SinderionsBones Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 I can't be the only person considering this. A playthrough on one of the top difficulties with a few mercenary mods on, somewhere around 10 followers, and a player character with virtually no fighting ability letting his small army take care of it. I have a feeling it would be more challenging than you might think at first. Has anyone done this? I'm about halfway through a light armor bound weapon sorcerer build, thinking of this next especially with Riverwood Mercenaries guild and the other new mercenaries mod that just came out. Both appear to be completely independent of the normal follower system and standalone. It may want a little extra few things modded in, but I think it would be challenging. You're not just he dragonborn, you're the leader of basically a platoon you can at least loosely control. For my sorcerer build I gave myself a little jumpstart by putting a standard wizard enchants on a few pieces of hide armor, which would be possible by lvl 30 or so anyways with enchanting. Maybe for this individual add in some more specific combat mechanics designed around being a 10 or so man team. If you haven't made the association already lol: Except the guy in back is more of just a guy commanding rather than participating to any great degree. Maybe using some specialized or beefed up mass restoration or illusion spells for his troops. Also, it would be a whole, or nearly entire play through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luckylewis Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 Quite an interesting idea. I would wonder how your band of mercenaries would perform in the smaller locations though, having so many followers in some of those tight caverns and caves may result in some quite irritating path finding. It's a shame it's not possible to make your AI follow you in some sort of formation though because I suspect they would all just group around you in a big blob if you stand still. Good concept though, I'd love to have a go at it and intervene in a Imperial/Stormcloak battle (through the warzones mod) taking place with my band of mercenaries. :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coinecc Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 Quite an interesting idea. I would wonder how your band of mercenaries would perform in the smaller locations though, having so many followers in some of those tight caverns and caves may result in some quite irritating path finding.I would just make most of them wait outside while myself and a fire team go into the smaller areas. Regroup when we're done. This is a pretty cool concept Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fortunado3 Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 I have plenty of builds like that. From Nobles, to leaders and generals etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SinderionsBones Posted March 9, 2012 Author Share Posted March 9, 2012 Awesome, soooo? did they work well? Any tips? how many followers did you usually play with? Do you think some extra control would have helped out? What commands do you think would have been helpful? Was it fun? If it was balanced would it make a cool challenging runthrough? especially with some more refined control? Things I've got working prototypes of in the CK include: dividing your followers in to a couple three man groups. This way under most circumstances with only one enemy, only one group will go charging into combat, while the others will stay behind, presumably protecting the player. If you are coming up against a larger enemy, you can send in your reserves. telling them all to not be agressive. Having them only attack when player is hit (haven't gotten to this yet) shooting an arrow and having them go to where it lands. (filling a quest alias with the unique type of arrow) Having them move out of the way ( no brainer) I've explored a few different control mechanisms, from dialog, to a spell or weap that instantly brings up extensive menus for control, to staves to cast spells for specific commands. I haven't decided on one yet. I'm also experimenting with a voiced assistant (voice in your head, not an actual person) talking to you to help you keep tabs on what all is going on, especially since you can't keep good track of how your troops health is doing, or how the enemies are. I'm also playing with the idea of helping the Forsworn faction pack http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=12436, this is quickly moving into more advanced control territory. Pre planned ambushes and quest and scene run strategies based on pre existing plans. Would any of this been useful/not annoying in a balanced version of any run through you've done? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bpestilence Posted March 9, 2012 Share Posted March 9, 2012 It would take a pretty big AI tweak to get NPCs to do anything close to realistic battling. Even in the "big battles" already in vanilla skyrim, NPCs basically just run around randomly until all the NPCs on one side are dead. It would be nice to have a system to simply set the default weapon and fighting style for any follower. It would also be nice to be able to set how far away from you the NPCs will get while fighting. So, you could set them to "meat shield" for really close formations, or "ranger" if you want them to go ahead and fight, or even a range where they have to stay behind you, though it would be hard to define "behind" in scripting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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