Underground Hideout /Amy Wong /Dogmeat

[Retsam]

Just started dabbling with Fallout 3 modding, so I've tried to pinpoint this problem myself but I've been unsuccessful so far.

 

In brief the problem is Amy Wong (mod) and Dogmeat both are unable to "Go Home" if home is Underground Hideout (mod).

Obviously we're talking several combined mods. However, I feel the problem has something to do with the obstacles the Hideout poses for them to reach the destination, regardless of the actor/companion.

 

Not so brief:

I have tried various combinations of what mod is loaded or not, no consistent change.

It helps to be familiar with the Underground Hideout mod to follow this:

1. The exterior door/teleport is a hatch at the bottom of a Personal Shelter. Since the Shelter is an activator, as opposed to an actual door, I thought perhaps this was an issue, perhaps the AI would not recognize it as a requirement to reach the hatch. I tried removing it and still no success.

2. The main interior door that is encountered after going thru the hatch/portal is set to require a key. Using addItem I have given the key to Amy. 99% of the time she will just stand where ever she is when I tell her to go home. I considered perhaps she was recognizing the area in front of the locked door as home as well since it is part of the interior cell, but she keeps her weapon equipped so I don't think so. ..It just occurred to me that perhaps that is exactly what's going on, she sees she is in the correct interior cell but there are no sandbox markers to make her "idle". Of course, we don’t want her to idle here we want her to go inside. I just started learning this actor stuff last night so It's taking me a while to figure out how to find this stuff.

A. If we are already in the interior cell (the actual interior of the hideout) and I tell her Go Home she will go into sandbox mode so I know she is recognizing that area as "home".

B. If we are just outside of the locked door she will stand there. Except one time- after I added the key to her inventory she did actually open the doors and go inside and entered sandbox mode. But I was unable to get here to repeat that- and no changes. That one really has me stumped.

C. Up until tonight, when just outside of the Shelter, when told to go home she would just stand with weapon equipped. One time, when I manually opened the Shelter prior to telling her go home, she actually went through the portal/hatch. When I followed inside I found her standing in front of the locked door- she had a key- weapon was still equipped. The change tonight was after telling her to go home, she had a key and Shelter was open, she ran off a few steps, "searched", and then ran back and said "I can't do that from here". First time I've seen that dialog.

 

The only difference in my mods tonight is I added Dogmeat Leather Armor. (OT - I was actually already trying to learn how to work with Actors because I decided Dogmeat needed a whistle. Their mod goes much further. It's nice.) But that shouldn't affect Amy. As far as Dogmeat goes, I've not been able to get him to go home to Hideout at all under any circumstances.

 

I hope the reader is able to follow all this. It sounds complicated, but I really feel the problem is going to find a simple solution in the form of changing or adding some kind of reference in Hideout. I'm just not familiar enough yet with the AI and how it handles calculating a route and pathing the actor. The inconsistencies is the thing that keeps throwing me...

 

As a sidenote, I already know I need to create a fake key, we'll call it "Spare Hideout Key" that can be used in a barter window so the player can give it to a companion. The original mod has 10 keys in a safe, but they are useless since they are true keys, thus the player cannot give them to a companion. I think I can handle that one, but I need some help with the companion going home stuff.

TIA