[LE] Anyone know a cure for slaughterfish on land?

[cumbrianlad]

We've probably all seen it. Slaughterfish that follow you out of the water onto the land. I used to think it was just vanilla water triangles wrongly going out of the water. Now I'm not so sure.

 

I have a new slaughterfish race and levelled actors using it. They are prone, like the vanilla ones, to coming out onto the land and I don't like it! While testing, I even saw one instance of a slaughterfish in one of the CaveG tunnels nowhere near any water navmesh triangles. That may have been a COC issue, though.

 

Other than the basic health, magicka and stamina stats, plus health regen on the race 'General data' tab being different, the rest of the race is vanilla.

 

The way I did the navmesh was to put all the land triangles in to the very edge of the water, then drag the water down, move the edges at the waterline so that they were all a little submerged when I dragged the water back to its original position. I then added the triangles that ran along the waterline, changing them all to water as I went. Last I filled in all the rest of the submerged triangles, selected them all and toggled water. I dragged the water back up. Job done?

 

So I have no water navmesh on land. I even removed water triangles that were underneath any bits of navmeshed land in the caves, such as balconies and the ramp where the player leaves the water.

 

I think the issue is the vanilla slaughterfish themselves.

 

Any ideas?

 

 

[anjenthedog]

Well, there *is* a mod that will remove them altogether, but as to occasional spawns outside the water or them doing like crabs and following you out of the water... No, I don't know of any.

 

In case you're interested in that "solution" (if it can be called a solution), the mod is called Slaughterfish are Extinct

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19987

 

PS> I use it, because follower Sha has a nervous breakdown each time we encounter one and goes into berserker mode until she kills it. I swear, if I didn't know better, I'd think these followers are partially sentient. (it's not as if she's actually protecting me...They're annoying but I've long since become too powerful for a slaughterfish to bother me any more than being attacked by a crab)

[maxarturo]

A quick solution, although it might not be 100% bullet proof, but it will stop the fish from spawning outside the water, is to:

- "Preferred Path" the "Underwater NavMesh", make sure that the underwater Preferred NavMesh does not "LINK/JOIN" with any section of your "Land Preferred NavMesh".

- Make him a custom AI Package and force him to only use "Preferred Path".

This works on my side, fish never spawns outside water (they stopped completely) and until now (while testing) fish does not follow me outside water when in combat.

* But, i didn't put some more stress to it, i just tested it 2 or 3 times (if i remember correctly), it worked so i moved on, since then (6+ month ago) haven't return to those "Group of Cells", they are all 100% finish.

EDIT: I forgot to add that: NavMesh must first be marked as "Underwater NavMesh" and then as "Preferred Path".

Edited January 15, 2020 by maxarturo

[cumbrianlad]

Anjenthedog, I'm afraid that my mod will not appeal to your follower.

 

I need these slaughterfish, unfortunately, so I can't to remove them. They have their own race, so I can set them to recover recover health. They have higher race unarmed damage and they are levelled, with levelled unarmed damage spells, so that their unarmed damage can kill a player in seconds, if the player falls off a ledge into the water... Pirhanna fear!

 

On the other hand, when I upload the mod, you may re-think Sha's obsession with attacking the things... maybe she's not only sentient... maybe she's seen my race of slaughterfish before?... spooky! Liked the post :smile:

 

Maxarturo... what can I say? That's getting tried right away. I'll test it to destruction, because I have to. You've probably guessed from answering my other posts recently that this is a stealth mod. You'd be partly right. It's a player home aimed at Thief-style players. It can be obtained by working out clues and surviving a nasty dungeon. It can also be obtained by donating money to charity... but where's the fun in that? I'm going to build in a bonus if the player gets through the dungeons to get the house, but they only get the bonus if they don't kill any of the NPCs in the dungeon... and it's vast! If the slaughterfish come out on land, they alert other enemies and killing may be necessary to survive and not the player's fault. That's why the slaughterfish coming on land is such an issue... I'm playing with very tight margins.

 

Thanks both of you!

[maxarturo]

An add on "Fail Safe" solution (with the above), is to:

Either,

1) Detach completely the "Underwater Navmesh" from the rest of the "Land NavMesh".

2) Add "NavCut Collison" wherever the 2 NavMesh meet, this approach has the positive that if you need those 2 sections to be link you can Disable the NavCut Collison after "Something Happens... Activate, kill, Trigger Enter... etc"

3) You can also have ALL NPCS in the same Faction, so this way they won't attach each other.

* All of the above will help to forbid npcs to enter their opposite NavMesh.

Edited January 15, 2020 by maxarturo

[cumbrianlad]

Thanks again, Maxarturo. My list of credits for this mod is starting to look like an Oscar speech!

 

There are 2 to 3 different sets of levelled actors, depending which of the 6 interior cells of the cavern that the player is in. I've already got their factions playing nicely with each other, so that they'll attack the player but not each other. They also won't help each other, but help actors of the same type.

 

L_Navcut collision would be good. I can't even think of a reason I'd need to disable it... so, a simple test. Easier than making the slaughterfish navmeshes into islands, though I may do that if the collision works, just to avoid needing the collision.

 

Thinking about it, in a book that the player reads on entering the caverns, 'Drevisa' (An ex TG guildmaster) advises the player not to take a clumsy, noisy follower in with them, she does not forbid it and I haven't made it so that followers can't go in with the player. If a follower dives into one of these pools, it's a sure-fire way of that follower ending up dead, or at least unable to get back out. Anything that stops Lydia or anyone else ending up as fish food is good. Besides, they'll have plenty of other opportunities to end up dead, later on in the caverns!

[maxarturo]

Just a little piece of advice.

Mods that have the possibility to get followers kill is a BIG NO NO for 99,9% of all players, you need to take in account that at the end players don't really care about how much work or how many inovations the mods has, they give more attention and credits to their followers mods since 99% of players have no idea how a mod is made or the difference between a follower mod and a quest mod which adds new material to the game.

* My project concentrates in killing the player in every possible way, it is not going to be a walk in the park for those that choose to play it.

However, I took all the precautionary measures and excluded followers from all the dangerous death threatening parts of the mod, so no followers can get killed, only staggered.

[cumbrianlad]

Point taken.

 

That's why I thought the idea about the navcut that you made was good. I was worried about that aspect.

 

After the slaughterfish pools (in 3 cells of the 'caverns'), There is one other area where followers could be killed if they fell into the water or jumped into it to try to reach the player, assuming the damage effect (Like lava damage) takes no notice of them being in 'Bleedout'? The area is in a Nord ante-chamber. The deadly flooded part is not navmeshed and the only enemy in there has no unrelenting force shout and is at the far end of the chamber, set to ambush on trigger. The player can pull a lever to enable wooden bridges and disable the L_Navcut collision cubes around the bridge locations, allowing a follower to reach the player safely, once the player gets to the other side. It's possible for the player to get out if they're fast enough, but I doubt that a follower would even try.

 

I was hoping that followers would simply stay put at the last bit of 'safe' navmesh available to them.

 

I'll need to test it thoroughly with a follower.

 

If followers die in there, I could exclude them from that cell of the 'caverns' dungeon, or else I could try to make them stay put on entering a trigger box.

 

It's an 'optional' area, anyway and doesn't need to be entered to complete the associated quest. It just has a load of bonus goodies and helps to complete the storyline for the player.

 

I'll see how it goes when testing.