LE Economy mod?

[xDarkAuthorx]

I wrote TheNiceOne (the creator of Enhanced Economy for Oblivion) and he said that he will consider making an economy mod for Skyrim once he gets around to playing a bit more (he's been busy) and once the SKSE is up to the task. Apparently, for Oblvion, the OBSE team had to add features to accomodate his mod, but he seemed optimistic that they would be just as nice for Skyrims SKSE (its the same team). So, while its not like this mod is going to come out tomorrow, it very likely will come out in the future. I gave him a link to this thread, so he can look through here and see what people are asking for. So...yeah, thats pretty damn awesome!

[Mystra007]

Mystra007, you took it to the next level man. Money lending and taxation? Wow! I haven't thought of that at all but... won't that make the mod WAY more complicated?

I would like it to start at first with a very basic resource trade system.

 

Actually it could just be all modular, like this:

- Weekly profit + business taxation (ie: what I described)

- Supply and demand (ie: oblivion mod and Dark_Author described)

- Trade routes (ie: what you described)

 

There's no reason why it wouldn't work together.

 

Ore mined by NPC <-> Passing trader takes for gold <-> Blacksmith buys for more gold / makes sword <-> Passing trader buys for even more gold <-> Bandit buys for the most gold.

Values

1 Ore <-> 1 gold <-> 3 gold <-> 6 Gold <-> 9 Gold.

 

I thought about it too. Here what I came up with for iron ores and iron sword(25 gold):

- 2x iron ores (3 gold) make one iron ingot (7 gold)

- player can mine 3 iron ores in about 6 minutes ie: 30 per hour

- an NPC would probably get paid 33% (a typical number for salaries expenses paid by companies I hear often in business courses)

- the mine owner can sell the ores for about 1/2 gold - thus an iron ore miner would be paid about 15 septims an hour (540 for ebony miners?!)

- the trader sell the ores for 2-3 gold to a smith

- the smith smelt them to make two iron ingots

- the smith sell them at value to a blacksmith

- the blacksmith make an iron sword and sell it to the shop owner at value

- the shop owner sell it at 200% value (barter skill of around ~50 for the clients)

 

assumptions:

- veins have > 100 ores in them (but they allow you to take 3) - so they can be continuously mined till they regen

- the smith/blacksmith are in locations close to each other (so they don't need a trader)

 

hence profit for each actors:

miner: 2 septims

mine owner: 6 - 2 gold ~ 4 septims

trader: 10 - 6 - 1(given to the merchant guild for not being a member) ~ 3 septims

smith: 14 - 10 ~ 4 septims

blacksmith: 25 - 14 ~ 9 septims

shop owner:

37 - 25 ~ 12 septims (other stores)

45 - 25 ~ 20 septims (general store?)

50 - 25 ~ 25 septims (arms & armors store? peoples are willing to pay more for specialized store?)

jarl: 8 gold or so, assuming an import/business/whatever tax of 10%, and a sales tax of 10% on the sale value paid by the shop owner?

 

Q: Where do bandits / warlocks / necromancers and the like fall in that?

- bandits could be the miners and traders

- bandits leaders or their right-hand men could be the mine owner / smith / blacksmith

- bandit "clans" could own a shop as a front to their illegal activites where they could smuggle goods in town and trade stolen items / legal items

- warlocks / necromancers could offer training / new spells / etc to anyone friendly to them.

- warlocks / necromancers could be producer of magic items and smuggle them in cities

 

Q: So how much septims was generated from one iron sword?

 

Derpending on the sale price, from 103 to 116 septims

 

 

All and all thanks for your support guys, I hope to hear even more from you and the rest of the community.

 

That project is really large scale and complex. So I suggest something like this:

1. Implement the supply and demand part for each merchant and each merchandise type

 

(I can only comment on what I was planning to do because I can't really flesh out someone else idea)

2.1 Add weekly income to merchants based on static factors and dynamic factors (quests done, who won the war, is alduin dead etc)

2.1.1 Make a basic script that generate that money and put it in a chest based on factors passed in parameters (DONE)

2.2 Modify shop cells to add disabled clutter/furniture that are enabled when the merchant "unlock them"

2.2.1 For each quality of furniture and each quality of clutter

2.2.2 Add "money chests" (see 2.1.1) to either the merchant shop or its vault(see 2.3)

2.3 Add vaults to shops so that merchants can start with a "treasure hoard" and add/remove to it depending on profits

2.3.1 Make several outfits for each merchant

2.3.2 Make several enchanted items for each merchant (that they can upgrade to)

2.4 Let the player purchase a part or a complete business

2.5 Guilds and moneylenders

2.6 Modify landscape

2.6.1 Larger farms

2.6.2 Worldspace for player-owned city / business HQ

 

3 Add traders and trade route that move between cities and villages

Edited March 8, 2012 by Mystra007

[JoTheVeteran]

That's great news Dark_Author, it would be awesome indeed, thanks for that.

 

Mystra007 whatever you can do is welcome on my part. I'm just not in a situation where I can learn how to mod Skyrim right now, I don't have the time for it, hence the "request" and not the "announcement" for that mod.

On the task at hand, keep in mind that the values I proposed are clearly just chance numbers, I tried to make it as simple as possible. I don't take into account demand, shortage of even inflation if there is such a thing in Skyrim while you talk about mine owners, guild membership, a new smith NPC character, and necromancer trainers lol :D. Don't get me wrong, I love the stuff, it's just too much for a start. It gets even more complicated than it already is, I try like to avoid that as you see.

What I'm saying is that the project is large scale but you have to think how to make it work without having to mod the rest of the landscape, my opinion at least. If you go and try to change every building into the most efficient design possible it automatically becomes HUGE, maybe even a whole new game!

 

I believe you've got to focus on that merchant chest idea you got and make it work for starters.

Then the ability to exchange items between traders that'd interconnected to those individual chests, another huge step and that's also gotta work flawlessly.

Then create that merchant character that buys weapons only for starters.

Then make that guy go sell swords to random NPCs inside the city he's based, even to the arrow-to-the-knee struck guards, and make sure that they KEEP the weapons, and not dismiss them in the next day cycle.

Make all THAT happen and the rest is well on the way eventually.

[SinderionsBones]

As far as I can tell there is no ability to go through an actor, player, or containers inventory systematically. At least in in game scripts and references I've been able to find.

 

All scripted inventory managment is based on individually stored references kept in their own, hardcoded variables. What this means to this idea:

 

Every time you sell any item to a merchant, it must use up one variable you have pre scripted in, this means, for any length of time, or significant group of transactions, you must have hundreds of individual properties on that merchants script. If this still isn't clear, here is an exerpt of the vanilla bookshelf script. PlayerbookshelfContainerScript

 

BookMarker01 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook01)

BookMarker02 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook02)

BookMarker03 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook03)

BookMarker04 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook04)

BookMarker05 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook05)

BookMarker06 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook06)

BookMarker07 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook07)

BookMarker08 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook08)

BookMarker09 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook09)

BookMarker10 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook10)

BookMarker11 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook11)

BookMarker12 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook12)

BookMarker13 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook13)

BookMarker14 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook14)

BookMarker15 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook15)

BookMarker16 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook16)

BookMarker17 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook17)

BookMarker18 = GetLinkedRef(BookShelfBook18)

 

This is one of 5 to 10 operations that must be done on all 18 objects, there are also 7 or 8 other variables that have to be split 18 times in the same script, Each object is filled with the onadditem event and cleared with the onremoveitem event.

 

This would mean for each merchant, for any reasonable number of transactions, you would need something like:

 

Item01 = Item01ref

Item02 = Item02ref

Item03 = Item02ref

...

Item120 = Item120ref

Item121 = Item121ref

 

the above, of course, doesn't actually mean anything, but the method and downsides are what I'm getting at. It's perfectly possible you could find a way to optimize this, but the fact remains you would need dozens of slots reserved for weapons, armor, or whatever else you wanted to keep unique. simpler objects could be stored with a base object and a number easily enough. For example, 15 emeralds.

 

More money based, versus item based calculations would be infinitely more simple of course. I am of course reffering to money distribution, income, taxes, and whatever else. These are the things I think they were hinting at when the developers hinted at economy. Player actions such as stealing, ledger modification and murder could then be magnified so they would be readily observable in the system.

 

How object oriented papyrus is is awesome though, In order to keep tabs on the entire system at any given time, you may even wish to attach the master script to some object you can invisibly teleport to the player and access by it's unique reference. you could then add script objects to the master script for each merchant or other such node you intended to track, and access it all at once. sort of like:

 

script merchant

 

int property gold auto

float property taxrate = 4.75 auto

bool property hasloan = 0 auto

bool property likescheese = 1 auto

 

int function removetaxes(idays as int)

gold = gold-gold*(100/taxrate)

end function

 

 

script MasterEconomyScript extends objectreference

 

merchant property ArcadiaMerchant auto

merchant property BelethorMerchant auto

merchant property BanneredMare auto

merchant property WRStables auto

int property day auto

 

Event Onload()

if getdayspassed() != days

Taxation()

endif

 

 

int function taxation()

arcadiamerchant.removetaxes(getdayspassed()-day)

belethormerchant.removetaxes(getdayspassed()-day)

banneredmare.removetaxes(getdayspassed()-day)

end function

 

 

 

 

 

Anyways, then expanded from there, with the idea being it's a central economy database that's being manipulated on demand, versus some crazy, probably bug prone series of scripts in various areas. Any interaction between localized elements like ledgers and NPC behavior would be handled by a quest, thus having a small 'global' element without cluttering anything up with actual globals.

 

Ok that's enough rambling for this late/early. I shoulda stopped a long time ago lol I think I was mixing two or three different programming languages for part of that lol. Also I forget what the merchant script should extend...

Edited March 11, 2012 by SinderionsBones

[JoTheVeteran]

I kinda see how this would work but it is still way over my head.

I do not like the quest thing though and I believe no one would want to bother with yet another quest just for buying/selling stuff. I know this is hard, and will be buggy as hell, but each transaction must have a global impact, else the whole idea is moot. Skyrim already has a mini economy in each city for the player's bounty. If it where to be as simple as that then it's no fun at all, if you forgive my candidness.

 

That's why I tried to visualize it as simple as possible. No taxes, no guilds, no things like that and no random events, at start at least. Only a locally, at first, system of distribution of weapons and armor from the blacksmith to the city dwellers by a new merchant NPC, with necessary condition that they will KEEP the new items as long as active, alive, and remove the old ones from their inventory as to avoid over encumbrance incidents. This would classify as a global event, right? If for example a soldier in Whiterun had a whole new set of weapons instead of the default ones. Wouldn't that need to register in the global variables as a new class of guard or something? Or could it be confined locally to avoid complexion?

Anyway, achieving that, I'd then start wondering about the gold/raw materials exchange, and finally outside the city influence.

 

I know it'd be complicated but if this can be done in strategy games and simulators, then why not also here?

[SinderionsBones]

I think you may have misunderstood the quest part lol. No worries though. It's a quest, in that the game can manage it in a certain, easy to control way, it's not a quest in the players journal. Virtually everything that goes on in Skyrim is encapsulated in a quest for easy management. Tons of quests run, start, and stop in the background as you're just wondering through skyrim. They manage every line of dialog, everytime an npc talks to another, every scene, and every time NPCs.... do anything other than their default daily wanderings, including serving you in an inn and giving you a bed. Even their usual 'sandbox' wonderings are often tied to a quest in several ways. The opening sequence of the game is one very large, VERY complex quest, and it never even touches your quest log, it leaves that to another simpler quest.

 

Now that I've had some sleep... even some aspects of your moving merchandise around sounds a little more reasonable. I'm still curious though...

 

Upgradable guards!

The 'new class of guard' is one thing I think that is key to this, if that's your main goal. Is your priority that this is pretty much one dimensional? the quality of the weapons sold to local npc, or this particular merchant, if you mean for him to be a real guy, directly contributes to upgrading a holds guards? Intuitively this would suggest they also get upgraded faster if business in the hold, and thus taxes are higher, or business is so bad that the merchants sell at rock bottom prices. The second one is far less likely of course. If all of this is ignored, it seems the simplest way would almost certainly be to track the total gold cost of weapon, armor, and high value items(rubies, jewelry etc, that can be traded for weapons) the player sells within the hold, and translate that into upgraded guards, with maybe different weapons.

 

If you wanted to upgrade guards with specific stuff, you'd have to keep in mind that whatever it was, they'd choose to keep it in the proper hold colors, and this would require retexturing. I suggest a simple changing of the relevant NPC's to have higher stats, and maybe a cooler weapon.

After going through all this, if the only visible result is to be upgraded guards, it then becomes kind of clear, couldn't the player just directly donate towards the guards upgrade with the steward and jarl? A dozen weapons donated could then be parceled out to random guards, probably starting with the jarls inner circle.

 

Is the goal an economy? or one specific side effect of a healthy flow of money? If so, can you make it so the player expects what you are offering (upgraded guards), and is fully rewarded by directly addressing the effect (upgraded guards) rather than the incidental cause(the flow of money)?

Functioning hold economies!

If the goal is a more vibrant and visible economy, like we expected to launch with the vanilla game, it would indeed be a significant undertaking. Expected visible effects would need to be defined, to give reason for the player to even bother with it. I started, and did a lot of work on a mod I called The Morrowind Black Market back in 2002 and 2003. The idea was an underground economy of all sorts of stuff you couldn't do back then in game. Farming, smuggling, running ... unsavory establishments, etc... Turns out it was pretty huge, and anywhere you drew the line there was still a ton that it still seemed like you should add. An economy is a big deal. I would only try and tackle it if I like... enjoyed accounting or some insane thing like that. Particularly if you want to achieve any sort of balance.

I'm suggesting that if you're going for a specific effect, address the specific effect. Even if it's just a small side quest where you place armor and weapons for guards in a side chest in some shops and take the data you need from that and apply it to the next guard upgrade. The system described in the first post is an "arrangement" between a few very specific people, for no apparent purpose. Oh, and sometimes a guard gets ahold of one of the weapons.

 

Economy = Awesome, but if you're expecting an economy, and get a half dozen arrangements for guards to get new weapons... then... i mean come on...

 

What I think players expect economy to mean, however simple or complex you make it, as suggested in the bethesda previews:

Buying goods in a town(contributing currency, gold) adds significantly to helping the economy flourish. (A rich adventurer brings in lots of money versus 200g companion jobs and revenue from an alchemist and inn)

Selling goods in town does the same, but less fluid, duh.

Doing favors of certain kinds can either benefit or hurt the economies.

Stealing, committing crimes that will be visible at some point, and changing ledgers detract significantly from a holds economy.

[very optional]:

Random events could possibly affect the economies in good or bad ways.

Health of neighboring economies could impact others

 

Good economy means:

More, and better stock at shops, extending the stock into higher level ranges than would otherwise be buyable.

More gold to purchase with if the economy, or at least the merchant, is good on gold.

Other random things up to imagination

 

Bad economy means:

Oposite basically, less stuff to buy. Think of lowest extreme as hunters in the wilderness. 50g, a hide and an apple to sell.

Possibly better opportunities for thieves guild/crime (another slippery slope for a modder if you don't have clearly defined goals before you start.)

Other stuff you add..

 

State of an economy should probably be clearly visible to the player, ideally through dialog as the player is walking through town. A few new down on their luck NPC's or upwardly socially mobile NPC's could make this abundantly clear.

Some simple(I use the term loosely) radiant quests related to the state of the economy could be thrown in for good measure and blending with vanilla content. (Think guy with a loan problem, guy needing servants, newly rich NPC that needs some services and doesn't have people for that yet, down on his luck guy needing just a little help to get by)

 

This, all together, means, from players point of view:

If I'm nice to my town/holds economy, and buy buy buy to increase their fluid assets (actual gold) they will prosper like never before.

If I kill, steal, and pillage my heart out, this town/hold will become a breeding ground for thieves, and I can get away with more. Also I can just generally feel the impact of my evily evilness.

If I keep an eye on the towns people, I can help keep the town/hold economy in a state I like best.

 

 

Free live nudes!

 

Anything less than these requirements would probably just end up with a lot of disappointment. Like just now, since there are no free live nudes under this heading /cry

 

So ... anyone here enjoy accounting? (/cringe)

 

Also, what was that guy thinking SKSE would help with? just wondering.

Edited March 11, 2012 by SinderionsBones

[SinderionsBones]

I know it'd be complicated but if this can be done in strategy games and simulators, then why not also here?

 

Whoops, forgot to address this. You said you know some basic programming? One of the huge problems, maybe this is even what the SKSE will help with, I haven't looked that deep into it, is that you can only make arrays of integers and floats. You can't make, for example a variable to store references to books that just has 20 elements i.e. MyBooks[20] and you can't make new variables on the fly. Additionally, an odd omission on their part, you can't go item by item through a container and inspect each thing to take action based on what it is. All you can do is inspect each item as the PLAYER adds or removes it from a container. Once it's in there, it cannot be looked at by scripts. Weird I know.

 

If you start to think about it for a bit it may become clear just how annoyingly complicated this can become. You have to track each item in your hard coded script, and any merchant exchanges it has taken part of would basically have to "have it's story made up" on the spot, the next time you interacted with it, or it's projected owner. In strategy games, every thing is in memory, and accessable at the same time. This is not true in TES games. The drain on memory alone makes that unreasonable. Thus, the only way to do what you're talking about is a global object, script, quest, whatever, that tracks this stuff and pretends exchanges happened in the past, based on mostly random numbers you feed some trade route generating routine. you cannot access where the NPC's where when, or what happened to them, just a bunch of:

 

If randomnumber <= 5 then

;a bandit attacked him 2 days ago

merchant.gold = merchant.gold - 300

end if

 

if randomnumber > 60 then

;he sold some weapons to some guy, lets pretend that happened.

 

;We have to check every possible weapon variable for eligibility 1 through 50 or so

 

if merchant.ItemWeapon01.present then ;check each weapon reference variable individually

merchant.ItemWeapon01.present = false

if randomnumber < 20 then ;choose a merchant

;Add to that merchants variable, not loaded onto merchant until merchant is with player

 

 

if merchant.ItemWeapon02.present then ;check each weapon reference variable individually

merchant.ItemWeapon02.present = false

if randomnumber < 20 then ;choose a merchant

;Add to that merchants variable, not loaded onto merchant until merchant is with player

 

 

 

;do it all again for ItemWeapon03

;do it all again for ItemWeapon04

;do it all again for ItemWeapon05

;do it all again for ItemWeapon06

 

....

 

;till weapon 50 or whatever your hard coded maximum is.

 

 

Blah blah the actual code isn't important, important part is it's just juggling a lot of stuff around, in excessively complicated ways, for... still no apparent real reason. you're just making up supposed events based on freshly generated random numbers. Nothing is *really* happening, you're just juggling a lot of stuff in the background, using up a good chunk of memory, and if one of those randomnumbers ends up hitting right, you get a guard with an upgraded sword.

[JoTheVeteran]

Thanks for the very thorough explanation SinderionBones.

I see how hard is this, or at least the way I'm proposing it. Actually creating city-wise economies would be much simpler. It'd be an accumulation of numbers that when > something it'd make the city flourish. The problem here is that no one would actually care about that, it has no real impact to the player, except if maybe the traders of a rich city have more gold to exchange for items. Actually I also see how the name of the mod confuses people allot, it's shouldn't be called an "economy mod", it's rather a "global items circulation mod", that is a part of the economical system of a society but still not the actual mod itself. It's also NOT a dress the guards mod idea, these where examples I proposed. "Create an NPC that sells items to everyone, EVEN the guards".

 

You say the game handles most events as "quests" and that kinda confused me, so I guess those are actually subroutines that connect to the main code that is the game.

But can you extract values from certain subroutines, or change them if other ones have been also changed?

All you can do is inspect each item as the PLAYER adds or removes it from a container. Once it's in there, it cannot be looked at by scripts. Weird I know.

Is that, a no then?

If not, then you also say how the game can't track each thing happening in the world so it actually randomizes certain events that you come in contact with. It does so in order to save memory, but what if those actions were to be stored in files? Track the path of a sword that was brought created somewhere in the world. And that trail doesn't have to go on forever, you get to fight enemies with unique items, enchanted ones of plain rare. Why not an item that was created from a blacksmith then, instead of a random game spawn?

 

Again, inside a city with random weapons created by a smith, and gold amount for each NPC and no live economy, how possible is this:

 

Create a merchant character that buys weapons only for starters.

Then make that guy go sell swords to random NPCs inside the city he's based, even to the arrow-to-the-knee struck guards, and make sure that they KEEP the weapons, and not dismiss them in the next day cycle.

Edited March 12, 2012 by JoTheVeteran

[SinderionsBones]

Actually creating city-wise economies would be much simpler. It'd be an accumulation of numbers that when > something it'd make the city flourish. The problem here is that no one would actually care about that,

 

:D

 

I'm pretty sure that's why the developers didn't include it in the end, the only reason it would be popular is BECAUSE people have this 'grass is greener' thing going on since they announced it but didn't implement it.

 

It almost seems like your idea could be adapted and put with any sort of expanded RP atmosphere or radiant NPC interactions mod.

 

Do you remember the quest where the first time you sell a dwarven, longsword I think it is, you soon after, get a visit from a courier with a request to meet the wizard guy in Markarth.

 

A small (invisible to player, mainly just to get the global event) quest could be started based on items with certain keywords, being sold (item type:weapon, material: iron, stuff like that). These items references (how the game points to them) could then be stored in one of several script maintained pools of weapons(really just collections of references) to possibly be distributed. Finally after certain conditions(time passed maybe), particular items in the pool would be put in places eligible, be it equipped by an NPC, in a merchants chest, whatever.

 

Example:

You sell a self crafted, and self enchanted sword, or some special sword from a dungeon, whatever. The script remembers this weapon, it's value, and the day it was sold. Then it places it in the proper storage place, a weapons pool, or.. a pool specifically for common NPCs versus noble NPCs, or whatever.

 

Since this is as good a time as any, the script does some housecleaning, if you've got too many items in the pool for it to store, it keeps some and gets rid of others based on some conditions (value, maybe even number of eligible places to put it...)

 

As you go about the world, the NPC's you've attached an eligibility script to, have a chance to equip, or begin selling, eligible items. The do this by checking the appropriate pools of items when they are loaded (OnLoad) and ninja'ing some phat lootz.

 

Global variables regarding the passing of some items would, in this case, be reasonable so these independent 'satellite' scripts could access them easily. Stuff like GlobalItemsMinTransferDays, GlobalItemsMaxCommonValue, GloblaItemsCount (I'm not sure what that one would be for, but you get the idea)

 

This would need:

A good implementation of a central script container, probably a quest, I haven't experimented with stuff constantly running in the background, but I have a feeling an (invisible) quest with a small memory footprint (not a lot of items always loaded in memory) would do great.

 

Scripts specific for potential item receivers, including the types of items they recieve. Tacking on a new script to an existing NPC or chest (for merchants chests) is no big deal, nor is it prone to causing even small conflicts so far as I can tell. Example: A guard get's a Guard2hWeaponReciever script, maybe a mercenary type NPC gets a WarriorWeapArmorReciever script, etc... They consider pillaging your item pools whenever they are loaded.

 

Making provisions for more than one transfer would add a little complexity to the scripts and storage 'pools' but wouldn't be a big deal I don't think.

 

With a little forethought, this would provide a good basis for radiant quests for weapons based on where they have made their way to through YOUR actions, and your unique travels.

 

Think, along the lines of: A weapon of unique power has been found with some guy in Dawnstar. It's a shame you didn't know what you had.

or A guy in Ivarstead has managed to imbue your old weapon with new power, you should go steal it.

 

TL;DR: 1. Event script to register an item for distribution. 2. Scripts attached to eligible NPC's to snatch up items based on your conditions.

 

Unless I'm forgetting something that should be a starting point of what you are looking for.

 

and make sure that they KEEP the weapons, and not dismiss them in the next day cycle.

I know nothing of a tendency to not keep things. I'm guessing this is based on them being from like, a leveled list? For guards maybe you could have them 'borrow' the weapon from the list rather than keep it, since you wont be able to tell which one is which tomorrow anyways...

 

Oh, and anyone doing this for guards and other leveled actors would also have to keep in mind the limitations of adding scripts to leveled characters... it's well documented, with several developer created work arounds on the creationkit site.

[JoTheVeteran]

I considered maintaining the inventory a big deal because I thought the inventory defaults for each NPC in the world at sometime. But now that I think about it, that doesn't happen with their equipment, only in merchants probably with their gold and the stuff they sell. It does however happen to companion characters and maybe some other NPCs.

For example if I where to steal my companion's armor he'd walk about naked, but if I reload the game, he defaults.

If on the other hand where to steal the armor from guards, whenever I pass at the place they guard, I see a bunch of them patrolling with only an underwear (which is pretty hilarious considering the harsh Skyrim weather :D)

They did defaulted however at sometime but I believe it was after I installed a bunch of mods.

This actually would make the mod easier, but I don't know if all NPCs handle equipment that way.

 

Your idea of a hidden background chest I also believe is the right one. Mystra007 also suggested something similar with the gold exchange.

This also has to be coded that way that it'd keep the values after a game exit, and because of that it has to be interconnected to the save files somehow.

Item goes into chest -> chest index is updated into RAM.

When saving -> chest HD permanent file gets updated from RAM index.

Exit game.

When loading game -> chest RAM index is loaded from chest HD file.

 

Yup... really complicated stuff.

Edited March 13, 2012 by JoTheVeteran