[LE] Removing or hiding actors added by a mod

[cumbrianlad]

I'm just thinking about the keeping them from falling, would it not be just as easy to build a little room, say with four corners of any building kit, navmesh it and finalize the cell's navmesh. Still below or to one side of the original interior. Move the actor and marker in there? Then sandbox packages aren't an issue either. They'll just stand around like the NPCs used for the BYOH planting system.

 

I realize that will create a new navmesh island below or to one side of the rest of it, but I wonder about the NPCs trying to 'teleport' themselves onto a piece of navmesh, back in the original cell. What I mean is similar to what would happen if you put an NPC into a cell that was only partly navmeshed, or not navmeshed at all. They'll load on the nearest piece of navmesh to their editor location, or they'll all load in a gaggle around the COC marker or the last item that was added to the cell if there isn't a COC marker.

 

Or will this not happen?

[agerweb]

My understanding is that he just wants to remove NPC's from the game, in which case they just have to be set to initially disabled. You can then move them somewhere or leave them where they are. It doesn't matter, to the game they effectivelly no longer exist.

 

This applies to any object in the game you want to remove, the only reason you actually move anything out of the way is to avoid confusing yourself about what's there and what's not.

[cumbrianlad]

Ah, yes. My mistake. I'd forgotten about them being disabled. I thought since the thread had got around to adding packages to them, they were not to be disabled, after all.

[Hoamaii]

@ PoorMan65:

"The mod that I am overriding simply places a boat load of female actors in the world to use as followers, wives, companions... "

"Simply" followers, wives, companions?!... And you're only saying this now? :facepalm: Gosh, PoorMan65, PLEASE, don't do it!.. Forget everything I said, I thought that was only one actor placed in some cell to just sweep the floor endlessly or something!.. You never checked these actors "info", did you?

 

Of course they're used in quests, not just custom quests, very likely Vanilla quests too!.. The original mod author would kill me... :pinch:

 

You should retitle this thread "How to butcher and bug a perfectly fine mod"!..

 

I'm not kidding and I'm saying this with the friendliest intentions, if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it. You're going to bug your game.

 

 

@ Agerweb: yeah, disabling them might work if it was juts a "sweep the floor" actor like I thought, but only if you're absolutely sure the game won't call them later in some scripts and/or quests. Depending how these are built, coded and conditioned, you could end up stalling a quest or a script forever. The only way to cleanly edit any mod is to fully understand how that mod works first. In other words, we need to be able to build it ourselves before we try to take any mod apart.

 

 

@ Cumbrianlad: yeah, you could also build some sort of containment structure to put them in, but that'd still have to be in their origin cell as far as I know (the DweFarmInt is pretty good to do that). And yes, navmeshed or not, if they're being called to do something, the game will try to teleport them where they're being called - a "DoNothing" package could prevent that (basically it keeps an actor restrained and waiting forever as long as that package runs) unless of course some high priority quest calls "EvaluatePackage" and overrides it. In that case, you'd need to edit that quest too to prevent this from happening.

[agerweb]

@ PoorMan65:

 

"The mod that I am overriding simply places a boat load of female actors in the world to use as followers, wives, companions... "

 

"Simply" followers, wives, companions?!... And you're only saying this now? :facepalm: Gosh, PoorMan65, PLEASE, don't do it!.. Forget everything I said, I thought that was only one actor placed in some cell to just sweep the floor endlessly or something!.. You never checked these actors "info", did you?

 

Of course they're used in quests, not just custom quests, very likely Vanilla quests too!.. The original mod author would kill me... :pinch:

 

You should retitle this thread "How to butcher and bug a perfectly fine mod"!..

 

I'm not kidding and I'm saying this with the friendliest intentions, if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it. You're going to bug your game.

 

 

@ Agerweb: yeah, disabling them might work if it was juts a "sweep the floor" actor like I thought, but only if you're absolutely sure the game won't call them later in some scripts and/or quests. Depending how these are built, coded and conditioned, you could end up stalling a quest or a script forever. The only way to cleanly edit any mod is to fully understand how that mod works first. In other words, we need to be able to build it ourselves before we try to take any mod apart.

 

 

@ Cumbrianlad: yeah, you could also build some sort of containment structure to put them in, but that'd still have to be in their origin cell as far as I know (the DweFarmInt is pretty good to do that). And yes, navmeshed or not, if they're being called to do something, the game will try to teleport them where they're being called - a "DoNothing" package could prevent that (basically it keeps an actor restrained and waiting forever as long as that package runs) unless of course some high priority quest calls "EvaluatePackage" and overrides it. In that case, you'd need to edit that quest too to prevent this from happening.

As we don't know what Mod is being amended here, difficult to say what the effect would be. If it is just a boatload of new NPC's running sandbox packages in various locations, you may be able to just disable them. If this mod does use them in custom quests, then it would take careful quest editing to remove them. We have Insufficient data to give furthert advice.

[cumbrianlad]

Agerweb, the OP has just revealed that the mod 'involves a boatload of female actors for use as wives, followers and cannon-fodder'. As Hoamii said, they are clearly tied into numerous quests, both custom and possibly vanilla.

 

OP, referring back to my first post in this thread, I cautioned about the possible use of actors in quests, scenes etcetera. I also informed you as how to check this before proceeding. If they are potential wives and followers they will most certainly be each tied into a quest, as Hoamii said and it's likely they are tied to 2 quests, minimum, each!

I'm not too familiar with the spouse quests but at least in the follower quests, the NPC who is to be a follower is forced into the alias when the player accepts them, assuming and that's a big assumption, that the mod author set this up along vanilla lines. This means that the DialogueFollower quest or custom DialogueFollower framework may not be affected, directly. However there will be another quest, somewhere that the mod author has built in their initial follower enquire/accept/refuse dialogue. You will at least need to find their alias in this quest and set it to 'Allow Disabled' and for good measure, also check 'Optional'... test. If the author has all of the initial follower dialogue in one quest (Quite likely... I might do it that way), failure to do this will render all of the potential followers unable to be hired.

 

If you are wanting more help on the forum, you'll have to specify more precisely what you are doing. If I even knew the mod, I could download it, take a look at it and give you more specific advice. I've done this for others. At least tell us what mod it is and which actors you want to disable.

 

I've even gone as far as downloading the esp, looking at it in CK, SSEedit and anything like Nifskope that may be needed. I've corrected the faults, cleaned the esp and sent it back. I could do that for you.

 

Edit: taken Agerweb's comment into account.

[agerweb]

Too much assuming: Shouting would be capital letters and it is not clear that any of these NPC's would be tied to custom quests.

 

Vanilla follower/marriage quests do not count. If they were set-up as followers but are disabled then they cannot be recruited so there will be no errors. If they are referred to directly in a dialogue line that is also fine because the game still recognises them as existing which is why you only disable not delete.

[cumbrianlad]

Point taken Agerweb, altered my post for some bits. I did say that the dialogue follower quests, custom or otherwise may not be affected directly. I don't think its at all unreasonable to assume that these NPCs are referenced directly as aliases, since they are all used as potential marriage or follower candidates. My concern is that there is a quest somewhere with a lot of aliases in it that won't fire because some of them are disabled.

 

You're right that I don't know this, but its possible.

 

Knowing which mod it is would clear that up.

[Poorman65]

Part of this is that I am trying to learn how to do modding. As a long time developer, I know that the best way to learn, is to dive in and play around with the stuff. I'm having fun with this and the worst case of making a mistake is that I have to start over.

 

All of the discussions on this thread provide a little more insight into how this all works and the pros and cons of doing things in different ways. Great stuff!

 

Probably not necessary for you to dig into the actual mod but here is the link.:

https://[Blocked URL: Stolen content, sexualised depictions of minors]/file/13-sassy-teen-dolls-complete-fomod-installer/

 

I've attached an example of the Info from one of the NPCs. All of the NPCs have the same Info contents. Just the location! There are no directly associated quests as far as I can tell. I think that the marriage and follower stuff is all handled simply by them belonging to those particular factions.

 

They do have packages associated with them but they are all vanilla.

[cumbrianlad]

If they're all like that and nothing shows when you use the 'Edit' menu, 'Find Text' and enter their name, you're probably fine to go ahead with all the moving and disabling.

 

Just be sure to save a backup of the esp before you do it and test. You can then revert to the original and take the problem NPCs out of the mod.