SSE A question about quest aliases and factions

[Dingo2742]

I understand that you can assign factions to an alias -- but does that mean the actor's normal factions are suppressed while they're filling the alias?

 

Or does the actor end up with their existing factions plus the ones added by the alias?

 

 

I have another related question. If you place two actors in a pair of factions set with "enemy" pointing at the other faction, but they also happen to be allies via a different faction, will they still treat each other as enemies and fight?

 

 

Example: Take Lydia and Jordis, add them to two FactionFighter1 and FactionFighter2 respectively.

 

Faction Fighter1 and FactionFighter2 are enemies of each other, but Lydia and Jordis are still both in PlayerFaction and PlayerAllyFaction. Will Jordis and Lydia fight each other under such conditions?

 

 

Basically, depending on who I fill my two aliases with, my little dueling mod sometimes won't make my dudes fight. I'm trying to debug and I don't know if it's because the faction thing isn't working, or if it's something else.

 

I've tested this on many random NPCs and it works, but one of the cases where it *won't* work is a pair of followers (even when dismissed).

Edited August 18, 2020 by Dingo2742

[IsharaMeradin]

Factions assigned to an alias should be added to any existing factions on the actor as well as any other factions assigned to the same actor through other aliases on other quests or through scripting.

 

As far as the other question, I don't have enough experience with actors and factions to give a definitive answer.

[Dingo2742]

So potentially, if faction conflicts actually do stop combat from happening, I'd have to Remove and add back the existing factions before and after my quest to make this work... if that's the case, then I might just rewrite this to use clones or something. The point of my mod is to work on any two NPCs at all. If I have to make the script detect, store, and restore factions for any actor the user chooses, then this is going to be way too complex.

Edited August 20, 2020 by Dingo2742

[cumbrianlad]

For the second question, I wouldn't know either, but your tests seem to show that they won't fight because of their common factions.

 

Removing them from their other factions temporarilly and adding them back in at the end is a good idea.

 

The other thing that determines when they will fight is their aggression. Just making them enemies won't work if they are unaggressive. In your tests were the actors unaggressive? If so, they wouldn't initiate combat. Then there's confidence. One could run away from the other if their confidence is low enough.

 

In the case of Lydia and Jordis, it would make an interesting test esp! Set them as enemies, find one of them and use the console to move the other one to the player and see what happens! They are both aggressive and foolhardy, so you'll know the answer right away. If you video it, I'd watch!

[Dingo2742]

Yeah I've already tested for confidence and aggression, if there's nothing else I guess that leaves the common factions. That's unfortunate, it makes this whole thing less simple.

[IsharaMeradin]

I know some followers will start fighting each other especially after some friendly fire occurs during a fight. Serana is known to instigate this with all the area of effect magic that she uses. Perhaps, force one to attack the other and then maybe they'll keep fighting. Other than that, I have no idea.

[cumbrianlad]

If this is done in a quest, it's not that much trouble to remove the factions and add them back in, if needed when you're done. I did that recently in a quest because my very aggressive actors were attacking a 'Dwemer Ghost' who appears at times and is meant to be ignored. I just tweaked his aggression and confidence and then added him to the enemy faction for that bit of the quest... problem solved. The Dwemer machines ignore him and he doesn't help them when the player attacks them.

 

The reverse will be true here.

 

IsharaMeradin, that Serana problem with her area effect spells can wreck the assault on Castle Volkihar. It's so bad when it happens that I reported it to the USSEP team. Anska and Illia can cause this problem too, with followers, but if the player is a high enough level to get Serana's area effect spells working in the castle attack, it's a nightmare. She can easilly hit one of the Dawnguard while trying to target a vampire. Then the entire Dawnguard turn against Serana and it's impossible to get to the next stage of confronting Harkon.

 

I made a little private esp to get around it that boosted the stats of the killable Dawnguard and changed Serana's area effect spells to higher powered versions of the lesser spells... works a treat!

[Dingo2742]

IsharaMeradin,

 

 

The funny thing about Serana is that she's actually not in the normal PlayerAlly or PotentialFollower or Player factions. This is probably why she causes other NPC's to freak out when she hits them with friendly-fire. They don't consider her an "ally".

Edited August 20, 2020 by Dingo2742