits, so they actually have places to live other than frozen camps.

-EDIT: Bandit camps around Skyrim randomly grow in influence over time. As individual bandit gangs get more powerful, their bounty increases. Wait longer to collect a higher bounty, but wait too long and the local law will clear them out.

-EDIT: More powerful bandit gangs can attack small villages, but won't kill everyone. Bandits will ignore citizens that submit, and a successful attack decimates the town's traders' inventories.

-EDIT: More peaceful road encounters: adventurers, travelers, farmers bringing their goods to town, etc can be seen commonly on main roads, and occasionally on smaller paths.

-EDIT: more roving traders, with packhorse/cart caravans accompanying them. They may be attacked by bandits and/or yourself. Can also be used as a pay opportunity: caravans will wait at towns, and you can hire on for a leg of the journey as a bodyguard as in Fallout 1.

 

Struggles

I would also like to request some world event changes to make the main story more urgent and the civil war less...dumb. Some of these would be quite difficult, but they would be nice to have:

 

- Dragons have chances of actually attacking towns/forts, even if the player isn't present. If enough people are killed, it will be abandoned replaced with a ruin. EDIT: If enough people are killed, some houses will be ruined, but the settlement will eventually recover. Recovery time is approx the time it takes for a dungeon to respawn.

- Forts can come under attack by the opposing side, possibly changing hands.

- Camps can be attacked in the war or by dragons, and can be razed in the process.

- Towns can be occupied by the Legion or the Stormcloaks.

- Larger 'battlefield' random occurrence, possible 'pitched battle' random occurrence where you come across Legion and Stormcloaks fighting. EDIT: Large battles will occur randomly at a number of locations around the map. Participation for your allied side will have some effect, dunno what yet.

- As more towns get occupied/attacked by dragons, people get displaced. An Empire-sympathizing refugee camp grows outside Solitude, and a Stormcloak one grows outside Windhelm. People who lose their home to dragons make their way to Whiterun, where the Dragonborn is believed to frequent.

-EDIT: Small Imperial-sympathizing refugee camp outside Solitude, and a Stormcloak one outside Windhelm. A refugee camp of dragon survivors is established outside Whiterun, after hearing rumors that a dragon was killed by Whiterun soldiers. The Whiterun camp will start from nothing and grow as the main story progresses.

-EDIT: Before a large battle, dragon attack, or town occupation starts, innkeepers, villagers, news boards, and guards will talk about them and when the player hears/reads, a reused quest will appear to direct you to the location. Event will trigger when player gets there or after a period of time elapses. This is to facilitate participation in these events.

Edited November 21, 2011 by KillerHappyFace

[wesside0yes]

 

Struggles

I would also like to request some changes to make the main story more urgent and the war less...dumb. Some of these would be quite difficult, but they would be nice to have:

 

- Dragons have chances of actually attacking smaller towns/forts. If enough people are killed, it will be abandoned replaced with a ruin. After that, bandits/scavengers will move in.

...

- As more towns get occupied/attacked by dragons, people get displaced. An Empire-sympathizing refugee camp grows outside Solitude, and a Stormcloak one grows outside Windhelm. People who lose their home to dragons make their way to Whiterun, where the Dragonborn is believed to frequent.

 

Love it, and agree with it all except for the two excerpts I have qouted above. The first one I disagree with because, disregarding that this would take incredible amount of modding work to achieve, it might destroy the immersion in Skyrim if you play long enough. In the end the whole of Skyrim would be nothing but abandoned village and smoldering wreckages, since the dragons remain even after finishing the main questline. My alternative would be to still have dragons attack smaller (mabye even bigger?) towns and forts but make it so that after some amount of time, believing the dragon is the victor, the village repopulates.

 

Second one not just due to my first argument, but also due to that it would not fit within the Skyrim lore and style. I would resemble more of a Fallout like ambiance instead of an Elder Scroll one.

[KillerHappyFace]

Hmm, good point wesside. Making some changes to the OP.

 

Changed:

- When dragons kill a lot of people in a village or even a larger town, it has some buildings burned down, but the settlement recovers in about the same amount of time it takes for a dungeon to respawn.

- Refugee camps are small, persistent, and don't change based on the war. I'd like for the locations to stay the same though, and for the Whiterun camp from dragon attacks to grow slightly over the course of the main story.

 

Added:

- I feel like bandits need something to make them seem more...bandit-like. How about bandit camps around Skyrim that randomly grow in influence over time? As individual bandit gangs get more powerful, their bounty increases. Wait longer to collect a higher bounty, but wait too long and the local law will clear them out.

 

Keep the feedback coming!

[Lineoutt]

Awesome awesome awesome! I agree with most of the stuff and agree with that other guy and agree with your solution. A couple things on the bandits:

 

- People always talk about bandits raiding places and I think it would go along with the "pitched battle" theme you mentioned to maybe have more of these raids on actual towns/cities. Keeping with the same respawn thing with the dragons. Also if there are bandit raids maybe not make them very powerful because i think it would be immersion breaking to constantly see people killed by a dragon and then made alive and then killed by bandits and then made alive and then killed by a dragon. Maybe make bandits knock them out or something?

 

- Just have to say it would be so awesome to see more of the "big battle stormcloak vs imperial" stuff in the right area, like whiterun or somewhere with navigable terrain. Oh and the fort wars would be amazing! just as long as they werent very important forts with any quests (like you said taking bandit forts and making them into winnable forts would be just the best)

 

EDIT: oh also, the problem with buildings being destroyed is that in many towns there are only like 4 to begin with so maybe, idk what a good solution would be

Edited November 18, 2011 by Lineoutt

[Drytor]

Loving the idea. I was actualy wondering myself if it would be possible to maybe have some player controlled Forts or something. You are the Dragonborn so surely people would rally to you. Obviously this would probably fit in better if used in the context of you're fighting for the Stormcloacks or the Imperials. I feel that particular quest line was a little rushed although I did start it at around level 30... Could have done with a few more challenging Skirmishes or yes, the open field battles.

 

In terms of Dragons or bandits attacking settlements or forts there could be a "quest prompt" to make it easier to implement than wholly random. You speak to the Jarl or maybe a guard approaches you saying "A Dragon has been spotted approaching the city!" and your response will mean you either join the battle or let the city face the consequences. It could even be done through asking Inkeepers if they've heard any rumours with a random response of "I hear a <dragon/bandit camp/some other trouble> was spotted near <insert settlement>" which gives you say 24 in game hours to visit the area or the town gets hit.

 

I felt the Blades were very underused with the temple being excessively small and with you only able to recruit 3 new blade members! Perhaps the Blased could take up residence in Forts/Ruins with some confruntations with the Thalmor? Though it's very improbable that anyone will try to implement this into the game I had a thought that there could be some sort of a mission/ranking system within the Blades where they go off Dragon hunting or something and there could be a chest (like the one just outside the temple) where some of the spoils would be placed if you wanted them. More Blades would mean more people to fight Dragons with you, although at higher levels you really don't need them at all, and to just fill the space a bit.

 

I very much agree with some of the "populated" areas feeling very empty but the risk of places being too crowded is also present

[KillerHappyFace]

@ Lineoutt: added a clarification -- all quest forts would be untouched to prevent weirdness. Also, more buildings would be added to all settlements to make their population increase without crowding, so the discerning dragon would have a wider selection of homes and inns to burninate. Nice idea about the massive battles, and about the bandit attacks. I edited in:

- Large battles that will occur at random in set open areas across the world.

- Trading caravans for bandits to attack. You can hire on as a bodyguard if you're inclined to travel in the direction they're going. If the caravan passes near a powerful gang, the bandits have higher likelihood of attacking.

 

I'm not sure how well bandit attacks on settlement could be handled though. The guards may well slaughter them all, which seems a bit high-risk for all but the most powerful gangs. For the large battles, I feel there would have to be some incentive to participate, but I don't know what. Any Ideas?

 

@ Drytor: Nice catch! I have all of these world events, but no way for the player to see them with any consistency!

- Gossip and news boards will give you a reused quest for bandit bounties, dragon sightings, and high-tension war areas. The event will trigger when you get there or after an amount of time. As gossip is never perfectly accurate, maybe some of these could be wild goose chases?

 

I like the idea of expanding the Blades, but I'm not sure if that sort of story quest change should be implemented. I would like for this mod to add a number of things, but leave quests, combat, and as many other things as possible untouched to maximize compatibility with other mods. What does everyone else think?

[Deleted2558536User]

Agreed, to everything. Simple as that. If you or another group of modders can do this, and I am sure they will. It will be excellent.

[stumpndum]

Awesome idea, i don't really care enough for more voice variety tho, having skyrim feel alive is more important.

 

By the way having 6 people bash another 6 people isn't a war, it's gangland violence.

[Midicow]

If I were actually decent at modding and not a lazy good for nothing like I am, I'd lean towards figuring out a way to just increase the terrain by 2x or 3x its size (at least x and z axis, maybe not so much height due to heightmap limitations), then I'd rebuild each town to be at least four times its current size with at least two npcs per household. Miniquests and sewers and encounters abound.

 

Then I'd release it in 2020 when I actually manage to accomplish it.

 

Unfortunately this isn't something I'm particularly talented nor motivated to do, so I will simply dream.

 

Major problem is that well, more = more. You have more polys, shadows, fancy stuff to render. Smart people figure out how to abuse occlusion and walls and the like to reduce the performance hit, but that's still quite a few additional scripts.

 

Personally? With sufficient ini modding I've got skyrim running on four cores and using most if not all of my ram. Phenom I 2.5ghz black edition, 4 gigs of ddr 1066 ram hd5750 1gig, and the game runs smooth and fast even in complex situations at 1600x900. My cpu monitors and logs report that I get up to 40% utilization on each core just wandering about, up to 60% when in combat, and up to 100% in complex situations, but I rarely get stutter or drops in frames even with stock ultra settings + a few moderate tweaks and improvements. No AA of course though. GPU's a bit gimpy for that.

 

.. So I know Skyrim can handle much more than Oblivion ever could. The question is at what point does the global increase of npcs, polys, and scripts start to cause the min-spec curve to rise?

 

I'll cite open cities for oblivion as an example. They looked great, the reborn version even modified and prettified the houses, but your performance when approaching cells with the open cities in them would plummet so hard unless you had a nice rig.

[KillerHappyFace]

Good idea midicow. I'd say the expanding of the whole world would be a little overboard, but who says we cant put a little tardis effect into the existing closed cities? A 1.25 expansion of Windrun would give a lot of space without any real noticable difference in size from inside to out. In fact, I'm pretty sure Bethesda already did it, knowing their indoor-outdoor size ratios. There's that and all the space in the plains around it and we can have ourselves a sizable Edoras clone.

 

I can't really say much about performance because this is just a plan, and not even started conceptually. Since most cities are closed, expanding them should have little impact on the world map.

 

By the way having 6 people bash another 6 people isn't a war, it's gangland violence.

Lol, yeah. Precisely the reason I posted this request. Well, that and I was really sick of hearing "Olaf (or whatever his name is); patron of the great clan Battle-Born...a name I'm sure you know well!"

 

As an aside, I would like to note that this is still a request/suggestion thread. I'm too busy at university and too inexperienced with non-Unreal and non-java modding to do any heavy lifting on my own. I'm still willing to help in any small way I can, though.

Edited November 18, 2011 by KillerHappyFace