Updated UI: Brighter blue for magic skills, and added experience percentages to skill list. Moved "Train" button before "Cancel". Added new UI elements pertaining to the new "Experience Efficiency" mechanic.
Train certain skills in town: Speechcraft, Mercantile, Sneak, Acrobatics, Athletics, Alchemy, Armorer, Security, and Enchant. Even if town training is disabled. (Optional)
MCM: Increased max grace period to 2 weeks, increased max of EXP ratio slider to 50 from 20. Reorganized and added new settings.
Skills now have an "Experience Efficiency" mechanic. Racial Skills, Specialization Skills, Novice Skills (skills below 15) gain more experience per hour. Miscellaneous skills gain less. Willpower/Endurance damage and fortification also affect efficiency up to +50% or -50%. (Optional)
Added optional sound effects.
Added Training Fatigue after training, which reduces Endurance or Willpower proportional to the amount of hours trained. Longer sessions lead to longer/worse bouts of fatigue. (Optional)
A secret bonus waits to be discovered for those fortunate enough to encounter it...
Version 1.1 Released:
Fixed bug where training was not actually passing time (oops).
Added optional chance of training being interrupted when training in hostile interiors/the wilderness. Any cooldown will still be invoked.
Added slider for experience per hour.
Added switch to turn resource consumption on/off.
Added switch to turn session length limits on/off.
Love the concept but the amount of EXP gained seems somewhat low, at least for low skills. Training Sneak from a rank of 5 gets 40 experience after 6 hours of training. Increasing the experience gain setting to maximum still only gives 145, a level and a half for 6 hours of training on a skill at 5 doesn't seem right. Meanwhile Block at 33 still gains 47 EXP, or half a level.
Maybe it's just me being picky, I don't know.
On a side note, the cooldown seems to count from when you start training not when it ends.
I'll be releasing an update soon. I considered what you said regarding the EXP slider.
I increased the max from 20 to 50 for the slider.
I introduced a new feature where you gain extra experience for skills below 15 (default, can be changed to 25 etc).
Also, the cooldown beginning when training begins is intended so players can train at roughly the same time every day, like before bed. Training for a bunch of hours at once really wasn't intended anyway, neither is gaining a bunch of fast experience. It's meant to be a balanced time sink or casual alternative to training. But how the mod is used is ultimately up to the player, so I figured I'd provide some more options in that regard.
I'm seconding almightyk's feedback; there really needs to be a separate significant multiplier for very low-level skills. I tried out this mod and spending 1 hour of training on my rank-5 Conjuration skill brought me from 0/100 to 24/100. At medium-high levels (rank 50-75) that amount of progress makes sense. But at very low levels, gaining 24 xp per hour is ludicrously slow.
I only plan to use this to boost skills that are a) low level and b) very hard to develop normally without trainers. For instance, conjuration requires regular casting, but most 'bound' spells last for 60 seconds, and you can't cast the same spell when it's active. Making a practice spell that lasts for 2 seconds only costs 1 magicka, which means it gives minimal XP if you play with a mod like Magicka Mastery (where spells give experience in proportion to how much magicka they cost). This mod gives me a perfect way to practice Conjuration without trainers. So, I boosted the 'daily training' XP rate from 6 to 25, so I'm starting to make actual progress on the skill each time I train it.
I'll reiterate: the focus of this mod is not to power level skills. This mod is primarily for adding a touch of immersion. At best, it is a way to get that last bit of experience needed to level up a skill or passively train the same skill over time. At worst, it is simply a more useful alternative to waiting. When used as originally intended by keeping a training streak, your training sessions become more meaningful. This form of training was always meant to be less efficient than hiring an NPC trainer as well...since it doesn't cost gold.
That being said, I'm often partial to adding more versatile customization options. I'll concede that low level skills should be easier to train to an extent. Once this college semester is over in a few weeks I'll take another look and consider adding more customization settings, particularly for low level skills. I may also make some menu changes to help elucidate the "Experience Efficiency" mechanic. I've also been playing around with the idea of allowing more than one "streak skill".
After a looong time not playing (yes, we are talking months) I come back to find this gem. I love it! This mod as well as companion leveller are now permanent on my modlist.
Thank you Danae! I am also pleased to inform you that I'll be adding some new features to Companion Leveler soon as well, including the blacklist feature.
Yes, I was going to message you about that :) I was also wondering if there was a way to let the mod detect modded classes, I'd love to assign Ahead of the Classes classes in particular.
That's on my list actually. I should be able to figure something out regarding modded classes. I'll definitely let you know the progress on it once I get time to mess with some ideas I have.
Very cool idea. An interesting wrinkle might be to have training inturrupted by a random encounter cancel the benefits gained, adding a little extra consequence to doing jumping jacks in the wilderness.
Nice one. Shaping up to be quite an immersive mod. No idea if even possible but for purist masochists like me, what would be the chances of seeing an optional mechanic where attempts to train in hostile areas increase the chance of encounters (i.e. being inattentive/careless/making noise etc)?
Also, quick question: when training is interrupted do you lose progress and are the resources still used up?
The way I decided to implement training interruption basically rolls for the chance of an ambush each hour you train based on your ambush chance setting in the MCM.
Once you "fail" an ambush roll on a given hour, any further hours you would train are cancelled and the cooldown is invoked, and the training session does not apply to your streak. Any experience reward from a streak bonus is not awarded either. However, any hours you have trained already still award experience because the experience reward is given each hour you train as you increment through the hours. The resources spent increment the same way and are spent each hour you train. You won't spend the full amount shown in the menu unless you were ambushed at the very end of your session, which is possible.
If you plan to go to the gym for 3 hours and only end up staying for 2, any work you have already done wouldn't be reversed. So it should be like that in game as well.
Currently, any exterior you train in where resting is allowed, you have a chance of being ambushed. Even in modded exteriors.
For interiors, if there are no hostiles within the interior you won't have a chance of being ambushed as a reward for "clearing" the interior in the case of a dungeon.
Typically, I've found that the game disallows the opening of the rest menu when hostiles are present in an interior except through the use of invisibility. So I figured that normally you wouldn't be able to even open the rest menu to consider training in the first place, and if you did so through the use of invisibility you would still have a chance of being ambushed from any noise/movement you make through the training session.
I was flirting with the idea of simply reducing the chance of being ambushed in a cleared dungeon instead, but the problem is some player homes allow you to rest wherever you like in the interior, and since this mod detects town cells by checking whether or not you can rest in the cell, this would allow you to be ambushed inside your own home, which is not ideal. (Since resting is legal there, like the wilderness and in dungeons)
Interesting, thank you for the detailed explanation. I think the adjustable encounter chance is what I needed to nudge me over the line, adding this to my modlist. Re: negative skill gain and resource loss, how you've done it makes sense practically and logically for sure. Not against it in theory, as a counterbalance and interesting risk/reward mechanic (facing an enemy without full bars). There are ways you can explain an unexpected fight undoing the gains but it's not an important difference. The ambush setting is key for me to be able to tweak the difficulty/convenience, thanks, appreciate it!
Just had a proper play around with it, extremely well done! Clean interface, not op at all. Just enough to get 'over the line' for a skill about to level, without having to say swim into a corner for 5 minutes or something equally non-immersive. I did turn up the ambush chance quite high, because the mechanic is supposed to be a bit punishing and I think it's good to roll the dice a little when you're gaining something; I also think not having all your health or magicka adds a fun twist to getting jumped by a scrib in the middle of practice. That's a ringing endorsement from me, cheers!
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Version 1.1 Released:
Maybe it's just me being picky, I don't know.
On a side note, the cooldown seems to count from when you start training not when it ends.
I increased the max from 20 to 50 for the slider.
I introduced a new feature where you gain extra experience for skills below 15 (default, can be changed to 25 etc).
Also, the cooldown beginning when training begins is intended so players can train at roughly the same time every day, like before bed. Training for a bunch of hours at once really wasn't intended anyway, neither is gaining a bunch of fast experience. It's meant to be a balanced time sink or casual alternative to training. But how the mod is used is ultimately up to the player, so I figured I'd provide some more options in that regard.
I only plan to use this to boost skills that are a) low level and b) very hard to develop normally without trainers. For instance, conjuration requires regular casting, but most 'bound' spells last for 60 seconds, and you can't cast the same spell when it's active. Making a practice spell that lasts for 2 seconds only costs 1 magicka, which means it gives minimal XP if you play with a mod like Magicka Mastery (where spells give experience in proportion to how much magicka they cost). This mod gives me a perfect way to practice Conjuration without trainers. So, I boosted the 'daily training' XP rate from 6 to 25, so I'm starting to make actual progress on the skill each time I train it.
That being said, I'm often partial to adding more versatile customization options. I'll concede that low level skills should be easier to train to an extent. Once this college semester is over in a few weeks I'll take another look and consider adding more customization settings, particularly for low level skills. I may also make some menu changes to help elucidate the "Experience Efficiency" mechanic. I've also been playing around with the idea of allowing more than one "streak skill".
This mod as well as companion leveller are now permanent on my modlist.
Also, quick question: when training is interrupted do you lose progress and are the resources still used up?
Once you "fail" an ambush roll on a given hour, any further hours you would train are cancelled and the cooldown is invoked, and the training session does not apply to your streak. Any experience reward from a streak bonus is not awarded either. However, any hours you have trained already still award experience because the experience reward is given each hour you train as you increment through the hours. The resources spent increment the same way and are spent each hour you train. You won't spend the full amount shown in the menu unless you were ambushed at the very end of your session, which is possible.
If you plan to go to the gym for 3 hours and only end up staying for 2, any work you have already done wouldn't be reversed. So it should be like that in game as well.
Currently, any exterior you train in where resting is allowed, you have a chance of being ambushed. Even in modded exteriors.
For interiors, if there are no hostiles within the interior you won't have a chance of being ambushed as a reward for "clearing" the interior in the case of a dungeon.
Typically, I've found that the game disallows the opening of the rest menu when hostiles are present in an interior except through the use of invisibility. So I figured that normally you wouldn't be able to even open the rest menu to consider training in the first place, and if you did so through the use of invisibility you would still have a chance of being ambushed from any noise/movement you make through the training session.
I was flirting with the idea of simply reducing the chance of being ambushed in a cleared dungeon instead, but the problem is some player homes allow you to rest wherever you like in the interior, and since this mod detects town cells by checking whether or not you can rest in the cell, this would allow you to be ambushed inside your own home, which is not ideal. (Since resting is legal there, like the wilderness and in dungeons)
Could I potentially die training armour skills?