This "news" article is simply a copy of a former sticky post. But since it is rather lengthy and has decorated the discussion topic for some time now, it's time to free some space. Since I don't want to hide this piece of news, it's now an article about Requiem. ;)

First details about Requiem 1.8 - Requiem for the Indifferent

It has been a long time now since the last Requiem update and it still will take some time until the next release, but now the Requiem dev team finally considers the new core features stable enough to make a public announcement.
At first, Requiem 1.8 was thought to become a minor content upgrade, fixing the mass effect to work better with heavy armor NPCs and light-armor players, but once I implemented the upgraded version which takes your perks into account, I made a horrible discovery: almost no NPC in the land had any armor perks, so my refined system ended up as a player-exclusive feature again. At this point it became clear, that this update would be more work than I thought at the beginning. After having a close look at the hold guards, I began to undestand how generic these NPCs truly are (even after Xarrians awesome work). A nice example: All guards derive from the generic civil war soldier, as such they need to master both armor types and all three weapon types, despite the fact that imperial guards only use one type of armor, one sword and one bow in Vanilla. As a consequence they are severely underskilled for their levels and often would not naturally qualify for the high-skill perks Xarrian gave them. To change this arbitrariness, one has to go the very core of the game and restructure the complete actor inheritance tree, which is no simple task because these structures are quite complex. This also brings you straight to the next problem of the system: Actor Data Inheritance from Templates has a severe shortcoming which makes it impossible to generate both a variety in skills and look at the same time without an extreme amount of work. Have a look at the Bethesda bandit inheritance pattern to get a rough idea of the nightmare that awaits one, if you ever want a real variation...
When I realized all of this, I decided it is time to do something against this generic stuff and bring a new level of detail to all those generic actors, granting them individual fighting styles with suitable equipment (instead of random stuff), stats and skills that would match the player on the same level as closely as possible.
In the end I spent a lot of time in my dark programming pit, torturing my betatesters and finally I came up with a black magic construct so utter dark you probably would not have expected it, but... Requiem for the Indifferent will make use of the SkyProc library!

So, what have I done to suddenly need SkyProc or what can I achieve I could not without it?

a) tempered equipment for NPCs (without any side-effects so far, no items occasionally lying on the floor or other oddities)
b) chosen NPCs (for 1.8 this likely means "bandits and guards" as the major generic factions) will no longer use "outfits" but instead use the best available armor, i.e. they actually wear the tempered stuff given to them (and guards that end up with a random divine amulet will actually equip it, contrary to Vanilla Skyrim)
c) chosen NPCs no longer have at will chosen skill and stat offsets, but they now follow the same leveling rules as the player and all have their specializations, both in terms of skills and perks. When a guard approaches with sword and shield in hand, better be prepared that he might shield-bash you into the mud if you're unlucky. And if he has a ranged weapon instead...well, you better find cover quickly, he surely has more skill and perks than ever before! :D
d) Actor variation: Instead of at most a handful different visual templates per NPC-skilltemplate, SkyProc allows to generate a much wider range of looks per skilltemplate.
e) The mass effect is now split into the "mass" which governs knockdowns and the "penalties" where your perks factor in. This means with more heavy armor perks you still gain the full knockdown protection you had in 1.7.3 but the penalties will reduce, making all kinds of things easier for seasoned warriors. This also opens the path to all kind of "mass bonuses" that do not affect the magnitude of the penalties.
f) Tempered items now have a wide range of qualities, so you will find items in lots of different qualities among your enemies

That's of course not everything in 1.8, but these are the major features which took so long to reach a sufficiently stable state. I hope you like those changes. I am locking this sticky to replies, but feel free to leave your thoughts below, as a normal comment.

Since it seems that the time span became not really clear from the original post, let me state it again: Requiem 1.8 will still take at least several weeks until it is ready for publication. But since a lot of time has passed since the last update, I wanted to let you know where the journey goes, now that we finally consider those features stable enough for an announcement. ;)